The House Committee Substitute (HCS) of House Bills 167 & 166 was debated on the House floor on Tuesday afternoon. You know from our Weekly Perspective and Call to Action last Friday that the version voted out of committee needed some significant improvements. The floor debate was an opportunity to hear several amendments offered, get...Read More
If you follow our work, you are likely aware that one of our policy priorities this year is to modernize Missouri’s outdated, medically inaccurate, stigmatizing HIV-specific criminal codes. You may remember a Weekly Perspective from the first week of February after an energizing committee hearing. If you haven’t paid that close of attention because you feel like...Read More
It has been clear to criminal justice advocates in Empower Missouri’s network for some time that poverty has been criminalized. Among the ways we have drawn attention to this topic were an April 2017 forum and a special Media Award to Tony Messenger in May 2018 for his series on policies that create debtors’ prisons,...Read More
On March 28, the Missouri House approved its version of the $29.23 billion state operating budget for the 2020 fiscal year. The budget process now continues on the Senate side of the building, with final agreement due by May 10, a week before adjournment of the 2019 Regular Session of the General Assembly. There is...Read More
The General Assembly has been on Legislative Spring Break this week, but will return to action on Monday, March 25. Conventional wisdom says that most bills that have not been passed by one chamber by break week will have difficulty making it through the entire process by adjournment of the Legislative Session in mid-May, but...Read More
The National Low Income Housing Coalition’s newly released report, The Gap: A Shortage of Affordable Homes 2019, finds a housing shortage of nearly seven million affordable and available rental homes for our nation’s extremely low-income renter households. In the state of Missouri, we are about 199,000 units short of meeting the need for affordable and accessible...Read More
Missouri children rely on Medicaid and CHIP for health insurance. Medicaid and CHIP coverage is beneficial to children’s health and has positive economic impacts. Healthy kids are more likely to graduate from high school and find the kind of jobs that contribute to the economy. Recently, Missouri has seen a significant drop in child enrollment...Read More
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