Laws to prevent gun violence and invest in mental health services are priorities for the Springfield City Council as it makes a list of request to Missouri lawmakers.
Lobbyist Will Marrs of the Governmental Services Group met the Springfield City Council to clean up priorities and discuss additional asks of the Springfield city government to the Missouri legislature at an Oct. 17 study session.
Drafting the city’s 2024 legislative priorities comes at a time when, according to Marrs, “cities are not viewed favorably” by state lawmakers. The 2024 Missouri General Assembly also happens ahead of the 2024 election cycle, which Marrs warned could contribute to an unproductive legislature. With that in mind, Springfield leaders emphasize flexibility and using broad language — with a few exceptions — in hopes to ensure a bill’s support to find the governor’s desk.
“It does — we do believe that — as difficult as it may seem from time to time, that it does give us some advantage to be able to clearly communicate what are our municipal legislative priorities,” Springfield City Manager Jason Gage said.
With feedback from City Council members, a draft of Springfield’s 2024 legislative priorities will be voted on at a future City Council meeting ahead of the Missouri General Assembly’s next legislative session, which begins in January.
Flexibility key in requesting legislation to reduce gun violence
“Public safety” as a government priority encompasses several areas, including funding for mental health services and reducing gun violence.
Among specific requests, the City of Springfield is asking for Missouri law to be amended to match federal law related to minors possessing handguns, as well as legislation to require the collection of DNA samples of individuals ages 18 or older who have been arrested on felony charges.
Springfield continues a broad approach to reducing gun violence, with the proposed priority listed as, “Efforts to reduce gun violence in our community and across the state of Missouri.”
The city staffers, and Marrs, feel that broad language is the most effective, and perhaps the only way to communicate to a state legislature that has a supermajority of Republicans in both chambers.
“As you might expect, this is — especially at the state legislature — this is an incredibly sensitive item,” Gage said. “I’d say it probably hasn’t worked in favor of the positions in many of the cities who experience the most gun violence. Larger cities experiencing most of that hasn’t worked in our favor.”
Marrs said keeping the language broad allows for flexibility and possibilities that might not otherwise be possible if specific gun violence reduction methods or the 2nd Amendment are mentioned.
Nonetheless, Marrs expressed doubt in the success of any “meaningful” gun violence reduction legislation.
“I would say that cities are not viewed favorably, particularly St. Louis, in their efforts to reduce gun violence,” Marrs said. “I think that’s been, you know, part of the anti-city or anti-municipality feeling in the legislature for some time.”
Councilmembers express other priorities, specifics
In addition to the new items the City Council will consider adding to its list of legislative priorities, council members pointed to other concerns they would like to see addressed by the state legislature.
Councilmember Monica Horton expressed an interest in quality housing becoming a legislative priority, advocating for the inclusion of anti-discrimination language as it relates to income level.
Several council members indicated they would like to see a crackdown on expired license plate tags and temporary license plates, though they struggled to reach a consensus on how to approach pitching such legislation to the General Assembly.
Council members suggested different methods to raise penalty fees for expired plates, which Councilmember Heather Hardinger said might only prolong payment of sales and property taxes on vehicles.
“If the goal is to get the money, then maybe we should focus on getting the money,” Hardinger said, suggesting that an installment agreement might be a more effective means to get people to pay taxes.
Councilmember Derek Lee added that he would like to see flexibility built into state law to allow for exceptions for people with “valid excuses” for their expired plates and tags.
Ultimately, city staff agreed to look further into vehicle registration enforcement to determine how to best draft legislative priority to suggest to state lawmakers.
Overall, Gage cautioned against certain legislative priorities being too specific and Mayor Ken McClure described himself as a “realist” in encouraging flexibility.
Councilmember Craig Hosmer, who served in the Missouri House of Representatives from 1990-2002, expressed frustration with the state of the legislature, and the lack of progress that has been made on its current slate of priorities.
“We’ve got a legislature that doesn’t do anything we ask them to do, it doesn’t take any of our priorities,” Hosmer said. “That’s just substantially different than what our past relationship has been with our legislative delegation.”
Marrs warned he anticipates a continued lack of progress, especially as it relates to policy bills, heading into an election.
“I wouldn’t say that the prospects are high on getting anything passed this year,” Marrs said.
Continued priorities see progress, face challenges
Much of the Springfield City Council’s 2024 legislative priorities will look similar to 2023’s, with reductions in explanations and consolidations to make room for additional requests of state lawmakers.
For example, the city government wants to consolidate its priorities of retaining local control, avoiding unfunded mandates from the state legislature and ensuring municipal elections continue to be held in April and remain free of partisanship.
