Missouri Press Association
Serving Missouri Newspapers Since 1867
Missouri News Network: Statehouse News for MPA Members
This report is written by Missouri School of Journalism students for publication by MPA member newspapers in print and online.
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Missouri News Network this week takes a look at some of the election issues facing voters, a growing migration of the Amish to the state and how electric utilities are seeking new rules to streamline power plant construction.
If you have thoughts or questions, contact Fred Anklam at anklamf@missouri.edu.
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Lessons from efforts to cut income taxes in Kansas and Tennessee
By John Murphy, Missouri News Network
TOPEKA, Kan. — Many Missouri lawmakers supporting Amendment 5, which would phase out the state's individual income tax and allow lawmakers to broadly raise sales taxes to replace it, point to Tennessee as an example to follow.
Tennessee fully eliminated state income taxes in 2021. But critics of Missouri's plan point to neighboring Kansas, which set out to eliminate its income taxes during the 2010s before some of the same lawmakers who launched the effort ultimately reversed course. The experiences of Tennessee and Kansas offer a glimpse into what could happen in Missouri if Amendment 5 passes.
"As much as Kansas and Missouri are rivals, mostly on the sports field, we have a lot in common," said Paul Davis, the former Democratic minority floor leader in the Kansas House of Representatives.
He was serving in the Legislature in 2012 when, at the bidding of then-Republican Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback, Republican legislators enacted massive income and business tax cuts.
"We saw no growth," Davis said. "We just saw massive reductions in state services: funding through for K-12 education, universities, community colleges. Our transportation program (was) decimated, and really a lot of other state services were just sort of hanging on by a thread."
State services were so underfunded that by 2017, just five years after enacting these tax cuts, a Republican-led Kansas Legislature voted to repeal them. Several of the same lawmakers who initially voted for the cuts initially later voted to eliminate them.
"When people talk about the Brownback tax experiment, they really see it as a dark point in the state's history," Davis said.
Revenue growth triggers tied to Amendment 5
In Missouri, Republican State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick said he doesn't believe the state's income tax elimination plan would unfold the way it did in Kansas.
"If we wanted to do what Kansas did, Amendment 5 would be unnecessary," he said. "Because what Kansas did was they just went in and they whacked the income tax immediately — no revenue growth triggers tied to it."
There are growth triggers tied to Missouri's Amendment 5. For income tax rates to fall, sales tax revenue first has to go up. That was not the case in Kansas, where lawmakers implemented a flat-out income tax cut.
"That was just a bad way of doing it ... the way they managed that," Fitzpatrick said. "They had to cut services. And, it's not like you pull the tax lever and the economic growth lever is happening at the same time."
"It will take time for this to work," Fitzpatrick said of the Missouri plan.
Fitzpatrick, who is running for reelection, said he thinks Amendment 5 would make Missouri more closely mirror Tennessee.
"Our neighbors that are contiguous to us in Tennessee are doing very well without an income tax," he said.
Missouri's tax portfolio
Don Bruce, the director of the Boyd Center for Business and Economic Research at the University of Tennessee in Knoxville, explained that Missouri's tax revenue portfolio is vastly different from Tennessee's.
"I'm not going to point fingers at Missouri here, but I think there's a lot more to the comparison that needs to be made very carefully," Bruce said.
Tennessee lawmakers voted to incrementally eliminate the Hall Income Tax in 2016, and it was fully phased out by 2021. But unlike Missouri’s income tax, the Hall Tax did not apply to wages. Tennessee has never taxed income earned from wages. Instead, the Hall Tax was levied only on interest from bonds and notes and dividends from stocks.
"It was a very small tax," Bruce said. "It only applied to a small number of Tennesseans. And typically this would have raised less than 2% of our total tax revenue."
That is not the case in Missouri.
Individual income tax revenue in Missouri made up 61% of the state's general revenue funds in the 2026 fiscal year.
