We do not envy Gov. Jay Nixon or anyone else who has to review every provision on every bill passed by the Missouri Legislature, one of the nation’s most misguided deliberative bodies. But when the dust and spittle settle on this legislative session, there are at least two bills that the governor should and must sign into law.
Senate Bill 5, steered to passage by state Sen. Eric Schmitt (with assistance from the Ferguson Commission, Arch City Defenders, SLU Law and others), is a landmark in municipal reform. The bill caps the amount of money that cities can collect from traffic fines and fees at 12.5 percent of a city’s budget in St. Louis County, and 20 percent in the rest of the state. This is down from the 30 percent currently allowed by state law, a restriction that is not enforced.
An amendment by House Speaker John Diehl added a host of standards for St. Louis County municipalities, including written policies regarding use of force by police officers and for collecting and reporting all crime and police data. A city that violates those standards could be placed under the oversight of an administrative authority or face a disincorporation election – serious enforcement threats that are essential in dealing with scofflaws like municipal governments.
Critics of this sweeping bill complain that it will mostly impact small, majority-black municipalities. To the latter, we say, so be it. Whether governed by white or black elected officials, many of the county’s majority-black municipalities inflict some of the most unconscionable abuses with their municipal police and courts. SB5 will force these municipalities to reform, or force them out of business – either would be a major improvement on the mess currently at hand. We urge these small municipalities, many of them in North County, to proactively pursue strategic disincorporation and mergers. True leadership would emerge from Ferguson and the passage of SB5 with a merged majority-black mega-muni that has the scale and good governance to proactively institute the police and court reforms urged by Better Together and become a model for progress.
A smaller (to many) but very important (to us) matter is Senate Bill 334, steered by state Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, which would allow Harris-Stowe State University to offer graduate degree programs, provided that the Coordinating Board for Higher Education approves. This is but one of many ambitious changes in the city’s only Historically Black College and University advanced by Dwaun J. Warmack, its impressive new president. He has been a welcome replacement to an interim president who served the two previous years and accomplished little. Warmack told us, “I want to increase Harris-Stowe’s ability to make quality contributions to this state, region and city.” We believe that he is sincere and correct in saying this, and that adding graduate study to the university’s offerings for the first time in its 158-year history will greatly assist him in this important endeavor.
Our state and region have many problems, and we sadly have not found this Legislature or this governor as helpful as they should be in solving them. But we commend the Legislature for passing SB5 and SB334 – and urge the governor to sign them into law.Â
