Voters in the city of St. Louis and St. Louis County will vote on Tuesday, June 5 whether to authorize a $945 million bond issue. Proposition Y would authorize bonds that would spread out the cost of $4.7 billion in sewer repairs mandated by the Metropolitan Sewer District’s settlement of a suit filed by the State of Missouri and the United States Environmental Protection Agency. A vote of “no” on Proposition Y will mean higher sewer bills beginning in July 2012. The authorization of the bonds will share the debt burden as MSD acts to fix the 537 outflows that dump 26 billion gallons of untreated sewage into our creeks every year. We strongly endorse a vote of YES ON PROPOSITION Y.
Nixon must sign bill on sentencing disparities
We encourage Gov. Jay Nixon to look closely as two important bills passed by the Missouri Legislature and championed by state Rep. Tishaura Jones, the Assistant House Minority Leader and candidate for Treasurer of the City of St. Louis.
Most importantly, Nixon must sign into law Senate Bill 628, which would reduce the illogical and ultimately unconscionable sentencing disparity between crack and powder cocaine in Missouri. Under existing state law, possession of just one gram of crack cocaine results in the same sentence as possession of 75 grams of powder cocaine, the worst disparity in the nation.
This illogical disparity takes on a racial tinge when we consider that crack cocaine use is more prevalent among African Americans, while powder cocaine is more commonly used by whites. Therefore, the high disparity in sentencing protocols punishes black drug offenders much more severely than white drug offenders. The bill championed by Jones and passed this year would lower disparity to 17 to 1, the same as the federal ratio.
“Intended or not, Missouri’s drug laws resulted in racial bias in sentencing,” Jones said. “This bill will bring some rationality to how the state punishes drug offenses.”
We aware that part of Nixon’s statewide voter appeal in Missouri is his “tough on crime” stance as a friend to law enforcement and a former Attorney General in a death penalty state. However, the value of pandering to blindly punitive conservative voters on this bill is not worth the credibility Nixon would lose among black and progressive voters who are aware of the racism latent in this sentencing disparity. Nixon must sign the bill.
We have mixed feelings about another bill supported by Jones that sits on the governor’s desk: Senate Bill 576, which would toughen student performance standards and require greater accountability for Missouri charter schools while also expanding their potential reach statewide.
Under existing law, charter schools are allowed only in St. Louis and Kansas City. SB 576 allows for charter schools, which are public schools that operate independently of a local school district, to be established in any unaccredited or provisionally accredited school district. Charter schools could also be established in fully accredited districts, but only if sponsored by the local elected school board.
More accountability for charter schools is definitely a good thing. We wish it were not coupled in this bill with the expansion of charter schools statewide, which should be a separate concern. Jones is an eloquent and principled advocate for “school choice,” whereas we strongly believe more of our efforts should be focused on turning around the public school districts that educate most of our children and that are most subject to public scrutiny and accountability.
