(Missourinet) – Republican Governor Eric Greitens was sworn into office in front of the state capitol in Jefferson City Monday.

He’s the 54th person to be elected to be head of state, and will oversee Missouri’s 56th gubernatorial administration. According to former Missourinet news director Bob Priddy, the inconsistency stems from two previous Missouri heads of state, Republican Kit Bond and Democrat Philip Donnelly, who had non-consecutive four-year terms, or administrations.

During his inaugural speech, Greitens received a rousing applause when he stated he’d be tough on crime.

“To those who commit violence against a fellow citizen, to those who would abuse a child, to those who would assault a member of law enforcement, to those who would steal from the needy, I assure them this,” Greitens said. “They will feel the might, strength and resolution of the firm fist of justice.”

The ceremony was held in front of a large crowd of Greitens supporters. It took place at noon following the traditional ringing of 12 bells at St. Peter’s Catholic Church across the street.

While delivering his address, Greitens touted himself as an independent voice for the public.

“This is the people’s house. And to those who would trouble this house for their own selfish and sinful gain, hear me now. I answer to the people. And I come as an outsider to do the people’s work.”

Greitens is a political newcomer, having never before held public office.

The Republican expressed a central theme of conservative politics by calling for limited government.

“One of the worst lies of our present politics is the false promise that government can fix any problem and find every answer,” Greitens said.  “That never has been and never will be part of America’s promise to its people.”

He also wrapped the sentiment into the state’s motto.

“Our state’s great history reminds us that Missourians have always understood that big achievements demand hard work. “Show me” doesn’t mean “Give me.” It means “prove it can be done, and we will do it.”

Greitens address lasted just under 11 minutes.  Four other Republicans were sworn into office during the same ceremony after the GOP swept all statewide seats in November’s election. They included Lieutenant Governor Mike Parsons, Attorney General Josh Hawley, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft and State Treasurer Eric Schmitt.

Greitens assumes the governor’s seat after running on a platform of ethics reform and ridding Jefferson City of corruption. Shortly after the swearing in ceremony, he went to his office to issue a number of executive orders, including one which forbids executive branch employees from accepting gifts from lobbyists.

Early Monday afternoon, country music star Sara Evans was announced as the entertainment at the inaugural ball later on in the evening.

(Missouri News Service) – SPRINGFIELD, Mo. – On the first day of 2017, there was a fatal police shooting in Missouri.

Police gunfire killed James Lewis, 44, after he allegedly displayed a weapon in a park in North Springfield.

Police officers have the legal authority to take lives, but keeping tabs on how many people are killed each year hasn’t been easy.

Brandon Patterson, a staff reporter for Mother Jones, broke down new Department of Justice data and found police-related fatalities in the U.S. are significantly higher than earlier estimates.

“And this new DOJ number is the fullest – I won’t say complete because it is an estimate – but the fullest, and likely the most accurate, estimate that we have at this point of how many of these deaths occur every year,” Patterson said.

The DOJ estimates 1,900 people died during a police encounter in the 12 months ending in May of 2016.

The Death in Custody Reporting Act passed by Congress in 2000 requires police departments to report deaths, and agencies that don’t comply can lose 10 percent of their federal funding.

But Patterson said Congress only added an enforcement component to the law in 2014.

“Essentially, the number was significantly lower than the new estimate because law enforcement agencies simply were ignoring the reporting mandate because there were no consequences under the old law,” he said.

Patterson said it remains unclear if the reporting act will be enforced after President Barack Obama leaves office.

“Both Trump and his pick for attorney general, Jeff Sessions, have been critical of the Department of Justice’s involvement in local policing issues, and have indicated that they would sort of pull back on that under a Trump administration,” Patterson said.

The lack of good data got national attention when Michael Brown, an unarmed black teenager, was killed by a police officer in Ferguson in 2014.

The Guardian and The Washington Post newspapers responded by making independent counts, in a process similar to the one adopted by the Justice Department.

(Missourinet) – A Missouri factory has played a key role in a milestone achieved by Ford Motor Company.

