MOScout Daily Update: The Mini-Session Outlook - O'Laughlin on DESE - Schupp's April Quarter and more...

The Upcoming Mini-Session

A week from today the general assembly will reconvene.  It’s unclear what the day-to-day mechanics of this mini-session will look like, and how wide the agenda will be.

Budget

The first week back – the week of the 27th – the top priority of the House will be reconfigure and pass next year’s budget.

In many ways the House Budget Committee is flying blind.  Normally there would be a range of forecasts from economists to guide estimates on GDP growth and revenue.  The range now is scattershot.  There’s no consensus.  And the numbers are unmoored from where we are right now. 

Missouri’s March unemployment rate was 4.5%.  But as of last week over 8% of Missouri’s workforce had filed unemployment claims.  Some estimates for April’s unemployment rate are in the 20% ballpark.  Complicating projections, of course, is the unknown of where we’ll be in three months, six months, and nine months.  How many of these folks are sucked right back into the workforce once the virus abates?

One view is that the House – facing this great economic contraction and uncertainty – will have to wield a heavy axe.  One building denizen sees K-12 getting whacked by several hundred million, maybe $300-400 million.  (See Sen. Cindy O’Laughlin’s view on DESE below).  A big cut to education might be a frightening vote for Republicans in swing districts.  Education funding enjoys bipartisan support.

While the House works on the budget the Senate will likely finish the two Senate bills sitting on their third read calendar.

·         SB 632-Hegeman - Extends the expiration date of the broadband internet grant program for unserved and underserved areas of the state from August 28, 2021 to June 30, 2027

·         SB 569-Koenig - Modifies provisions relating to victims of sexual offenses

What they tackle after that is unknown.

The Senate expects to get the budget from the House, and then pass their own version by the following Tuesday, allowing for Wednesday and Thursday (May 6 and 7) to conference before final passage before the constitutional deadline of May 8.

Lobbying

No one really knows how this is going to look, but the expectation is that there won’t be a lot of in-person lobbying going on.  Instead most lobbying will conducted by text and email and phone, as many legislators will discourage meetings in offices and in hallways.

Look for guidance from leadership to strongly suggest everyone employs face masks, and 6 feet social distancing while in the building.  There will be hand sanitizer everywhere. And folks will be told: “Don’t go where you don’t have to.”

Education Chair: Cut DESE

Sen. Cindy O'Laughlin writes on Facebook: So as you know I am the Senate Chair of Education. This encompasses every educational institution in Missouri. I have some friends in education (yes, I actually do!) and they are full of experience and good advice. I am a strong proponent of schools having some major flexibility and freedom to choose their education path. This kind of goes against the grain so to speak but in the schools I've visited I've seen some great things happening and in some I've seen where they could benefit from the ideas of their neighboring schools. The K-12 bureaucracy is immense. When I say immense I truly mean humongous. This consumes a lot of dollars but then you get down to the point of influence (the classroom) and the dollar flow has been choked off to a mere trickle. So teachers struggle to have resources and freedom to innovate. If you're going to ask someone to take a room full of very diverse people and get them all to move in the same direction then shouldn't you be able to innovate? Just as government often chokes off innovation in other areas I have to believe this happens in education. We are going to be asked to cut $1 Billion out of the state's budget. I would start at the top with DESE. Not because they do nothing well but because they are the furthest removed from the classroom and I know how bureaucracies work. I would start there and achieve two things: 1) Cut expenses and 2) free up the people down the line. As more money becomes available it could actually reach the classroom. What do you think?

To be clear I am not suggesting get rid of DESE I am suggesting downsizing it.

Schupp’s April Quarter $$$

The mighty Jason Rosenbaum looked at couple of April quarters that I missed last week.  Sen. Jill Schupp outraised Congresswoman Ann Wagner. And also the St. Louis County Executive’s race.  See it here.

Schupp took in roughly $655,000 during the January-to-March time frame, compared to more than $580,000 for Wagner. The Ballwin Republican still has much more money in her campaign account — over $2.8 million, compared to Schupp’s nearly $945,000.

The Wagner-Schupp contest could be one of the more competitive Missouri congressional races in the past decade. National campaign committees, like the Democratic and Republican congressional ones, will likely pour money and organizational resources into the contest — which in the past has been critical for challengers like Schupp to have a chance.

While the GOP-controlled Legislature drew the 2nd Congressional District to lean Republican in 2011, some parts of St. Louis County that Wagner represents have become more competitive in recent years. Wagner defeated Democrat Cort VanOstran by about 4 percentage points in 2018.

The Limits of Modeling

There’s been some criticism of the widely-followed IHME coronavirus model.  See criticism here.

But as one reader points out – and points to 538 – modeling is not easy – and makes for a wide range of expert opinions.

Galloway on Parson Plan

Auditor Nicole Galloway’s statement on COVID-19 testing: “Missouri workers and business owners are eager to get back to work, and they must know doing so is safe and sustainable. We must continue to be guided by public health experts who agree we need to significantly increase our testing capabilities in order to reopen Missouri. Missourians need to know how the Governor’s administration determined 50,000 tests are needed per week in order to reopen and how we’ll get there. About 50,000 tests have been done in total since this crisis began, so the Governor is suggesting an increased testing ability by nearly 500 percent a week. Missourians need the Governor to communicate clearly and to create a transparent database showing our expanding testing capabilities, including where we are testing, the number of tests kits and swabs available, test processing capacity, and the number of tests processed each day in order to give Missourians confidence that a phased reopening can be done responsibly and safely beginning May 4.”

Lobbyists Registrations

James Harris added AIM Laboratories, and deleted Fab Tech Wastewater Solutions LLC.

Birthdays

Happy birthdays to Chris Moody, Chris Roepe, and Amanda Latty.