Admittedly, we were looking forward to the unhurried pace that we typically enjoy in the days following Memorial Day. Alas, the short work week began with a fiery start on Tuesday afternoon when the aldermanic Housing, Urban Development, and Zoning (HUDZ) Committee met to discuss Board Bill 3, as introduced by Alderwoman Laura Keys (Ward 11).
Thursday afternoon, the Public Safety Committee was scheduled to meet to discuss Alderwoman Cara Spencer’s (Ward 8) recently introduced Board Bill 29, which effectively brings a controversial “stop and frisk” policy to St. Louis City.
In theory, Keys’ Board Bill 3 would replicate the universal basic income pilot program sponsored by Alderwoman Shameem Clark-Hubbard (Ward 10) during last year’s legislative session. Clark-Hubbard’s UBI program would distribute $500 monthly cash payments to 440 St. Louis public school families across an 18-month period at the cost of $5 million in federal ARPA funds. Keys’ proposed program, on the other hand, awarded $500 monthly cash payments for one year – but even with a requested $12 million, Keys was unable to tell her colleagues how many seniors would actually be served by the program. The four-page board bill also lacked any criteria to determine who would be eligible for cash payment assistance. Keys assumed apparently that federal money would magically appear and her barebones board bill would skate through the Committee.
We love to SEE support for our elders in the community and this program would be life-changing for many residents – except Alderwoman Keys’ bill didn’t fund it. At all. She came to the HUDZ hearing completely unprepared to address how the bill would work and who would be served, in front of a room of dozens of senior citizens who expected to be able to speak about a viable bill. We are glad to see so many interested residents testify at City Hall, but we were deeply saddened as we recognized how misled they were and that their energy was wasted on a short-sighted political stunt.
When HUDZ Chair Clark-Hubbard asked if Keys had a fiscal note for her board bill – a basic requirement for all legislation – Keys responded that she did not have one and implied that City Comptroller Darlene Green failed to tell her that she needed one for her $12 million bill. When Board Vice President and 3rd Ward Alderman Shane Cohn pointed out the components missing in Keys’ bill – namely, how her program would be funded and which department would administer it – Keys blamed the Board’s attorneys for apparently not reading her mind and adding vital information that only she would know.
Each of Keys’ colleagues’ valid points related to the bill’s shortcomings was met with political posturing and rude comments about young people in St. Louis. Nevertheless, Clark-Hubbard and Cohn graciously moved the meeting forward by pointing to the need for following aldermanic procedures, as well as an awareness of the state and federal laws that govern the Board.
Operating within the bounds of state and federal law, however, seems to be an overarching challenge at the Board of Aldermen this week.
Thursday afternoon, the Public Safety Committee was scheduled to meet to discuss Alderwoman Cara Spencer’s (Ward 8) recently introduced Board Bill 29, which effectively brings a controversial “stop and frisk” policy to St. Louis City. On paper, this bill would require any person who is open-carrying in St. Louis City to also hold a concealed carry permit. But from a legal perspective, Spencer’s bill directly violates both state and federal laws. In addition “stop and frisk” laws elsewhere in the country have largely been found to violate the civil rights of innocent Black and Brown civilians.
Since 2007, the Republican-dominated Missouri legislature has been undermining all of the reasonable gun-related laws that once protected residents and visitors alike. That year, the state repealed a requirement that a person purchasing a handgun obtain a permit to own that firearm, almost immediately causing a spike in gun-related deaths in Missouri. In 2006, the legislative body enacted the “castle doctrine,” which removed the need for a person to retreat all the way inside their home before resorting to lethal force. Less than three years after Trayvon Martin’s tragic murder excused by a Florida “stand your ground” law, Missouri passed its own version of the dangerous policy. Finally, in 2017, the General Assembly achieved the epitome of lax gun laws when it passed “constitutional carry” across the state, which means that a person does not need a permit to open-carry or conceal-carry a firearm.
