In less than three weeks members of the Missouri legislature begin pre-filing bills for the 2019 session. Right To Work promises to return, as well as efforts to undo last week’s vote to raise the minimum wage. By the first Friday in December representatives and senators will have filed several hundred bills.
Allow me to suggest they include welfare reform.
Using Missouri Republican’s working definition – welfare is giving people who don’t deserve help what they don’t need (like food and medical care) – let’s get outside the box: Missouri ought to re-define a “county” as an area with more than 10,000 residents.
By best count, 28 Missouri counties (20% of the total number of counties) have fewer than 10,000 residents. They range from Worth County, just above 2,000, to Lewis County just under 10,000. [ https://www.missouri-demographics.com/counties_by_population ] With population numbers that low the “little ones” drain state resources without adding benefit.
For example, Worth County turned-in just 923 votes for U.S.Senator. [ https://enr.sos.mo.gov/CountyResults.aspx ] That’s below a rounding error in a race with over 2.4 million votes. For more perspective, that’s around 40% of my polling place’s vote total!
Having a county election apparatus, then requiring the Secretary of State to separately track results from the little ones, is not efficient. Add-in the state money used to subsidize county highway departments, sheriffs and all the rest and even by Missouri standards there’s no bang for those bucks.
Now, most of the little ones occupy northern Missouri. They lend themselves to some logical mergers. Worth County gets absorbed into Grundy, resulting in population of about 12,000. Scotland, Schuyler and Putnam melt into one county with better than 14,000 resident – that’s almost 40% of one state representative district! By the time all the little ones get things worked-out Missouri could go from 114 counties (and one independent city) to 90 to 100 counties. Much more efficient.
Note that Florida has almost 21 million residents but just 67 counties! [ https://www.census.gov/quickfacts/fl ] Okay, maybe that’s not the best example this week…
The Missouri Constitution might seem to be a problem. It sets up rules for dissolving counties, starting with a two-thirds vote by those in the melting county. No matter.
Remember, last week Missourians overwhelming voted to amend that constitution to limit campaign contributions and re-do how elective districts are drawn. This week the head of the Missouri Chamber of Commerce and Industry and the incoming head of the Missouri Senate talked of plans for undoing that mistake. [ https://www.stltoday.com/news/local/govt-and-politics/despite-election-night-victory-fight-over-ethics-overhaul-in-missouri/article_420965d6-af95-5529-9673-7d0f7cc8f0b3.html ] As we’ve seen with citizen votes on puppy mills and concealed carry, propositions and constitutional amendments merely start court and legislative action to get to the “correct” outcome.
Just think, by redefining counties, Missouri Republicans could accurately claim in their 2020 election materials that they brought meaningful welfare reform to Missouri – without really hurting anyone.
Glenn