A.1 Environment
Clean air and water are essential to protecting the public health. Protection of air and water resources and providing incentives to encourage renewable resources are two of the most important functions of government. The City urges the General Assembly and the federal government to provide adequate funding and legislation to protect air and water resources from pollution including funding for storm and sanitary sewers as well as linear parks and open space. Training, recycling and cleanup programs should be adequately funded. Federal and state policies should, however, be cost-effective, directed to all sources of pollution and not be simply unfunded mandates from the state or federal government. The City supports state and federal programs, which provide for proper management of all hazardous materials, including asbestos. The State should form partnerships and encourage regional solutions with local government whenever possible in order to increase efficiency and reduce costs. Efficient use of energy and resources should be encouraged by the State, establishing minimum energy efficiency levels for new buildings and heating, air conditioning and home appliances. A portion of the State’s Solid Waste fee should be set aside for use by local government to encourage recycling programs in order to reduce the amount of solid waste going into landfills. The State should amend Section 260.247 RSMo. to eliminate barriers to local franchising. State funding of Household Chemical Waste programs on a regional basis is an important tool to encourage the use of regional facilities.
The City supports funding for programs and practices at state and federal level that educate the public regarding energy conservation and that promote the responsible and efficient use of energy and protection of air and water resources. Further, given the historical position that waste disposal is typically and traditionally a local government function, the City supports legislation dealing with funding of waste disposal programs through flow control ordinances and opposes any effort at limiting a Municipality’s ability to utilize flow control programs.
A.2 Education
- Community Education. The City supports the concept of using public buildings, facilities and equipment as an important means for municipalities and schools to maximize the use of their combined resources towards the resolution of community concerns. The City strongly supports the use of state funds for community education programs; i.e. prevention of juvenile delinquency and child abuse, reduction of unemployment, lack of elderly services, teenage pregnancy and the lack of adequate or available recreation facilities. The City supports coordination and cooperation of related local governing agencies in planning, development and implementation of community education programs and urges the sponsorship of legislation to require the State to provide grant funds for local community/school cooperative program demonstration projects, with special emphasis on joint utilization of physical facilities.
- Education Funding. The City supports more flexibility and local control over public school funding for Springfield schools and a more equitable funding formula for public school systems.
A.3 Police Powers and Administration
- Nimble and Efficient Law Enforcement. Law enforcement is constantly evolving, thereby requiring state and local government to adapt to changing conditions. The State should respond to these changes through legislation. For example, police departments need to be able to quickly obtain search warrants by telephonic means, and the burdens of false alarms caused by the use of security systems should be addressed through legislation giving counties who run E-911 systems authority to correct abuses.
- Confidential Police Personnel Records. Recent court opinions have interpreted Chapter 610, the Missouri Open Records Law, to hold that police internal affairs records are incident and investigative reports, thus open to the public under certain circumstances. Internal affairs investigations are not criminal in nature, and are for the purpose of addressing officer conduct and identifying potential law enforcement areas for improvement. Under prior law, internal affairs investigations were considered closed and confidential personnel records, subject to disclosure when judicially determined to be directly relevant to the accused's defense in a particular case. Under these recent court opinions, officers are now subject to being confronted on the witness stand with confidential and personal details from employment investigations completely unrelated to the case about which they have been called to testify. This potential for required disclosure also substantially interferes with the law enforcement agency's ability to conduct and use the internal affairs investigation in a constructive manner. The General Assembly should limit the dissemination of information about police officers due to the unique problems they and their families face.
- Right to Appeal from Adverse Evidentiary Rulings. Currently case law limits the right of the city to appeal adverse evidentiary rulings in Municipal Court. Examples are motions to suppress evidence or motions to dismiss based upon legal grounds such as the constitutionality of a city ordinance. Because of this limitation cities have no recourse to get a final determination on the ruling from a higher court. State prosecutors do not have the same limitation. Fixing this problem will require legislation to amend the Missouri Constitution but will give municipal prosecutors the same ability to fight crimes as state prosecutors. Further, this will not have any impact on criminal defendants’ double jeopardy rights.
- Criminal Property Forfeiture Laws. The current criminal property forfeiture laws need to be revised in order to allow for recovery of costs and reduction in compliance burdens. Further, local governments should be allowed to share in the proceeds as an economic incentive to encourage forfeiture of property seized from criminals to the state.
- Bounty Hunters. The State should provide for adequate regulation of bounty hunters. There is a distinct lack of coordination between law enforcement and bounty hunters; there are no licensing or training procedures, and no regulation of their procedures and activities. Legislation requiring more coordination and regulation should be passed since bounty hunters are providing a quasi-police service.
- Efficient Traffic Enforcement. The state should modernize its traffic control laws by providing for automated Photo Red Light camera enforcement of stop light violations and allow municipalities to enforce these infractions as a non-point penalty. This will help municipalities promote safety on their streets while holding those who violate red light rules accountable. Additionally, the Department of Revenue should have current contact information for every Missouri resident. The legislature should revisit this issue and once again require that Missouri residents update their contact information with the Department of Revenue whenever they change their address.
