(Missourinet) – The state house has again proposed making it illegal to advertise sex with a victim of human trafficking.

A similar bill cleared the House last year that would have made such advertising illegal when it involves children. This year’s bill includes adults.

Such advertising was identified as a top priority by a task force on human trafficking, but Representative Tracy McCreery (D-St. Louis) says most think the law already addresses it.

“It’s just unbelievable to me and when you talk to neighbors about these things they can’t believe that this is even legal, and to me it just seems like good, clean, policy making that we should be getting up with the times and close the loopholes in the law that allow advertising children and other people for sex is even legal,” said McCreery.

House sponsor Elijah Haahr (R-Springfield) noted both this year’s bill and its predecessor cleared the House with unanimous support.

“This is a bipartisan fight against the traffickers, and this is one more step in the war for our state that we can move forward in this,” said Haahr.

Last year’s bill was one of those that was not taken up in the Senate in the final days of the session.

Haahr has led a task force on sex trafficking and said more recommendations based on its work are coming, including proposed changes in state spending either in the budget being developed now or in the one the legislature will work on next year; legislation to allow victims of sex trafficking to participate in a state system that will allow them to hide their addresses, and a proposal being developed that would toughen penalties against those who solicit sex from victims of trafficking.

(Missourinet) – A state lawmaker says banning a method of carrying out second-trimester abortions would eliminate a particularly inhumane procedure, but abortion rights groups say her bill is unconstitutional.

The bill sponsored by Representative Tila Hubrect (R-Dexter) would ban using medical implements to dismember a fetus in the womb to complete an abortion.

Patty Skain with Missouri Right to Life argues such abortions would support the illegal sales of fetal tissue, which Planned Parenthood has been accused of participating in.

“The reason they predominantly use dismemberment is because the baby’s alive, the tissue’s alive, and they want that tissue for research,” said Skain.

Skain says videos released last summer accusing Planned Parenthood of being involved in such sales, “prove that there is a healthy business in tissue extraction and the selling of those parts.”

Abortion rights supporters say that argument against Planned Parenthood has been debunked and those videos have been dismissed as unreliable and edited to support abortion opponents’ claims.

Of the legislation, Sarah Rossi with the ACLU says the U.S. Supreme Court has already said bans of that type of abortion are unconstitutional.

“This is actually the most cut-and-dry line when it comes to the slew of abortion regulations that are being proposed this session,” said Rossi.

She said that particular procedure has been considered twice by the Court, “and both times the Court found that you can’t ban this procedure.”

Similar laws in Oklahoma and Kansas have been blocked by pending lawsuits.

The bill has not come to a vote in a House committee.

(Missourinet) – A proposal to give Missouri adoptees a way to get their original birth certificates is being considered again this year in the state legislature.

Backers say having a copy of a birth certificate would allow adoptees to research medical histories, genealogy, and other important information. The bill’s sponsor, Representative Don Phillips (R-Kimberling City) considers having a copy of a birth certificate a basic right. He told a House committee about a women he met named Diane.

“Diane is a great-grandmother. She can’t get a copy of her original birth certificate,” said Phillips. “I’m telling you folks that’s a crying shame. We’ve got people in their 80s. They don’t want anything. They don’t want to go stalk somebody. There’s nobody to stalk. They just want a copy of something that’s rightfully theirs.”

Heather Dodd with Missouri Adoptive Rights movement told the committee birth parents would still have a say in whether to be involved with an adoptee.

“It’s best, I think … to allow the adopted person to know that his mother’s name was Jane Smith and he can go directly to her and say, ‘I think I’m your son. May I have information for my medical history, and would you like a relationship,’ and she has the opportunity and the same rights as everybody else to say yes or no,” said Dodd.

Some say the idea infringes on the rights of a birth parent that doesn’t want to be found, and believes his or her identity will be kept confidential under the agreement signed when the adoption was finalized.

Laura Long works as a confidential intermediary dealing with cases of adoptees trying to find birth parents.

“I came into this thinking, ‘Well of course every birth mom is going to be overjoyed at my contacting them that my child is looking for them,’” Long told the committee. “I learned very quickly that is not the case.”

“I’m here to speak on behalf of those who say, ‘No,’” said Long. “By reason of their anonymity they won’t be here. I could fill the room with birth moms who don’t want to be found, but of course they can’t do that because then they’re found.”

Catholic Charities of Missouri also opposes the bill. General Counsel Tyler McClay says that’s because it is retroactive.

“Those women that were promised confidentiality and who made their adoptions at a time when the law said it would be confidential ought to be respected,” said McClay.