"Simply changing the tax portfolio will not guarantee you the same results that you have in another state," Bruce said. "So my advice always — and we've gotten this call all the time from states who are interested in repealing an income tax to have more emphasis on the sales tax — is to tread very slowly and very carefully, and take a very long view of this."
Fitzpatrick argued Amendment 5 does that, since the measure would give lawmakers a five-year window to phase out income tax and impose new sales taxes.
"We can pass Amendment 5, give ourselves the ability to transition the way we fund state services and do it in a responsible way that allows, I think, to continue to lower our tax burden on citizens over time in terms of, in the state of Missouri, how much government is taking of people's total personal income. Over time, we want that number to continue to go down," Fitzpatrick said.
Nine states already don't levy income taxes.
"All of them have other ways of generating large revenues that Missouri is not currently contemplating," said David Gamage, a professor who specializes in tax policy at the University of Missouri School of Law. "There are states that have large natural resource revenues: Alaska, Wyoming, to some extent Texas. There are states that have large tourism revenues, Nevada and Florida."
Gamage previously served as special counsel in the U.S. Department of the Treasury Office of Tax Policy from 2010 to 2012.
Considering Missouri's economic profile and the conditions of Amendment 5, Gamage said there is no other state that has successfully eliminated income taxes in the way Amendment 5 would.
"I think the idea that Missouri could successfully replace its income tax with expanding its relatively high sales tax rate to services — I predict it won't work," Gamage said. "I predict it will be a political and economic disaster."
Amendment 5 and property taxes
Some TV advertisements supporting Amendment 5 claim it would lower property taxes. But that is not guaranteed in the language of the amendment.
Four amendments, including income tax changes and changes to the initiative petition process, are set for Missouri’s August ballot.
State lawmakers added a provision to the measure that effectively prevents local governments from earning more revenue than they already do if the state expands the sales tax base.
If Amendment 5 passes and state lawmakers expand the sales tax base onto services, then local governments would have to reduce either their property tax or sales tax rates to a degree that almost entirely offsets the revenue gains they would receive from taxes on new services.
Kansas City and St. Louis also have the option to lower earnings tax rates to offset the new sales tax revenue. Amendment 5, however, gives the local governments the authority to decide which tax rate they choose to lower. It is not mandated that they lower property taxes.
There is a provision barring local governments from changing their tax base in any way that results in less money going to public schools.
Amendment 5 will be on ballots statewide in the Tuesday, Aug. 4, election, alongside three other statewide amendments, including Missouri Amendment 4, which would make it harder for Missouri citizens to change the state constitution.
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Surge in Amish population growth is reshaping rural Missouri
By Hailey Sanford, Missouri News Network
Ashlea Cardin is an occupational therapist in southern Missouri, where many of her clients are Amish children.
Recently, one of her patients died, and the family asked her to attend the viewing.
“I drove out there, and I had never seen so many horse and buggies,” Cardin said.
Likewise, Katie Broeker, who owns a farm stand in Washington, Missouri, has noticed an Amish population surge in her area.
Much of the produce Broeker sells comes from the Clark Produce Auction, held twice a week from May to October.
“I’ve seen more communities throughout the state than I ever did,” she said.
Decadeslong migration has made Missouri one of the nation’s most attractive locations for Amish families looking for affordable land and room to grow.
In 1992, the estimated Amish population was 128,000, with 3,745 living in Missouri.
Amish numbers today have grown to more than 404,000 nationally, and Missouri’s growth has been even faster.
According to the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies, an estimated 18,375 Amish lived in Missouri in 2025. That’s an increase of 393% compared with the national growth rate of about 216%.
Steve Nolt, the director of the Young Center for Anabaptist and Pietist Studies at Elizabethtown College in Pennsylvania, said that despite slight variations in average Amish family growth between states, “I think a lot of that greater rate is because of migration.”