The auto manufacturer’s F-Series pickup is in its 40th consecutive year as the top selling truck in America, and 35th year as the top selling vehicle overall.

Its Kansas City plant in Claycomo is one of four facilities where the truck is assembled. Ford’s Todd Eckert says the operation plays a key role in the success of the F-Series.

“Kansas City remains a really important part of our F-Series business,” Eckert said. “We produce all of the configurations that we have from an F-150 perspective there.”

One other Ford plant in Dearborn, Michigan assembles the F-150 truck. Two others, the Ohio Assembly Plant outside Cleveland and the Kentucky Truck Plant in Louisville, build F-Series Super Duty trucks.

The Claycomo plant normally operates 24-hours a day and employs more than 7,500 union represented hourly workers covering three-shifts.

It’s currently shut down temporarily because of an oversupply of the manufacturer’s Transit van, which is assembled exclusively at the facility. It’s scheduled to reopen Monday, January 9th after being shuttered for a week.

Ford representative Kelli Felker confirmed a portion of the plant, the F-150 Side, closed down for a week in October due to a three percent drop in F-150 sales in September. She said short interruptions in production aren’t unusual, serving to balance short term customer demand with inventory.

Assembly line employees with more than a year on the job still received 80 percent of their wages during such work stoppages.

Ford has also stated the temporary shutdown of the Kansas City plant will allow time maintenance of the machinery at the factory.

Eckert says Ford is heavily involved in the communities where its facilities are located.

“One of the things that Ford does consistently, that’s held in Kansas City as well, is “Ford Days” where we’re out in the community helping,” Eckert said. “Whether it’s Habitat for Humanity, soup kitchens, food banks, any type of activity that helps the greater community, Ford is always a key part of that.”

He also says the Missouri plant plays a pivotal role in the constructing the F-Series trucks.

“Certainly in Kansas, we appreciate all the hard work that both hourly and salary do there, to make us the best-selling truck for 40 consecutive years. Obviously, we couldn’t do it without those outstanding folks.”

Among the innovations Ford has put forth as reasons for the F-Series top sales performance are the introduction of the Super Duty category in 1998, as well as the launching of luxury editions such as the King Ranch and special edition F-150 trucks. The company also claims the shift from steel to lighter aluminum alloy bodies marked a milestone in the F-Series evolution.

(Missourinet) – A long-standing tradition in Missouri is to have the bells toll noon at St. Peter Catholic Church near the capitol during the inauguration of the governor.

Those bells are expected to sound twelve times as Republican Governor-elect Eric Greitens is scheduled to be sworn into office at noon on Monday.

History tells us that timing issues during some past inaugurations have led to hiccups with the bells.

One of the most memorable malfunctions was in 2013, during Governor Nixon’s (D) inauguration. In a blog by former Missourinet news director Bob Priddy, he recalls the occasion.

The bells sounded eight times. After a long pause, Senate President Pro tem Tom Dempsey (R-St. Charles), the MC, approached the podium. As he took a breath to introduce the judge to swear in the governor, the ninth bell rang. The crowd and podium guests laughed loudly. Dempsey tossed his hands up in the air and went back to his seat. The tenth bell sounded. Then the eleventh. A 12th bell never rang. Voices on the platform (including Nixon’s apparently) are heard confirming, however, that there had been a 12th bell.

Dempsey introduced St. Louis Circuit Judge Rex Burlison, who mispronounced Nixon’s first name, to swear in Nixon.

Missourinet will cover the inauguration ceremony in a live simulcast from 11-1 p.m. with Columbia television station ABC17 on Missourinet and Missourinet.com.

JEFFERSON CITY, Miss. — Red may be a festive color during the holiday season, but it isn’t a good look for a bank account. And experts warn that racking up holiday debt can lead to a cycle that’s hard to break.

The average American was expected to spend $936 on holiday gifts – the second highest amount on record, according to the National Retail Federation. Financial literacy specialist Kathryn Greiner said the pressure to spend can push consumers to extreme measures, including turning to payday lenders.

