Legislators are being rated by one non-profit organization.
United For Missouri, a non-profit organization working to educate citizens about limited government and economic policy, has released its 2016 Legislative Scorecard.
Carl Bearden, Executive Director with United For Missouri said the high and low scores give voters an idea of what their legislators are about.
“Somebody who has a high score in our opinion has done a great job of some fiscal issues, of limited government and they ought to be congratulated,” Bearden said. “Those with a low score doesn’t make them bad people, they just didn’t go with the fiscal issues and the limited government issues we selected.”
Bearden said United for Missouri does not try to convince legislators to vote a specific way towards issues.
“We don’t go into legislators’ offices and say ‘look this is the way you need to vote on this’. If they ask us we’ll tell them where we’re at on this. We believe they should vote the way they believe is right and correct. We’ll evaluate that,” Bearden said.
Bearden said United for Missouri focuses upon issues that are defined.
“We are limited in scope. We try to do fiscal issues and limited government issues,” Bearden said. “We try to look for the bills that have the most impact on those issues.”
Bearden said their evaluations are significant.
“We do weight our evaluations. Medicaid expansion has been a big issue for several years. That’s always going to be one of the top things we rate and score,” Bearden said. “This year paycheck protection was top of the list along with Medicaid expansion. Last year it was right to work, employee freedom.”
Click here to see where legislators rank on the United For Missouri Scorecard.