A Missouri adoptee has to appeal to the court that handled the adoption to seek an order that his or her birth certificate be unsealed.
Last year Phillips’ bill didn’t advance past a hearing.

(Missourinet) – The Head of the Department of Corrections says since the 1980s, no members of its execution team have been given forms to file taxes on what they’re paid.

Contractors and those who pay them are supposed to file a 1099 with the IRS, so that it can make sure they’re paying taxes on their earnings. The Department pays members of its execution team with cash to hide their identities. Director George Lombardi told a House budget committee the department hasn’t issued 1099s to execution team members since the admistration of Governor John Ashcroft.

“Because of the issue of anonymity, to give 1099s to these individuals would in fact reveal who they were, and that would end the death penalty, essentially, because they wouldn’t do it,” Lombardi said.

Lombardi said the execution team members are counseled to report that income, but said that is not part of the Department’s policies and procedures.

Representative Jeremy LaFaver (D-Kansas City) criticized that the Department’s budget doesn’t identify where the money comes from that goes to pay execution team members, and for the pentobarbital used in lethal injections. That money comes from a fund that pays for equipment and expenses, but its description makes no mention of those payments coming from it.

“Executing somebody is a big deal and if we’re going to spend money to do that, I think it should be included in the description – that this is the area of the budget where money goes, in envelopes, in cash, to kill people,” said LaFaver, referring to reports that the money might be taken to execution team members and the drug’s maker in envelopes.

Sources told a BuzzFeed reporter there could be penalties for the state, the execution team members, and the drug’s maker for not having those 1099s.

Lombardi testified to a House committee nearly two years ago about the state’s execution procedures, in which some information about how executions are paid for was revealed.

(Missourinet) – Missouri law already requires equal pay for equal work among men and women, but Wendy Doyle with the Women’s Foundation said a 2014 report by the foundation shows that Missouri women were paid 71 cents for every dollar a man makes.

“Our research shows that we are losing a combined total of $8 billion due to this wage gap,” said Doyle. “What that could mean in dollars and cents is 73 more weeks of food for a family, eight more months of mortgage and utility payments, nearly 13 more months of rent and 2900 additional gallons of gas.”

Doyle supports Affton Democratic Senator Scott Sifton’s bill that would allow the recovery of underpaid wages based on gender discrimination.

“The good news it’s already illegal, under Missouri law, to pay somebody less just because of their gender,” said Sifton. “The bad news is the existing remedies have proven to be demonstrably insufficient to rectify the injustice of paying somebody less on the basis of gender.”

Ray McCarty with Associated Industries of Missouri opposes the measure.

“While we support equal pay for equal work, that’s already the law. What this bill tries to do is set up equal pay for equivalent work,” said McCarthy. “That’s a much harder nut to crack.”

McCarty said the bill would lead to lawsuits against employers.

“One of the groups that pushes this idea, talked about their successes on comparing wages,” said McCarty. “They had compared school head secretaries with audio visual technicians, they compared registered nursing assistants with plumbers, they compared cashiers to stock clerks.”

Representatives Gail McCann Beatty (D-Kansas City) Stacey Newman (D-Richmond Heights), Lauren Arthur (D-Kansas City), and Stephen Webber (D-Columbia) have filed this session legislation addressing equal pay.

President Obama signed seven years ago the Lilly Ledbetter Fair Pay Act, to address pay discrimination among men and women.

(Missourinet) – The House has sent two batches of ethics reform proposals to the state Senate, and some ethics proposals could soon be debated by the full Senate.

Democrats continue to say an ethics reform effort won’t be complete without a bill to limit campaign contributions, but Republicans oppose such a measure.

Still, the Chairman of the House Committee handling ethics bills, Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City), says it will be brought up.

“I will probably hold a hearing on a campaign contribution limit bill at some point. That hearing hasn’t been scheduled,” said Barnes.
Republicans say reinstating campaign contribution limits would result in donations being funnelled through committees, hiding the identity of the actual donor.

Barnes earlier this year said, “No matter what limitation we put on campaign finance as a legislative body, under citizen’s united, people have the ability to spend as much money as they want on political issues that don’t go through official campaign accounts. That money is in many cases unaccountable, it is uncontrollable. Money in politics is like water. It will take the path of least resistance.”

Democrats note that Missouri voters approved limits in 1994. Those limits were struck down by courts and replaced by the legislature, which later voted to eliminate them in 2006. Democrats maintain that voters still want limits.

The House has passed bills that would ban lobbyist gifts to legislators, keep elected officials from becoming lobbyists immediately after leaving office, and make several other ethics reforms.