“About 75 percent of all payday loans are payoffs for old payday loans,” Greiner said. “And a lot of folks who use these end up taking not just weeks, but years to pay them off.”

Greiner said using cash instead of credit cards to pay for purchases can help curb the tendency to overspend. She also recommended developing a written budget for next year’s holidays as soon as possible.

Many credit unions offer free financial counseling to help their members stick to their financial goals.

The urge to keep up with the Joneses can be particularly hard to avoid this time of year, but Greiner said spending beyond one’s means only serves to suck the joy right out of the season.

According to a recent survey, more than 1-in-4 Americans planned to rack up debt over the holiday season that will take longer than an month to pay off, two-thirds of whom expected they would need three or more months to get caught up.

By Veronica Carter/Missouri News Service

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A new report shows that a plan to partially repeal the Affordable Care Act could reverse progress made in improving access to health insurance. According to the Urban Institute findings, more than 220,000 Missourians would lose insurance coverage, and the majority of them are in working families. Comments from Joan Alker, executive director, Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University.

Congress is considering repealing parts of the Affordable Care Act, a plan that a new report suggests would double the number of uninsured people in Missouri and other states. The Urban Institute research shows that in Missouri, more than 220,000 children and adults would lose coverage.

Joan Alker with the Center for Children and Families at Georgetown University said because of the ACA, 95 percent of children in the U.S. now have health insurance.

“But now, Congress is poised to take a U-turn and taking away affordable coverage options, which would actually double the number of uninsured kids,” she said.

Senate Republicans have said rolling back the law would have few impacts on the number of people without health insurance. But the report shows that nearly 30 million Americans would lose coverage.

Alker said there is a lot of misinformation about who would be most impacted. She explained it’s not just those who are low-income.

“Eighty-two percent of those losing coverage would be in working families,” she added. “The majority of those are non-Hispanic whites and 80 percent of the adults becoming uninsured would not have college degrees.”

Alker also added that repeal would cause chaos in state budgets as well.

“Families’ health-care needs won’t disappear if their coverage goes away,” she warned. “And the responsibility for responding to that will fall squarely into the states’ lap and we’ll have huge gaps in our health-care safety net.”

The report also found that the individual insurance market would be severely disrupted and the share of people under age 65 without insurance would increase from 11 percent to 21 percent. That’s higher than it was before the ACA.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – About 4 in 10 people make New Year’s resolutions, but only a tiny fraction actually keep them.

The top pledges center around health – losing weight, eating better, exercising more or quitting a bad habit such as drinking too much or smoking. Others include getting organized, saving money, spending more time with loved ones or living life to the fullest.

Research psychologist Frieda Birnbaum says people often fail to keep promises because they make them too hard.

“Resolutions need to be easier,” she states. “We need to be more specific. If we make it doable, then it is doable.”

Birnbaum says set a time to go to the gym, don’t just promise to do it during a busy day. She says make it a routine. For example, set a time to work out each day, and she says it will be easier to stick to that resolution.

Birnbaum says it’s more likely people will stick to their guns if they don’t let everyone know what they plan to do.

“Unlike what research tells you that you should tell your friends about it so you can have support, I have found that it’s better not to tell anybody about it, so you don’t have other opinions in your way and you can just move at your own pace,” she explains.

Birnbaum says people also make resolutions to lose weight for the wrong reasons.

“Women are very, very into looking as good as they can, being as thin as they can,” she states. “But it doesn’t mean being as happy as you can, so we have to have perspective over our values.”

Statistics show that by the end of this month, about two thirds of those who made pledges will still be hanging in there. However, six months later that number drops to just over 40 percent.

(Missourinet) – Outgoing Missouri Democratic head of state Jay Nixon hosted his last Governor’s Prayer Breakfast in Jefferson City Thursday.

His featured speaker was Pastor Randy Gariss of Joplin, who’s a nationally known voice on justice.

Gariss spoke about the need for people with sharp disagreements to embrace each other. Afterward he acknowledged politics and religion exist in a world of tribalism, but said barriers can be broken when people become friends.