Twenty-one new Amish settlements have been established in Missouri since 2015, the most in the nation.
“They share what they call mutual aid, helping one another with medical bills and things like that, but every family is economically independent,” Nolt said.
Settlements are defined by Amish who live close to one another, he said. Because they hold their church services in a community member’s house, when a new settlement is established, the homes must be within horse-and-buggy distance. As settlements expand, more church districts are added.
“Getting larger over time is not necessarily in conflict with the idea of being within buggy-driving distance for Sunday morning,” Nolt said, “because as a settlement gets larger, they just create a second or third or fourth church district within that settlement.”
Missouri as a magnet
Missouri is now the seventh most populous state for the Amish in the United States. The trend has been fueled by inexpensive farmland, fewer land-use regulations and room for expanding families.
The four largest settlements are spread throughout the state: Seymour is in the south, with 4,325 Amish; Clark is central, with an Amish population of 1,730; Jamesport is in the northwest, with 1,090 Amish; and Spickard is in the north, with 645 Amish.
Seymour also ranks as the 10th most populous settlement in the country.
Amish are flocking to Missouri from Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana to escape economic epicenters and church districts whose practices no longer align with their beliefs, to have more land to expand on and numerous other reasons, said Caroline Brock, an associate professor at the University of Missouri and an Amish lifestyle expert.
The absence of zoning regulations in rural Missouri, coupled with land affordability, large areas of for-sale land and religious preferences are driving the population growth in the state.
According to the U.S. Department of Agriculture, the average price of farmland in Missouri is $5,000 per acre, far less than that of other neighboring states. Land in Illinois averages $8,930 per acre, and it costs $9,790 per acre in Iowa.
The real estate taxes in Missouri are also lower than many other states like Pennsylvania and Ohio. This likely contributes to the decision to move to Missouri, Nolt said.
Brock said the Amish population tends to cluster in the Midwest and the Northeast. Fertile, affordable land draws many Amish to Missouri rather than other Midwestern states.
Many of the Amish are leaving Lancaster, Pennsylvania, which has the largest population in the country, because there is no room to grow. Its proximity to Philadelphia, an urban environment, offers too many modern conveniences, fast-paced lifestyles and distractions.
Having large areas that are undeveloped with few regulations can be beneficial for new Amish settlements expecting significant growth over time. Many Missouri counties do not have zoning regulations, which means those looking to construct new buildings are not restricted to a specific geographical district.
These relaxed regulations can be attractive to Amish settlements because they can then build homes, barns, storefronts and schools closer together without worrying about zoning compliance.
“Eventually, they kind of max out the land in a contiguous area,” Brock said.
Staying together
When Amish people are considering moving, Nolt said they will look for areas with plenty of available plots of land in proximity to one another so numerous families can establish themselves near each other.
“These are all what we might call ad hoc efforts, so it’s people who know each other, it’s friends,” Nolt said. “Families are making decisions about moving, you know, in concert with one another.”
Amish communities are also being established in Missouri because of ideological differences among their local churches.
Amish churches are quite specific and contained, with services held in a community member’s home or barn, so the congregation must remain small. The highest church official is a bishop who presides over a church district, and there is no overarching Amish church leader.
According to Brock, many Amish migrants move because they don’t think their local churches are conservative enough.
“I think it’s just that (Pennsylvania, Ohio and Indiana are) are more established, and they’re some of those bigger places that are sort of ‘less conservative’ by my definition, probably because they’re closer to urban centers,” she said.
More conservative Amish people likely move to Missouri in hopes of having a quieter lifestyle, which has a higher degree of separation from urban-English life, she said.
Economic connections
Amish-owned businesses and skilled trades have become a familiar part of everyday life in many rural Missouri communities.
At the biweekly auction in Clark, Amish and non-Amish buyers move together through the crowd, bidding on the same produce and stopping to chat between sales.