A.4 Preemption
The General Assembly and Congress should refrain from actions which limit local authority to deal with problems at the local level, such as local franchising authority, taxation of businesses, teenage drinking, teenage smoking, and use of tobacco, licensing of massage and body piercing, all of which have in recent years been preempted in whole or in part. Preemption of local laws, including local business taxes, limits the ability of local government to deal quickly with problems, which are of concern to local citizens. It is almost impossible to predict the evolving nature of issues. State-mandated solutions which provide “one size for all” or remove local governments ability to deal with conditions of its own property or funding its own services unnecessarily limit the flexibility of local government. An option to preemption is for the State of Missouri to forge alliances with local government in the enforcement of laws, resulting in better enforcement and savings to the State.
A.5 Public Health - Funding and Administration
Adequate state funding of local public health agencies is critical to maintaining and improving the quality of life to Missouri citizens. The public health threat of emerging diseases, bioterrorism and the global implications of disease spread requires a rapid and effective local response to protect the public’s health. The State should increase funding for local efforts to address these growing threats.
Nurse-Family Partnership is an evidence-based nurse home visitation program with three goals to accomplish improved pregnancy outcomes by helping women improve their health-related behaviors, including reducing use of cigarettes, alcohol, and illegal drugs; improved child health and development by helping parents provide more responsible and competent care for their children; and improve families’ economic self-sufficiency by helping parents develop a vision for their own future, plan future pregnancies, continue their education and find work. The four sites in Missouri call this program, “Building Blocks”. Currently Kansas City, St. Louis, and SEMO receive Healthy Families Title V Funds through the Block Grant with the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. We are requesting legislative action to add the Springfield program, currently funded through Safe Schools, Healthy Students federal grant initiative, in order to continue to provide services in the Springfield area when the grant terminates August 2007.
The State of Missouri should follow the National Centers for Disease Control (CDC) Best Practices for Tobacco Control in the expenditure of whatever funds are available for promoting public health as related to the health consequences caused by the use of tobacco products.
In addition, the burden imposed upon the regions aging Veterans population, as well as the burdens imposed on Veterans returning from tours of duty in Afghanistan and Iraq compels Council to support the location of a regional health facility for Veterans in the Springfield area. This would allow a significant portion of the Southwest Missouri Veterans to obtain health care without traveling great distances to facilities currently located in Saint Louis, Columbia or Kansas City.
Finally in light of the hardship imposed on the Southwest Missouri region due to the January 2007 ice storm, and the severe burdens placed on our elderly population residing in long-term skilled nursing facilities, the State should review its legislation regarding requirements placed upon long-term skilled nursing facilities to add a requirement that nursing facilities have back-up electrical generation equipment sufficient to maintain all necessary life safety activities for the facility’s residents.
A.6 Liability
The cost of local government is substantially affected by state and federal laws which in certain situations impose unreasonable liability costs on the taxpayers, and at times remove local government’s control over its own property or operations, thereby affecting the ability of local government to deliver basic services and raising the cost to do business in the State. For example, the current state law provides that even if a person is not wearing a seat belt, the maximum percentage of fault that the person who failed to wear the seat belt can be assessed is one percent. The current law allows a person who has been paid by the City’s insurance to recover these costs against the negligent party without any obligation to reimburse the City. Under joint and several liability, the City may be required to pay 100% of a verdict even if it is only one percent at fault. Reform should be balanced by the need to adequately protect citizens who are hurt by the negligence of others, giving due consideration to the need to place the burdens of negligence on the person causing the harm, while preventing excessive recoveries. The use of public entity risk pooling has helped reduce some of these costs and any effort to increase the amount of regulation of such systems is opposed. Since local government relies on volunteers to assist the City in providing many services, it is important to minimize liability for volunteers. The state and federal government should pass legislation to reform the system by eliminating these and other disparities. In addition, the state and federal government should refrain from requiring automatic payments for certain health conditions for specific employee groups.
A.7 Housing
One of the mainstays of the American way of life and its economy has been home ownership. In addition, decent, safe and sanitary housing for all Americans is an important public policy objective which directly affects the urban environment and our quality of life. Not only is it important to provide opportunities to rent or own affordable housing, but the maintenance of housing stock which is decent, safe and sanitary is also important. The City supports federal and state legislation which encourages home ownership, affordable housing whether it is for rental or home ownership, and the maintenance of housing stock so it is decent, safe and sanitary.
Affordable housing is an important quality of life issue for any community. In addition, affordable housing is also important to the economic development of the community. The recent rise in housing cost coupled with reductions in federal housing funds has strained existing resources in Springfield/Greene County. The Vision 20/20 plan recommends creation of a local housing trust fund to provide additional resources for affordable housing. The City supports legislation to allow an increase in real estate recording fees to fund a Springfield/Greene County housing trust fund.