Last summer, Justice Clarence Thomas wrote in a U.S. Supreme Court opinion that constitutional state or municipal gun laws do not encroach on rights established under the Second Amendment’s text and they are “consistent with this Nation’s historical tradition” – meaning they have a “parallel” in the laws that existed when the Constitution took effect in 1789. This unbelievably high legal precedent all but ensures that any state or municipal gun law – like Spencer’s Board Bill 29 – would swiftly lose in courts. “Stop and frisk,” a policy that allowed law enforcement to arbitrarily stop, question, and pat down “suspicious” people, has largely gone unenforced since 2013 when a federal judge found NYPD’s application of the law to be unconstitutional.
Putting both of these federal cases together and commingling with existing state law, we can reach the reasonable conclusion that the city does not have the time, legal capital, or resources to expend on Spencer’s political stunt, and we would instead encourage members of the Board of Aldermen to look to municipal gun measures that are feasible under current state and federal laws. Under state law, police aren’t allowed to confiscate firearms that may not be legal, and cities must “cap” the fine amount for gun-related crimes to a maximum of $35 – both factors effectively remove any “teeth” from Spencer’s feckless bill.
Looking at the statistics from the cities that historically implemented similar “stop and frisk” laws,” persons stopped by New York or Washington, D.C. police were overwhelmingly Black and innocent. We recognize the lack of wiggle room under our existing laws, but the starting place is not a blatantly unconstitutional law and certainly not a policy tied to inevitable racial profiling and harassment.
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The same team that brought us last year’s Amendment 3, which legalized recreational marijuana also created a litany of legal issues – as we accurately predicted – now wants to change the way Missourians elect our leaders.
Significant problems arising from both the medical cannabis and recreational cannabis bills are still pending in courts across the state, and earlier this week, the state released rules that excluded all of North St. Louis from eligibility for a “micro-business” cannabis license – touted as a so-called “equity” action to address historic consequences created by racism and the “War on Drugs.” So much for that!
Now, we are being asked to trust the same consultants, strategists, and funders with our most fundamental right – the right to vote. In short, the “Missouri Agrees” ballot initiative aims to bring “approval voting” statewide. While this type of system tends to work best at the municipal or local government level, bringing approval voting to a deeply-red state like Missouri all but ensures the erasure of statewide Democrat candidates for the foreseeable future.
Using MAGA-coded language that questions the integrity of our current election system, “Missouri Agrees” even goes so far as to refer to approval voting as “Freedom Voting” – we can’t EYEroll hard enough in response to this moniker. The problems with St. Louis’ Proposition D, which brought approval voting to the city, still haven’t been resolved and now the same group of lobbyists want to elevate this flawed system to the state level.
Considering that voters in the State of Missouri already do not get to vote directly in presidential primaries (we moved to a “caucus” system in 2022), we shudder to think of how easily blue voters will be further disenfranchised under this proposed system. We need not look any further than the statewide election results for the last few cycles to see that there is nothing “fair” about this system. In the most competitive August 2022 primary race – the vacant U.S. Senate seat – nearly 656,000 Republicans voted in that party’s primary; Democrats scraped together 368,000 votes in total. During the 2020 gubernatorial election, more than 682,000 Republicans turned out compared to Democrats’ 537,000. With these numbers, Republicans can easily dictate which two candidates move from the primary to the general election.
In simpler terms, Republicans have the numbers and turnout that the Democratic Party has not been able to achieve for decades. As a super-minority, why would Democrats support a process that makes it easier to be excluded from general elections?
We fail to see how approval voting provides a solution to our state’s current electoral problems. Voter turnout, at least in St. Louis, is low because of election fatigue and a lack of quality candidates. Voter identification laws and intimidation at the polls have caused more electoral problems than voters not being able to select more than one candidate on the ballot; why not start there?
Maybe we should first sweep our own porch – that is, fix our own municipal election laws – before we start looking at our neighbors’.