“The Amish people are not entirely self-sufficient,” Nolt said. “So they’re shopping at stores that are non-Amish-owned stores, and if they’re farming, they’re probably using the services of a veterinarian who’s not Amish but someone from the area.”
As the Amish population grows, local officials say the shift is becoming visible in both demographics and business activity.
“We have had a growth of Amish-owned businesses going up,” said Aaron Piburn, the assessor the Daviess County, home to Jamesport, the largest Old Order Amish settlement west of the Mississippi River with roughly 150 families.
That growth is reflected in county-level data. Daviess County has the third highest Amish population in the state and has seen a 10% increase over the last five years — changes that local officials say are increasingly visible in everyday work and services across the region.
“There are quite a few Amish people that help on construction or providing pretty affordable roof repair and things like that for hail damage,” Brock said. “In Columbia you might even see some of them.”
Signs in Clark hang from mailboxes that advertise fresh eggs, heads of cabbage and even rabbits. Custom cabinets, tarps, quilts and leather goods are also available.
“A lot of times people don’t fully understand how they’re contributing to the local communities,” Brock said.
Those relationships often grow beyond business transactions. For some non-Amish professionals, years of working with Amish families have turned into lasting, reciprocal relationships.
“I’m giving them my time and experience, and they’re sharing their child or their time or their baked goods or their butchering day meats or whatever with me,” Ashlea Cardin said. “I take care of their family, and they take care of mine.”
Future growth
Recently, when Cardin went to see a patient, she was introduced to a new baby.
“The grandparent proudly said, ‘This is number 78 for me.’”
Brock said that Amish communities double every 20 years because of high retention rates and birth rates. Amish families have, on average, six to eight children.
As families grow, so does the need for land. Cardin said she’s watched families leave established settlements to create new ones across Missouri and neighboring states.
Because Amish children are not required to attend school after the eighth grade, they spend a lot of time with their family.
Amish communities are also setting up more private, single-room school buildings so they don’t need to send their children to public schools where, they believe, influences could be negative.
“Lots of things happen in high school, very formative things,” Brock said. “Lots of social pressures and things like that.”
That is certainly another reason the Amish population continues to grow with little sign of slowing.
As land becomes scarcer and more expensive in traditional Amish states, researchers say the combination of affordable farmland, rural communities and limited zoning means Missouri is likely to remain one of the nation’s primary destinations for new Amish settlements.
The result is a quiet but steady reshaping of parts of rural Missouri— one family, one farm and one new settlement at a time.
“Places like Missouri (will) continue to, I think, be persistently of interest to the Amish population,” Nolt said.
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Former DOJ lawyer blames Missouri senators for inciting death threats against her
By Kennedy Voss, Missouri News Network
WASHINGTON — Former Justice Department lawyer Elizabeth Oyer has posted a video to YouTube blaming Missouri Republican Sens. Eric Schmitt and Josh Hawley for an onslaught of hate messages and death threats she has received.
“Hey everybody,” Oyer said in the video. “I started getting death threats after I testified against Todd Blanche last week.”
Blanche has been nominated to be attorney general by President Donald Trump, and Schmitt and Hawley sit on the Senate Judiciary Committee, which must make an initial vote on his nomination.
Oyer’s video shows images of several emails she received, many of which came from fake email addresses and contained messages such as, “Die in hell you pos,” “I hope you die tragically,” “Let’s hope somebody murders your family and gets clemency,” and other threatening messages containing obscenities.
“Two Republican senators with a political agenda rage-baited their followers into believing nasty and dangerous lies,” she states, referencing Hawley and Schmitt.
The committee’s July 16 hearing had five witnesses, including Oyer, who was the pardoning attorney for the Department of Justice for 13 years. In her written testimony to the committee, Oyer said she was fired by Blanche after she refused to restore firearm rights for actor and filmmaker Mel Gibson, a close friend of Trump.
