The Associated Press reported last week that, according to a report by State Auditor Susan Montee, convicted criminals and child abusers are working at state-licensed group homes and other residential facilities.
Missouri has laws designed to protect the vulnerable under the care of the state, but Montee discovered nearly 100 people were hired to work at 31 residential facilities licensed by the Missouri Department of Senior Services despite a history of child abuse or violent felony convictions. An additional 129 employees of state-run mental health centers or private contractors had records of child abuse or neglect, the AP reported.
Montee blamed a “patchwork system of screening procedures” that fails to alert state agencies that a potential employee is a convicted criminal or abuser. Missouri is one of six states that do not use criminal histories to prohibit employment in licensed residential child-care facilities. “They don’t believe they should automatically disqualify people,” Montee said at a news conference, according to the AP. “We believe that is a mistake.”
How can the state better monitor the criminal backgrounds of its employees?
Now that the St. Charles Road Development site has been selected for the next high school, an important question arises: What should the next mascot be?
We have our Rock Bridge Bruins. We have our Hickman Kewpies. We have our Douglass Bulldogs. No theme emerges from that trio, so the new school will be free to be creative.
No doubt some public process will ensue, but we’ll kick it off by offering the Mudcats, a collective nickname for the catfish that populate our near and mighty Missouri River. A unique moniker, the Mudcats was eschewed during the competition to name the Mid-Missouri Mavericks baseball team. We bring it back to the surface.
Regarded as delicious deep-fried with a touch of tartar sauce or vinegar, the mudcat is big and strong before it becomes dinner. It’s a blue-collar critter, eking out a living in the murky depths. It’s a fighter on the hook and threatens the angler who reels it in with spines as sharp as an ice pick. We believe it’s the perfect choice. But we’ll ask you:
What do you think the next high school mascot should be?
Just when it looked like an initiative petition was going to reopen the debate about smoking in Columbia, the petition was declared invalid for having too few signatures of registered voters.
Business owners who circulated the petition say they still plan to appeal to the City Council to put the ordinance that bans smoking in most public places to a citywide vote. The council could call a public vote or simply leave the ordinance as it stands.
Joel Thiel, co-owner of Otto’s Corner Bar and Grill, thinks the ordinance has hurt business at his establishment and others.
The composition of the City Council has changed since the ordinance was passed last fall on a 4-3 vote. First Ward Councilwoman Almeta Crayton and Fifth Ward Councilwoman Laura Nauser are the only two council members still serving who opposed the ban, and new council members Karl Skala of the Third Ward and Jerry Wade of the Fourth Ward support the existing ordinance.
What has been your experience — as a nonsmoker, smoker or business owner — since the ban was enacted on Jan. 9?
Columbia’s biking community got two pieces of good news this week. The PedNet project, in conjunction with city officials, is planning to place a bike rack downtown as a pilot project. Plus, bikers now have a host of “sweet spots” around town that they can use to trigger green lights.
The two projects are part of a $21.5 million federal grant to improve nonmotorized transportation in the city.
Bike racks will prevent the need for people to tie their bikes to parking meters and clutter the area around storefronts. City officials hope new racks will encourage more people to bike downtown instead of driving.
The sweet spots work just like the sensors for cars. Little magnets buried underground sense when a car — or for the 20-odd intersections designated by the project, a bike — is stopped at a red light. These sensors help shorten the wait a biker has at a red light.
Do these perks for bikers encourage the use of bicycles, or are they gimmicks that waste federal money?
Gov. Matt Blunt announced a new e-mail policy Thursday that directs the Office of Administration to save all of his staff’s e-mails.
Blunt was recently criticized for deleting some of the e-mails his staff received. Those e-mails were requested under a Sunshine Law request by the Springfield News-Leader. Blunt said the e-mails were not public records, and therefore it was legal, and in fact customary, to delete them.
Sunshine experts cried foul, and when an aide was fired from Blunt’s office, the controversy re-ignited. Blunt called his decision to retain the e-mails a policy that is “well beyond” legal requirements. Democrats say the policy merely re-states the obvious. “That would be like creating an office policy prohibiting theft,” Democratic spokesman Jack Cardetti told the Associated Press.
In any event, all government e-mails will now be retained and subject to open-records requests. The windows of Missouri government just let in another ray of sunshine.
Was Blunt amiss in this e-mail flap, or was the controversy simply much ado about nothing?