(Missourinet) – House Republican leaders have said they want to look to the state budget for a way to fund roads and bridges, there are no details to reveal so far.

The state Senate could soon debate an increase in Missouri’s fuel taxes, but Speaker Todd Richardson (R-Poplar Bluff) has said a tax increase is not what he would prefer.

“What I wanted to do is have something that we could work on as a House effort to try to get the ball rolling and get some projects done, and that was the cost-sharing proposal. Obviously we’ve got to find some revenue to put into that program and we’ll work through that with the budget process,” said Richardson.

The Transportation Department suspended a cost-sharing program in 2014 that saw local governments match state funds to support local improvements. Major highways are rarely part of such projects.

Richardson says if a tax increase proposal comes from the Senate it will be considered.

“We’ll see what they send over and if they send something over then we’ll take a hard look at it and evaluate it, and talk about it as a leadership team in caucus,” said Richardson.

Legislators started last week working on the budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1.

(A column by U.S. Senator Claire McCaskill) – Missouri is right in the middle of a national epidemic. Last year, 40,000 Americans died of a drug overdose—nearly three in four of those overdoses were from prescription drugs and heroin. Prescription drug and heroin overdoses are the leading cause of unintentional deaths amongst Americans, rising 14 percent from 2013 to 2014. Further, in the last decade, the rate of heroin overdose deaths has increased by 286 percent. Missouri has one of the highest drug overdose death rates of any state in the country.

Opioids are among the most commonly prescribed medicines, including drugs such as hydrocodone, commonly known as Vicodin, and oxycodone, also known as Oxycontin. Heroin belongs to the same class of drugs. Four in five heroin users started out by misusing prescription opioid pain medications.

There is no silver bullet to tackling this growing national epidemic, but experts agree that one critical step is establishing a Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP)—a program that collects information on prescriptions for controlled substances like opioids.

PDMPs help ensure that these medicines are used for legitimate medical purposes and identify when individuals are addicted to or abusing these powerful drugs.

49 of 50 states have established a PDMP. From California to Texas, Republicans and Democrats have worked together to establish these programs in the race to stop this epidemic. The lone outlier: Missouri.

Despite evidence that these monitoring programs can help reduce addiction and overdose deaths, our state legislature has refused to act. That inaction is unacceptable.

I recently led a hearing in Missouri to highlight this epidemic, talked to experts, and learned why our state was the only one that has failed to take this commonsense step. The hearing made clear that many dedicated health professionals, organizations, and public servants are interested in aggressively tackling this issue.

The hearing also made it clear to me that this isn’t a partisan issue. There’s a bill currently under consideration in our state to establish a PDMP, and that bill’s lead sponsor, Holly Rehder is a Republican from Southeast Missouri. Holly attended my hearing and spoke passionately about her views regarding drug addiction, abuse, and deaths from drug overdose.

While Holly and I may not agree on everything, we certainly found common cause in our desire to take proactive steps to prevent addiction and overdose deaths in our state. Missouri deserves programs, laws, and lawmakers that are actively fighting this epidemic—and I plan to continue to focus on this at the federal level and continue to encourage my friends and colleagues to do the same in Missouri.

40,000 dead Americans in a year is a national emergency, and it’s critically important our state takes every responsible action to address it.

(Missourinet) – The iconic 15-story Ferris wheel formerly featured at Chicago’s Navy Pier will be the newest attraction to Branson’s Highway 76 at The Track Family Fun Parks in 2016.

“Branson will be a great new location for this amazing Ferris wheel,” said Brian Murphy, COO of Navy Pier. “It was a landmark here for many years, and we are happy to know that it will continue to attract thousands of visitors each year to such a family-friendly destination.”

During its 20-year history in Chicago, the Ferris wheel helped make Navy Pier a top tourist destination. It is anticipated to begin operating in Branson in the summer of 2016.

“We are very excited to be the new home to this iconic Ferris wheel,” said Craig Wescott, President and CEO of The Track Family Fun Parks. “Our hope is that adding this unique attraction, which is enjoyed by people of all ages, will enhance our guests’ experience during the time they spend in Branson.”

This Ferris wheel, which was modeled after the first Ferris wheel built for the 1893 Chicago World’s Columbian Exposition, stands 150 feet tall and can hold 240 passengers in its 40 gondolas. At night, the Ferris wheel shines with 16,000 lights, making it a beautiful addition to the evening skyline.

Guests of The Track Family Fun Parks will be enjoying the iconic Ferris wheel, a $2.5 million investment, as part of the company’s 35th anniversary.