The hearing was meant to consider the pending nomination of Blanche. Schmitt and Hawley, however, did not ask Oyer about Blanche. Instead, they drilled her about the recommendation she made to President Joe Biden to commute 40 people’s federal death sentences to life in prison without parole.
“You personally recommended commuting all 40 death sentence cases, an even broader action than Biden took,” Schmitt said in the hearing.
Biden commuted 37 of the death sentences.
Schmitt was unable to be immediately reached for comment, but a spokesperson commented on his behalf.
“(Liz Oyer’s) disgraceful clemency recommendations ignored the victims’ families’ concerns and were so extreme that even Joe Biden’s autopen handlers couldn’t stomach them,” the spokesperson said in a statement.
Hawley confronted Oyer with photos of the parolees, many of whom committed violent acts of rape and murder. He showed photos of the victims and referenced them by name. In an interview with the Missourian, Hawley said that these were the real victims, not Oyer.
“The people who were murdered, and devastated and raped by the criminals that she recommended that President Biden give clemency to, those folks are the real victims here,” Hawley said. “I was proud to tell their stories.”
In her video, Oyer said that Hawley had misrepresented her by claiming that she had sympathy for the perpetrators of the crimes.
“That is dangerous misinformation, and Josh Hawley knows it,” Oyer said in the video.
In response, Hawley said that he had read from memos that Oyer sent.
“She tried to weasel her way out of it, and say she hadn’t said this or that,” Hawley said. “We have the memos, and I put them in the record.”
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Hawley bill would ban USPS leadership bonuses
By Kennedy Voss, Missouri News Network
WASHINGTON – Sen. Josh Hawley announced legislation this week to ban bonuses for leadership in the United States Postal Service due to what he says is bad service.
Hawley’s “No Bonuses for Bad Service Act” comes after weeks of complaints about Postmaster General David Steiner.
He had a heated exchange with Steiner in a Senate Homeland committee hearing last month where he pressed the postal chief over a missing pile of mail that was discovered in an abandoned lot in St. Louis in April.
“Thousands of pieces of mail,” Hawley said during the hearing. “Tax documents, prescription drugs, bills, utility communications from companies, thousands and thousands of documents.”
According to Fox 4, some pieces of mail were postmarked as early as January. Steiner claimed that the hearing was the first time that he had heard of the mail scandal.
During the hearing, Hawley displayed a poster board stating that the postmasters general had received over $300,000 in bonuses in 2025, and over $2 million in the past ten years.
“Why are you getting bonuses when my constituents can’t get the mail,” Hawley pressed.
Steiner did not answer when Hawley asked if Steiner would pledge not to take any bonuses until the crisis was resolved.
About a week after the hearing, Hawley sent a letter to Steiner informing him that his office is, “launching a new congressional investigation into systematic service failures in Missouri, possible criminal activity, and bonuses for executives at USPS.”
Hawley then decided to take action “to prohibit United States Postal Service (USPS) leadership from receiving bonuses or additional compensation until mail service and delivery meet the standards that the American people deserve,” according to a news release from Hawley’s office.
According to the release, the bill would:
No bill text was readily available.
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Friends are hopeful about a positive parole decision for James Scott
By Annie Goodykoontz, Missouri News Network
After a parole hearing was held Wednesday for James Scott, who was convicted of causing the Great Flood of 1993 more than 30 years ago, a family friend said he was optimistic about the outcome.
The Missouri Board of Probation and Parole met Wednesday morning to consider whether Scott should be released after spending three decades in the Jefferson City Correctional Center.
The board spent at least an hour questioning Scott about his role in the flood, the time he spent in prison and his future plans if he were to be released, said Adam Pitluk, the friend who represented Scott’s family during the hearing.
Scott was 24 when he was sentenced to life in prison in 1993 after the flood left Hannibal submerged in water and destroyed at least 14,000 acres of surrounding farmland. The flood ultimately inundated 20 million acres across nine Midwestern states and is considered one of the most devastating and costliest floods in modern U.S. history.