“We’ll disagree,” Gariss said. “We’ll even talk and, like brothers, it might even become a bit of an excited conversation. But that conversation, when it ends, your worth in value is not decreased one ounce. You don’t earn the right to be loved by me because you agree with me.”

Nixon said despite obvious differences with incoming Republican Governor Eric Greitens, he’s offered advice during the transition period.

“It’s a busy job,” Nixon said. “And if you even make a decision, and if you’ve got the information in front of you to make that decision, go ahead and make it, because the next hour will bring another problem. I think getting up to decision speed is one of the challenges.”

In what could have been his final press conference as governor with the media in Jefferson City after the Prayer Breakfast, Nixon indicated he wouldn’t be making a lot of public comments about policy decisions made by Greitens.

“I want to be somebody that if he’s got a difficult challenge, that he wants another perspective from, that he knows that it’s going to be for him and him alone, that it’ll be me. I’ll be one of those people. There are people who have provided that service to me,” Nixon said. “That’s the important part for me. I don’t want to be overly critical of him. And I’m confident he’s going to do some things I wouldn’t do. But that’s not the point.”

While having said in the past that he wouldn’t be watching over the next governor or judging that person’s job performance in public, Nixon said Thursday he’d continue to speak out on three issues.

One of them is Medicaid, where he’s hopeful Missouri can follow in the footsteps of Vice President-elect Mike Pence’s state of Indiana which expanded the service.

“I think the vice president-elect’s person that expanded Medicaid in Indiana, being the head of CMS (Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services) for the United States of America, is a clear path forward for conservative and progressives to agree about how more people can get health care in a cost acceptable way.”

Greitens and his wife were seated on the stage for the prayer breakfast, as was Senate Republican President Pro Tem Ron Richard, Democratic Minority Floor Leader Gina Walsh and Nixon’s wife.

Greitens spoke and led the audience in a prayer during the event. Although the tenor of the Prayer Breakfast was distinctly Christian – the theme was “God is Our Refuge and Our Strength” – Pastor Gariss made numerous references to the Muslim faith, at one point noting a Mosque in Joplin had reached out to his church after the city’s devastating tornado in 2011.

Presiding over the Prayer Breakfast and also seated on stage was Major Mike Roberts of the Missouri National Guard.

(Missourinet) – State Auditor Nicole Galloway says an audit completed of the Department of Higher Education’s performance funding has determined that the department does not provide adequate guidance and oversight on program operations or measurements.

The program is intended to create incentives for improvement or sustainment of excellence by awarding additional funding based on specific performance measures. Galloway says incomplete guidelines and unclear definitions leave colleges and universities on their own to figure out how to best measure their success, allowing them to interpret results differently when reporting information to the department.

“True performance funding should be an accurate reflection of how well a public college or university accomplishes its core purpose of educating students,” says Galloway. “The legislature and the Department of Higher Education must take responsibility for creating appropriate guidelines and improving program management and oversight. Without that commitment, it is difficult to determine whether the program provides any real benefits or if it simply creates another bureaucratic task that leads to more paperwork, but fails to improve educational outcomes.”

The state’s public colleges and universities receive a set amount of core funding each year, with additional performance funding awarded based on success in certain areas, including student academic progress, graduation rates, quality of learning, and financial efficiency. The amount available for performance funding is determined by the General Assembly and is generally 1 to 5% of each college or university’s core higher education funding.

In addition to concerns related to program management and oversight, Galloway says the audit found the department does not verify data used to determine performance funding results. The colleges and universities operate on an honor system that allows them to self-report the information that shows whether they are meeting necessary goals to receive additional funding.

In many cases success is measured against a comparable peer group, or group of similar institutions. Galloway says the department hasn’t offered adequate guidelines for selecting a peer group, which means colleges and universities could potentially select different peer groups than those already established for other purposes, or even downgrade to a lower-performing peer group in order to meet established benchmarks.

The audit includes a series of corrective actions the Department of Higher Education can take to improve management operations and oversight of the program. A complete copy of the report is available online here.