MOScout Daily Update: Kendrick to Razer - Health Industry Sends SOS - Roden for Senate 2 - COVID Deaths Not Falling and more...

Kendrick to Razer

Press release: Senator-elect Greg Razer (D-Kansas City) announces that Kip Kendrick will be joining his office to serve as his Chief of Staff… Razer and Kendrick have served together in the Missouri House of Representatives for the past four years. They served together on the Budget Committee for three of the four years. Kendrick, who currently represents District 45 (Columbia) in the Missouri House, will not be sworn in to his final term and will instead assume the role as Chief of Staff in January 2021…

What It Means

It’s tough on the House Dem superminority to lose a strong voice and potentially have the seat vacant until 2022.  “Need him now more than ever,” lamented one building denizen.

But it’s a good hire by Razer.  He gets a staffer who knows the building, and has a network of relationships – including Senate Floor Leader Caleb Rowden.  They’ve worked together on budget matters over the years.

Healthcare Industry Sends Emergency Flare

With COVID cases rising all across Missouri, the healthcare industry is signaling it’s under distress.

·         The Missouri Hospital Association sent a letter to Governor Mike Parson imploring him to issue a mask mandate. See it here.

·         Post-Dispatch reports that St. Louis area hospitals are limiting elective procedures in order “to save space for COVID-19 patients.”

Unless Governor Parson intends to stay the course for the next five months until a vaccine arrives, his team needs to do two things.

·         First, determine if there is a marker at which the current strategy is clearly not working.  It’s the best way to not get debilitated by an abstract position (“balanced approach”) when there’s really a tangible problem to work.  For some that marker might be when Missouri has 5,000 new cases in a day.  Maybe it was just last week, when hospitals ask for a policy intervention.  But there’s no point in monitoring data if it won’t be used.

·         Second, create a menu of options.  The current binary choice of mask mandate or no mask mandate has folks entrenched in their own positions.  Mask mandates for counties designated “red zones” by the White House Task Force, reduce indoor capacity for counties with # of cases per capita, social restrictions for counties adjacent to overwhelmed metropolitan hospitals.  Give the governor tools he might be comfortable with.

Driving the Day: MO Supremes

Oral arguments are scheduled at the Missouri Supreme Court today (1:30PM) for further litigation stemming from 2018’s HB 1413.  Missouri National Education Association, et al. v. Missouri Department of Labor and Industrial Relations, et al., Ferguson-Florissant School District, et al.

It deals with public-sector unions and collective bargaining.

Dashboard’s Misleading Death Tallies

I’ve written before that the state’s COVID dashboard understates the number of deaths currently occurring and whether deaths are climbing or declining.

DHSS recently made a small change.  They eliminated the color coding on the trajectory of COVID deaths.  It had previously always been green, because the dashboard presents data in a way that the death rate is almost always falling – even when its rising.

While they got rid of the color, they kept the misleading number on their dashboard.  As of yesterday morning, the dashboard said the trajectory of death was -45%.  There is 0% chance that is true. 

On October 26 I first called attention to this problem. I wrote: “Worse than minimizing the current death toll from COVID, this format also creates the false impression that COVID deaths are rapidly declining in Missouri.  It shows that deaths are down 38% by comparing last week to the week before.  This is completely misleading.  There is no evidence that deaths are declining, much less at 38%.  That number is simply a function of the data lag.”

Look back now, using state data, we can uncover something closer to the truth.  On October 26 when the dashboard said 65 people had died in the last seven days, the truth is that 192 people died during those seven days.  In other words, the actual number of deaths was triple what the dashboard would have had Missourians believe.  And compared to the seven days before that, deaths were up 16% from 164 deaths in the previous week.  Not down 38% as the dashboard indicated.

Roden Preps 2022 Senate 2 Run

It’s a cliché, but it’s true that there’s no break between election cycles.  Meet Mark Roden.  Already positioning for the Senate 2 seat in 2022. Sen. Bob Onder is term-limited.  Roden formed his candidate committee back in May, but recently added an IE PAC, Conservatives for Better Government.  See the paperwork here.

And see his website here, and his kick-off video here.  He’s a “constitutional conservative” and his is platform is “reducing unnecessary regulations, ending frivolous lawsuits, investing in workforce development.”

Lobbyists Registrations

Gamble & Schlemeier added Missouri Broadband Providers.

Mark Rhoads added Seven Seas Technologies, Inc.; and deleted Multistate Associates, Inc.

Travis Brown and Tracy King added MoCann Trade, MyScholar LLC, and MO Hemp Trade Association.

Travis Brown added BJG Cattle Co, Independence Power & Light, Maco Development Company LLC, Phoenix Home Care, Sterling Bank, Supermarket Merchandising, and Group XI Health LLC.

Thomas Robbins and Brittany Robbins added Robbins Law Firm.

Thomas Robbins and Steven Tilley added Public Consulting Group c/o MultiState Associates Inc; and deleted Federal Storage, Herbal Health LLC, Health Care Management, and Kindbio.

Thomas Robbins deleted Robbins Consulting, LLC.

Steven Tilley deleted Fair MO.

Jane Dueker deleted National Restaurant Association.

Scott Harper deleted Missouri State Treasurer’s Office.

Birthdays

Happy birthdays to Sen. Justin Brown, Rep. Cheri Toalson Reisch, Penney Wood Rector, and Jeff Grisamore.