Scott was working with a sandbag crew in 1993 to try to stop the rising floodwaters in Hannibal. On July 16, while he was loading several bags onto a levee, he noticed a breach. He threw several more bags onto the levee, notified the National Guard and walked away.
Later that day, the levee failed, the Mississippi River burst through the barrier and the town was flooded.
Scott was accused of tampering with the levee infrastructure and prosecuted under a 1979 Missouri law that makes it a crime to purposefully cause a catastrophe.
He has since maintained his innocence, and he has supporters who remain convinced that he is not guilty.
Pitluk, who graduated from the University of Missouri and is now a professor in South Carolina, wrote the 2007 book “Damned to Eternity: The Story of the Man They Say Caused the Flood,” which explores the case and its legal proceedings.
On Wednesday, he and Scott both attended the parole hearing, along with a representative of the prison and members of the Parole Board. Scott remained steady and calm throughout the hearing, Pitluk said.
He said Scott, now 56, was questioned about his actions during the flood and about previous charges of arson and burglary. Members of the board also reviewed Scott’s conduct in prison.
Pitluk said the board shared a file of his record, with 42 certificates acknowledging his positive behavior and four violations of prison policies about feeding the birds, where he dried his clothes and other matters.
The board also covered Scott’s plans to reenter society should he be granted parole. Pitluk said he told the board that Scott could become a carpenter or handyman, given his experience making furniture for schools and government offices during his time in prison.
A decision about Scott’s possible release is not expected for several weeks, but Pitluk said he was hopeful.
Meanwhile, a feature film inspired by Pitluk’s book is currently in the works, to be called “An Act of God.” Produced by Third Coast Film in Nashville, it is in the early stages of development, producer Blake Babson said.
He said the film company is currently working on the script and casting. He hopes to begin filming in the spring of 2027, and the movie could be released as soon as the end of 2027.
“In many ways, James’ story isn’t finished yet,” Babson said.
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Income vs. sales taxes: Who benefits from Missouri's Amendment 5
By John Murphy, Missouri News Network
CENTRALIA — Missouri Amendment 5, which all voters will see on the Aug. 4 ballot, asks whether the state should overhaul its tax base.
Right now, 61% of Missouri's general revenue funds come from income taxes. If Amendment 5 passes, that number would phase down to zero.
To make up for that loss of revenue, the General Assembly would have five years to implement new sales taxes on any good or service in the state.
Who that helps and who that hurts, ultimately comes down to a question of income.
"I feel like people are struggling now more than we've ever seen people struggle," said Maronica Kitchen, a retired social worker from Columbia.
After recently undergoing back surgery, Kitchen has been living with her daughter and grandchildren in Centralia.
Kitchen lives off a fixed income from Social Security and retirement from her late husband's service in the Army. She also works part time at Love Columbia. On most Fridays, she's helping people who come to visit the Hogan House, a neighborhood food pantry and gathering space just off Demaret Drive, which is northeast of Columbia.
The August primary election in Missouri is approaching. Here are the key races, issues and amendments you need to know.
"I have a love of helping, (and) there's a lot of need out there," Kitchen said.
While she said the people she helps are her priority, she also admitted the small amount of income she gets from this helps her, too.
"I retired, but then I went back to work because I was bored, but I also needed that little extra income so that it's not so tight after I pay the daily services that I need," Kitchen said.
Kitchen said she's concerned that if Amendment 5 passes, causing sales taxes on everyday goods and services to go up to make up for the lost revenue from income taxes, she'd be left with very little.
"With groceries, and if utilities go up — it just eats at what little I have left after that," Kitchen said.
What goods and services would be subject to sales tax increases?
Media campaigns circulating the state have brought into question what Amendment 5 would do to sales taxes on everyday items such as gas and groceries, and ballpark figures of median sales tax rates if it passes.
