MOScout Daily Update: Corporate Tax Cut Hearing - New MO Agrees IPs - The ESG Issue - Rehder to Schmitt and more...
Corporate Tax Cut Hearing
The House’s Special Committee on Tax Reform (HR7, Noon) will hear two bills seeking to phase out Missouri’s corporate income tax.
· Rep. Travis Smith’s HB 660 would shave 1% off each year for the next four years until the tax is eliminated.
· Rep. Dirk Deaton’s HB 816 kick-starts with a 2% cut and then has triggers for further cuts.
Both bills have generated potentially scary fiscal notes. HB 660’s would cost over $700 million over the next three years; HB 816’s cost is estimated at $923 million.
The Context
There’s plenty of money in the state coffers right now. But the fear of some fiscal hawks is that tax cuts together with new spending items will create a systemic shortage in state revenues in the future.
· Influential budget watcher Jim Moody has warned that we nearing a revenue peak.
· Budget Director Dan Haug has said that the state collected $2 billion in capital gains last year, a sum that appears impossible to repeat given the bear market in equities.
Approval Voting to Include Ballot Candy?
Missouri Agrees filed several more initiative petitions. See them here. These latest versions involve topics beyond the approval voting that former Rep. Shamed Dogan spoke about recently in the Post-Dispatch.
The new IP filings would enact…
· Mandatory audits of election results.
· The requirement that paper ballots are used.
· A framework for political parties to have observers present at polling places.
What It Means
It appears that the final proposal advanced by Missouri Agrees could be include popular “election integrity” measures which could the “sugar” added to the “medicine” of approval voting to help it win votes.
And
One reader takes issue with my assertion yesterday that a constitutional proposal to make it harder to change the constitution would not affect ballot propositions on the 2024 general election ballot…
Remember back in 2004 the MO Supreme Court upheld the constitutional power of the Governor (Bob Holden) to put the referendum passed by the General Assembly to outlaw gay marriage on the August primary ballot instead of the November ballot. If the R legislators are dumb enough to try to trick the voters, with the mother of all deceptive ballot titles, and then have the Gov put it on the August 2024 ballot, the referendum measure would change the rules for general election 2024, if it passes in August…
Scharf Kicks Off
It seems achronological, but Will Scharf will officially kick-off his attorney general campaign tonight in Clayton Missouri (Krueger’s at 5:30PM). This comes weeks after reporting nearly $800,000 raised for his campaign.
· The media advisory: After an impressive and record-breaking 4th quarter fundraising haul, Scharf plans to celebrate and announce plans for the future of his campaign…
Rehder to Schmitt
Among Senator Eric Schmitt’s hires… Christian Rehder, son of Sen. Holly Rehder. He gets a shout-out from his mom at the end of Cinder Girl for helping with the editing of the book.
Rehder’s Linkedin says he’s “Director of Research.”
Assessing ESG
ESG investing has become a new punching bag for Republicans.
CFA Institute explains ESG: ESG stands for Environmental, Social, and Governance. Investors are increasingly applying these non-financial factors as part of their analysis process to identify material risks and growth opportunities.
In Missouri, various Republican politicians have taken whacks at the practice in the past year.
· Last summer, then-Treasurer Scott Fitzpatrick pushed MOSERS to remove proxy voting power MOSERS’ asset managers, “including Blackrock, Inc… In one example of a betrayal of shareholders, several large asset managers who are advancing Environmental, Social and Governance (ESG) investment strategies used their proxy power to elect climate radicals to the board of Exxon…”
· Last year, then-Attorney General Eric Schmitt was involved in a couple lawsuits and heralded his office as “a national leader in the fight against ESG (environmental, social, governance) investing and banking practices.”
· Earlier this month, Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft submitted language to the Administrative Rules Division to “implement disclosure standards pertaining to security investments and how investment advisors and broker-dealers disclose to clients investment strategies that propagate values-based agendas that are not purely focused on generating profit for their clients.”
· And most recently, Attorney General Andrew Bailey joined 24 other state attorneys general suing “a Department of Labor rule that would allow 401(k) managers to direct their clients’ money to ESG (Environmental Social Governance) investments.”
But a New York Times piece yesterday explains that ESG investing isn’t necessarily a boogey-man of new “wokeness.” Read it here.
· The fight between red states and BlackRock, the world’s largest asset manager, has been a gawker’s delight. Republicans don’t normally line up to punch the chief executive of a giant Wall Street firm in public. In places like Louisiana and North Carolina, however, that’s exactly what’s been happening to Laurence D. Fink, the longtime leader of BlackRock.
· The fight is over BlackRock’s stance on E.S.G. investing. BlackRock believes that a focus on a company’s environmental, social and governance challenges is the very definition of prudence — and that how investors address those challenges will increasingly affect profits, too. State officials are calling out what they say is overly “woke” behavior by the asset manager.
· The big challenge here is the differences of opinion about what constitutes an asset manager’s fiduciary duty. And an interesting split has emerged among the red states that dislike BlackRock’s public stances. Louisiana, citing its fiduciary duty, has taken money away from BlackRock. North Carolina, citing its fiduciary duty, has not…
MO/IL Pols for SWAir
Southwest Airlines has brought on new lobbying firepower for the first time in almost half a decade, as the airline weathers new scrutiny in Washington over the scheduling meltdown last month.
— Your host reports that the carrier hired former Rep. Jerry Costello earlier this month to lobby on the upcoming Federal Aviation Administration reauthorization, according to disclosures filed over the weekend. The Illinois Democrat, who left Congress in 2013 after 25 years in the House, previously served as chair of the aviation subcommittee of the House Transportation and Infrastructure panel that has jurisdiction over the airline industry and FAA.
— The airline spent $1.1 million on federal lobbying last year — the same as in the previous year. But Costello’s firm is the first new addition to Southwest’s roster of outside lobbyists — which already includes fellow former lawmakers Kit Bond and Kenny Hulshof — since 2018, when lawmakers were crafting the last FAA reauthorization.
Gubby Appts
Governor Mike Parson appointed Rowe Arends and Jennifer Eddy to the Personnel Advisory Board.
Lobbyists Registrations
Philip Fracica added Renew Missouri.
Brent Hemphill added US Term Limits.
Richard McIntosh added Missourians For Personal Safety.
Chris Moody added Conduent Inc. and Its Affiliates.
Hamlin Wade added DirecTV, LLC.
Andrea Clark added Andrea Clark.
Ryan DeBoef added Responsability.us LLC.
Dale Amick deleted Missouri Corn Growers Association.
Birthdays
Happy birthdays to Robin Wright-Jones, and Zach Dunn.