MOScout Daily Update: COVID 3rd Wave and The Big Question - New MEC Database - MedEx Before Supremes Today - Axios on North Fund and more...

COVID 3rd Wave

KCStar has a long piece looking at how the recent resurgence in COVID cases came to be despite the wide availability of a vaccination.  Read it here.

·         Delta is rampaging through the unvaccinated, spurring rising cases and threatening to overwhelm Springfield hospitals. Missouri now has the second-highest rate of new cases per capita, according to data compiled by The New York Times, and among the lowest adult vaccination rates among all states.   What went wrong?

·         Thousands of pages of internal emails and other documents from 19 local health departments trace the growing alarm and a sense of near-resignation among officials about their chances of halting the advance of the variant.

·         The consequences of the squandered month will last well into summer…

·         The emails, obtained through records requests by the institute’s Documenting COVID-19 project and shared with The Star, paint a portrait of local health officials eager to vaccinate their communities but encountering resistance from residents, apathy from some politicians and a milquetoast state-level response. They document rising frustration with everyone from DHSS to elected officials to the public...

·         “I feel like we’re on an island, all alone in the COVID fight, but I know others in the state are feeling the same way,” Laclede County Health Department Administrator Charla Baker wrote to a DHSS official in late June.

FYI

As of this morning…

·         39.7% of Missourians are fully vaccinated.

·         Hospitalizations remain above the 1,000 mark with hundreds in ICU.

The Big Question

Is the Parson Administration going to  make a real effort to jump-start vaccinations again, or has COVID fatigue set in and we’ll just let this thing run its course?

Newsy Day Ahead…

·         Governor Mike Parson will hold ceremonial bill signings for SB 262 in Kansas City, St. Louis, Cape Girardeau, and Jefferson City.  This is the phased-in gas tax.

·         At 11AM, the Missouri Supreme Court is scheduled to hear SC99185, Stephanie Doyle, et al., Luke Barber and Christine Chaney v. Jennifer Tidball, et al.  This is the Medicaid Expansion appeal.  Listen to it here.

·         At noon, the Senate Interim Committee on Medicaid Accountability and Taxpayer Protection will hold its first meeting.  “The Department of Health and Senior Services and the Department of Social Services have been requested to present an update, including status on content, on the respective departments drafting of rules relating to the funding of abortion providers and their affiliates through Medicaid.”

New MEC Database

There’s a new database up on the Missouri Ethics Commission website.  It has filings from lobbyists who have business dealings with legislators.  Find it here. No blockbuster news items on my glance at it. More mundane stuff, for example, lobbyist Jeremy Cady used Sen. Mike Bernskoetter’s firm, Art's Pest Control.

Edwards to Betts

One MOScouter tops that St. Louis City Sheriff Vernon Betts City of ST Louis has brought Judge Jimmie Edwards on his team as personal Counsel and advisor to the Sheriff’s Office.  “Sheriff Betts will utilize Judge Edwards to expand training and improving his Department with the state and federal law enforcement entities…”

Axios Looks at North Fund

Axios looks at North Fund, a liberal dark money operation which contributed millions to the CLEAN Missouri campaign in 2020.  Read it here.

·         The North Fund's structure — and its refusal to reveal financial contributors — make it the latest progressive nonprofit to operate in ways that obscure key financial information from the public, even as it pushes for legislation to limit the role of so-called dark money in politics.

·         Founded in late 2018, the North Fund's budget shot up from $9.3 million in 2019 to nearly $50 million last year, according to previously unreported records filed with state regulators in Montana.

·         The North Fund is shadowy even by the standards of D.C. advocacy groups. It has no website. Its address is a shared workspace. And in March, it won a fight against Montana officials trying to force the group to disclose its donors.

·         Many progressive groups benefitting from that sort of opacity are simultaneously advocating for more political money disclosure. Their excuse is they don't want to handicap their own side in a fight against a well-funded conservative opposition.

Pushback on NYTimes’ Energy Piece

One player in the energy field says, “It sets up a conflict that really doesn't exist… It's really not an article that paints a true picture of what is happening on the ground with energy policy, specifically transmission policy.”

On Twitter, a similar sentiment: This @nytimes story is maddening. The authors approach it like a novelist - identify a protagonist (President Biden) and then a struggle (here, a so-called "policy struggle" between transmission build out and distributed energy resources)… We're going to need a lot of transmission, and we're going to need DER and local sources for resilience and to ensure the entire grid is as cost-effective as possible. That's pretty elementary….

Internet Assoc Disarray

Politico reports that there’s “disarray within the Internet Association, once one of Silicon Valley’s most prominent advocates in D.C. that is now being roiled by staff turnover and the fragmentation of the tech industry’s lobbying interests and is staying on the sidelines during one of the industry’s most hot-button policy threats.”

FYI

In Missouri, Colleen Daley was registered to represent the Internet Association.  Her lobbyist registration, though, was terminated at the end of last year.

MOSERS Names New CIO

Press release: After a national search, MOSERS has named TJ Carlson as its new chief investment officer (CIO). He will join the $9 billion pension fund on October 1, 2021. MOSERS selected Mr. Carlson from a field of more than 100 candidates to replace Shannon Davidson, who is retiring on November 1, 2021, after 25 years of dedicated service to MOSERS.  Mr. Carlson will bring more than 24 years of investment experience to his new role, including 15 years as a public pension system CIO, most recently with the Texas Municipal Retirement System (TMRS)…

New Committees

United We Stand PAC was formed.  Its treasurer is W. Perry Brandt.

Committee for Legislative Progress was formed.  It’s a PAC.  Its treasurer is Tom Keating.

Freedom for Missouri was formed.  It’s a PAC.  Its treasurer is Jason Sears.

Preserve WG, LLC was formed.  It’s a campaign committee to support Proposition 1 in Webster Groves repealing zoning code changes. Its treasurer is Nanci Daesch.

$5K+ Contributions

WPG PAC - $10,000 from Winton Policy Group LLC.

Invest in St. Louis Community College - $10,000 from Robin Wentworth.

Lobbyists Registrations

Gamble & Schlemeier added Binti Inc, and Jones Family Investments LLC.

Nexus Group added Empower Schools, and Seneca Commercial Real Estate; and deleted Civic Progress Action Committee, Clark Fox Family Foundation, Anthem Inc., Vitus, FanThreeSixty, and WellHealth LLC.

Birthdays

Happy birthdays to Rep. Scott Cupps, Jeff Howell, Brent Lasater, Tim Meadows, Cory McMahon, Jeff Craver, and Gary Marshall.