But there is no true way of knowing what goods and services would be subject to sales tax increases unless the measure passes.
There are no specific goods and services listed in Amendment 5, just simply the language allowing lawmakers to impose and raise sales taxes on "any goods and services." It also doesn't exempt any goods or services from this.
The amendment is also not a blanket income tax cut. Sales tax revenue would first have to increase, which would automatically trigger reductions in the state income tax starting at the top rate, until eventually it is eliminated entirely.
Amendment 5, at its core, is a question of whether someone in Missouri is better off paying more in sales taxes than income taxes and whether they trust state lawmakers with the authority to make that switch.
"The worst way to tax people is on their income because the government just takes it right off the bat," said John Martin, a Republican state representative from Columbia who's running for reelection.
Outside of the statehouse, Martin owns and operates Pro Pumping and Hydrojetting, a septic tank draining business in Columbia. Martin said he has 10 employees, and that they're one of the reasons he supports Amendment 5.
"My guys work hard, and sometimes they'll put in quite a bit of overtime, and they'll say to me, they'll make comments like, 'Wow, I worked all this overtime, but so much of it was taken out,'" Martin said.
'This is really a tax shift'
Missouri has a near-flat income tax rate, where anyone making more than $9,191 per year pays income taxes at the highest rate of 4.7%.
The state sales tax rate is 4.225%, and that gets added on top of local sales taxes. For instance, combined sales taxes are usually around 8% in Columbia, depending on what part of the city you're buying something in.
Currently, most services in Missouri are not taxed.
Advocates for Amendment 5, including Martin, argue that broadening the sales tax base by adding new goods and services to it will prevent people's overall sales tax rate from going up by all that much.
However, Amy Blouin, president and CEO of the independent nonprofit organization The Missouri Budget Project, emphasized who this shifts a greater share of the state's tax burden onto.
"This is really a tax shift from very wealthy folks to everybody else," Blouin said.
The Budget Project has analyzed the regressive nature of states reliant on sales taxes, where poorer people pay a higher share of their income in state taxes than wealthy people do.
"Things like groceries, gasoline, your health insurance, your doctor's visits, your medications, childcare — all of the things that people need to be able to thrive will be more expensive," Blouin said. "And those with the least resources are going to be the hardest hit."
Martin argued not specifying certain services or industries in Amendment 5 was a deliberate move by lawmakers who support it.
"So, when we're asking for the authority to eliminate the income tax and then to potentially expand the sales tax, it's not wise for us to put into a constitution, 'Okay, we're going to tax A, B, C and D,'" Martin said.
However, Kitchen said her concerns with Amendment 5 aren't alphabetical, but rather financial.
"I do my budget every payday. I see what's left. I try to put some back for my house, put some back for purchasing a car. There may not be money to put back," Kitchen said.
It will ultimately be up to Missouri voters on Aug. 4 to decide whether to amend the state constitution to include Amendment 5, but it could take years for them to feel the true effects of it if it does.
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Midwest utilities want less competition to build the grid faster
By Jana Rose Schleis, Missouri News Network
Electric companies in the Midwest say new large-scale power lines are needed to get more energy onto the grid to serve big power consumers such as artificial intelligence data centers. Now, the utilities argue reducing competition is the fastest way to do it.
A group of nine electric transmission utilities, including Ameren and Evergy, is asking federal energy regulators for the right of first refusal to build and operate new multi-state, large-scale power lines.
The group, called “Grid Acceleration Coalition,” filed a request with the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission, FERC, in April to exempt certain projects from the competitive bidding process or to put it on hold for five years. If approved, utilities operating in both the Midcontinent Independent Systems Operator, MISO, territory and the Southwest Power Pool, SPP, would be the default developer for any large multi-state transmission projects.
Northeast and mid-Missouri is situated in MISO territory, while the western part of the state and some of southern Missouri’s grid is facilitated by SPP.