“There are many, many bills up there that like to take away your local control,” Gage said. “So this is always a challenge as we go up [to Jefferson City].”
The city continues to seek legislation to restrict financing and interest rates by payday and car title loan companies, as well as to advocate for a law to allow cities to establish a land bank. Rep. Bill Owen, R-Springfield, has championed land bank bills in previous sessions. A land bank temporarily manages property to stabilize neighborhoods and encourage redevelopment.
The promotion of quality of place will remain a general priority, even as progress has been made in the form of workforce development legislation such as the Fast Track Workforce Incentive Grant program. Additionally, the city will continue to emphasize the need for “sustained” investments in mental health services alongside Greene County Presiding Commissioner Bob Dixon, who made mental health his primary focus in his recent State of the County address.
“The General Assembly and the governor, to both’s credit, have increased substantially funding for mental health the last two or three years,” McClure said. “That needs to continue, that’s why that word ‘sustained’ is up there.”
Springfield leaders work against some efforts in Jeff City
Despite progress on several fronts, some recent legislation has gone against Springfield priorities, including Senate Bill 190, which, if passed in individual counties, can freeze real estate property taxes for senior citizens.
The effects of the bill are unclear, as its broad language fails to clarify several components of its implementation. Its impact on jurisdictions that rely on property taxes will likely be significant.
“That bill — Senate Bill 190 — was one of the most poorly-written pieces of legislation I’ve ever seen…the definitions in there are either nonexistent or are inconsistent,” McClure said.
Gage said SB 190 essentially “violated” the city’s priority to promote fiscal sustainability and that the city, while it doesn’t rely as heavily on property taxes as other jurisdictions, stands to be impacted by the tax freeze as well.
In a matter related to its municipal court, the Springfield government will ask that the failure to appear in court for traffic violation procedure — or FACT — be reinstated. Its elimination in 2015 rolled back a process that allowed the city to grant a 30-day grace period for driver’s license suspensions for individuals who fail to appear in court after a minor traffic violation, rather than arrest warrants being issued.
Gage proposed for the city to continue to advocate for legislation and related measures to address chronic nuisance properties and dangerous buildings, including an accelerated abatement process for chronic nuisances and recovery of costs associated with processing and abatement of unsafe buildings and nuisances.
The City Council revisited the need to advocate for the repeal or significant amendment of House Bill 1662, which deregulated home-based businesses. The law, which has been in effect since Aug. 28, 2022, “disrupts the equitable application of municipal zoning across residential, commercial and industrial areas,” and can disrupt peace in neighborhoods while not being subject to zoning regulations.
Concerns with gaming machines
The city’s new asks of the state legislature primarily encompass funding for several local projects and statutory and legal clarity, among them being video lottery terminals, or VLTs.
VLTs, electronic gaming machines that have popped up around the state despite gambling being restricted to casinos, were raised as a concern by Horton, and further emphasized by McClure as a problem in Springfield.
As a part of its 2024 priorities, the city will ask state lawmakers to legally define VLTs as a form of gambling.
Marrs said the fate of any such definition will likely, for at least one more year, be tied to sports betting legislation, which has also failed to pass. Even then, Marrs anticipates VLT companies to find another “champion” in the legislature and keep the machines running.
Funding for I-44, nurses to visit mothers and babies
The City Council will ask for clarity on the statutory use of funds collected from transportation development districts, political subdivisions created to finance transportation improvement projects.
In terms of new policy priorities, the city will ask the state legislature to amend state law as it relates to voluntary annexations. While voluntary annexation is made possible by a property being contiguous to, or in contact with existing city limits, Springfield plans to request exceptions for noncontiguous properties, perhaps of a certain size and distance to the city limits that are in a defined planning area.
“We felt that it might make sense to just simply kind of put this on the radar…I’m not sure yet, what legislation will look like on something like that,” Gage said.
The city intends to once again make funding requests for projects along Interstate 44 in Springfield and for Lecompte Road and Eastgate Avenue. Gov. Mike Parson vetoed funding for both road projects in 2023.
Specifically, the proposal asks the state to fully fund the components of I-44 between Kansas Expressway and U.S. Highway 65, and the $3.4 million for the Eastgate extension that was vetoed as $34 million — which was listed in error — in the 2023 state budget.
Additionally, the city will ask Missouri lawmakers to fund the Family Connects program in the amount of $1 million for three years. Family Connects, set to launch in 2024, will provide mothers and newborns with at-home visits from registered nurses in Greene County.
