Category: Legal, Laws, and Regs

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Documents Legal, Laws, and Regs

The money game

One of the problems I kept running into when preparing stories for this site is the fact that Missouri’s Department of Agriculture seems to have abysmal data systems. Every Sunshine Law request, no matter how small, exceeded whatever amount of money I had set as a cap for the request.

Now it would seem the same problem occurs elsewhere in state government. When asked about Lt. Governor Kinder’s calendar, journalists were first told the entries were not available. Later, though, it was discovered that the entries were available, but the cost would be well over several thousand dollars in order to get the information.

I had turned in a Sunshine Law violation complaint to the Attorney General’s office and was told by the person who responded that my main concern seemed to be not that the information wasn’t available, but that the cost was too high. According to the AG office rep, high cost to access the information does not form a Sunshine Law violation. However, when the price tag is invariably high—too high for the average person—cost does form a barrier against transparency.

Either Missouri has the worst data systems in the country—in which case there’s another first we can’t take pride in—or cost is being used as a barrier to information.

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Legal, Laws, and Regs Political

Politics

The bill we fought so hard for, Proposition B, was killed today. It was killed by the state legislature, and it was killed by Governor Nixon. It had the honor of dying in a bi-partisan fashion, killed by Democrat and Republican alike.

I have found there is one thing that can bring both parties together: the vote of the people. All we have to do is enact direct democracy at the national level, and politicos from both parties will bond tightly, in a mutual shared horror of “we the people”.

Governor Nixon manufactured a “compromise” that was supposed to be an improvement of the bill the legislature began, but as I’m writing over at Puppies at Burningbird, it was a simple matter to discover the gaps and loopholes the breeders can easily find in this new “improved” law. Not only was Proposition B ripped to shreds today, but it was done so with compliance by a couple of major players in the animal welfare movement in Missouri: the Humane Society of Missouri and the Missouri Alliance for Animal Legislation. Some would say they meant well; I will be charitable and just call them foolish.

Betrayed. I feel betrayed. But I don’t matter. What does matter is that the dogs were betrayed. In the end, even the most progressive of people on Twitter were implying that, after all, they’re just dogs.

Categories
Legal, Laws, and Regs Political

I can only imagine

Susan Redden in the Joplin Globe on Governor Nixon’s “solution”:

I can only imagine how the lawmakers must feel after passing legislation and then seeing the governor turn around and propose his own plan. They must feel like the voters who passed Proposition B.

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Critters Government Legal, Laws, and Regs

Nixon’s Agreement

Recovered from the Wayback Machine.

Governor Nixon just came out with an “agreement” supposedly between animal welfare people and the agricultural groups.

Press release

Letter of Agreement (PDF)

Legislative Text (PDF)

I’ll have more to say on these later.

Categories
Critters Legal, Laws, and Regs

This isn’t the end

I listened to, and recorded, the “debate” on SB 113 in the House today.

First, my thanks for those brave souls who suffered the indignities heaped on them by Representative Loehner, aided and abetted by Tilley. I’ll have the folks’ names as soon as I can decipher who said what from the recording. I’ll also post all of the recordings I have—though be forewarned, you’ll need a strong stomach to listen to them.

This is not the end. We still have the possibility of a Nixon veto. Well, OK, the possibility is slight: after all, the politicians in this state are more afraid of the Missouri Farm Bureau than the voters. Still, we can only be pleasantly surprised—read that “astounded”—at this point. Whether I vote for Nixon again is based on his actions in regards to SB 113. I have no patience for people who trade either dogs or our votes for political gain. It is just that simple.

If Prop B fails, if all our leaders let us down, then we’ll start over with a citizen referendum that overturns SB 113. But next time, we’ll also have the companion initiative that adds a Constitutional Amendment prohibiting the state representatives from modifying the bill without a 3/4 majority vote. Such an amendment would have killed SB 113 in the Senate.

We also have two other ballot items we’ll have to fight: HJR 3, which creates a ballot item to create a Constitutional Amendment to protect agriculture from any new laws regarding livestock enacted by the citizens of the state; and HJR 5, which attempts to do the same about hunting and fishing. It’s time that we remind certain folks in Missouri that they have to play by the same rules as the rest of us.

We will be heard. One way or another, we will be heard.