In their plea to federal regulators, transmission utilities stress how delays on infrastructure projects hurt progress.
“To meet spiking load growth, we must build the transmission needed to connect new large loads and generation,” the request reads. “If we succeed, we will win the race to achieve dominance in artificial intelligence (‘AI’), rebuild our nation’s manufacturing base, and ensure we have the infrastructure needed to extract our nation’s oil and gas resources.”
Davis Strobridge is director of regulatory strategy for ITC, one of the largest transmission companies in the country. He said it can take 16 to 20 months to select a company to build a large-scale power line.
“We need rules and regulations that do things quickly and don’t have red tape involved, and removing this solicitation requirement would absolutely do that,” Strobridge said.
But in recent months, a number of state lawmakers have spoken out in opposition. Legislators from Missouri, Iowa, Montana, Wisconsin and Kansas have sent letters to the FERC urging the agency to deny the transmission companies’ request.
State Sen. Tracy McCreery, D-St. Louis County, said she fears there would be “no regard for cost” if the utilities had the right of first refusal. She said halting the competitive bidding process would raise project costs that then get passed onto customers.
“Without competition, there would be no motivation for these investor-owned utilities to do things in an economical manner,” she said.
In a letter to federal energy commissioners, McCreery said infrastructure costs for transmission and distribution are the primary driver of her constituents’ rising utility bills. McCreery writes that nearly a quarter of Missourians have unaffordable energy burdens, meaning they spend 6% or more of their household income on utility bills.
“We are putting so much strain on Missouri families, and we have to just say stop,” McCreery said. “Let’s use some common sense.”
State Rep. Ben Keathley, R-Chesterfield, also sent a letter to FERC echoing McCreery’s concerns.
Faster and cheaper is the goal
More than a year ago, President Donald Trump declared a national energy emergency, and made new electric generation and transmission infrastructure a priority. Transmission utilities say the project solicitation process to bid on and win the ability to build power lines delays grid upgrades and hurts the ability to get new power plants online. But consumer advocates and lawmakers say without competition, costs will increase.
Prior to 2011, the transmission companies operating as a regulated monopoly in a certain area had the right of first refusal for building new transmission lines. A policy called “Order 1000” changed that, opening up large scale power line projects to a competitive process. Developers from across the country, as well as incumbent utilities, could submit proposals to win the project.
“In 2011, the environment we were in was a really low load growth environment … and so we almost had the time to experiment with the policy, and it wasn’t impacting our electric grid,” Strobridge said. “Fast forward, obviously, we’re in an unprecedented time. The demands that are coming that utilities are experiencing right now are almost incomprehensible.”
Paul Cicio is chairman of the Electricity Transmission Competition Coalition, a group advocating against the utilities’ recent request. He said lobbying in state legislatures to reduce competition has been intense in the MISO region.
“Because these same utilities couldn’t get legislation in their home state, now they’re petitioning the federal government to bail them out to help them and prevent competition,” Cicio said.
The companies’ request before federal energy regulators says electricity demand is “increasing at a rate unseen since World War II, particularly in MISO and SPP.”
The transmission utilities’ request makes clear utilities want to take advantage of the current AI data center development boom and build assets to facilitate the increased electricity demand — which they say the competitive project “solicitation” process hinders.
“Any purported benefits of solicitations — which are uncertain and, at best, small — are almost certainly overwhelmed by the costs of foregone benefits of AI development,” the request reads.
In an email to KBIA, Evergy spokesperson Courtney Lewis said the current way the country goes about building large power lines hurts the ability to meet growing electricity demand and threatens the region’s ability for economic growth.
“As one of the home utilities in the region, Evergy is well positioned to build transmission,” Lewis said. “We own and operate the local power grid that the lines connect to, and we are staffed to monitor and quickly respond anytime there is an issue that could impact service to our customers.”
The Federal Energy Regulatory Commission is expected to rule on the utilities’ request this fall.
