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OPINION

6 Things Missouri Lawmakers Should Fix In 2025

  • 5 min to read
Missouri Flag - distressed image

Missouri's a fantastic place to live (and Lake of the Ozarks is the best place in Missouri, confirmed). But it's got its fair share of problems.

With a new governor, new cabinet, and new faces in the legislature, our state has the opportunity to make some much-needed changes in 2025. So, since Governor Kehoe and the entire legislative branch are undoubtedly reading this column, here are six things Missouri's leadership should urgently prioritize in the upcoming legislative session.

1. Cut Taxes

It's perfect timing, as Missourians are paying their property tax and personal property tax bills. Take a look down your bill; are we getting good ROI?

Missouri could easily cut two types of taxation and be better off. First...

1a. The Personal Property Tax

The only entities that support Missouri's personal property tax are the ones that receive the checks from it. It siphons more than $1.5 billion out of Missourians' pockets every year. And it's just downright onerous. Every person who pays it, I think, deep-down knows there's something fundamentally immoral about taxing a person year-after-year simply for continuing to own a vehicle or boat or livestock.

The Missouri legislature should do something about this.

(Side-note: Bill Eigel ran for governor with the abolition of the personal property tax as a key piece of his platform, and he mustered a formidable challenge to Mike Kehoe. Abolishing the personal property tax is popular with Missourians. Take note, Governor Kehoe.)

1b. The Income Tax

Taxes are a disincentive to whatever is being taxed. This is Economics 101. It's why the opponents of fossil fuels want to tax and fine every use of fossil fuels they can reach. They know that the more heavily something is taxed, the less of it you get.

Missouri's income tax is hurting Missourians' income, and it's disincentivizing economic growth. Plenty more ink could be spilled (and has been spilled) about this topic. But with a massive, multi-billion-dollar budget surplus the past couple of years, couldn't lawmakers find it in their hearts to maybe, just maybe, let Missourians keep more of their paychecks?

2. Save Us From The Destruction Of Our Energy Infrastructure

With Missouri's largest electric provider Ameren systematically powering-down its most reliable coal and natural gas power plants, Missouri and the Midwest stand at the precipice of an energy crisis. 

The Midwest's energy grid operator MISO warned last summer that if utilities companies like Ameren don't stop the madness, the region will have a 2.4GW shortage in 2025 and potentially a 14GW deficit by 2029. For reference, that means lacking the ability to power about 10 million homes.

Rush Island Energy Center

Rush Island Energy Center, powered-down by Ameren in 2024

photo by Ameren, from fact sheet: "RUSH ISLAND ENERGY CENTER - Providing customers affordable, reliable energy since 1976."

If Missouri's Public Service Commission is going to keep rewarding companies that are actively making Missourians' power-supply worse, that commission needs an overhaul.

And hello, nuclear anyone? Missouri's sole nuclear plant is an example of what could be. Let's clear the way.

3. Protect Families

Thanks to millions of out-of-state dollars put toward fearmonger-marketing, Missourians were duped into pulling the lever for Amendment 3, and as a result they ordained outcomes the majority are certain to be unhappy with.

With Amendment 3, abortion will be legalized through all nine months of pregnancy, and the door has been opened for trans-rights activists to shove gender treatments down families' throats. All under the nasty term "reproductive rights." (Those, by the way, are the same thing as "trans rights," according to leftist groups like the National Women's Law Center.)

Most people don't want these things — the vast majority of Americans strongly oppose abortion throughout most of the pregnancy, according to a 2023 poll. So even if abortion were about women's rights (it's not), most Americans say they're already in favor of restricting those alleged rights.

Missouri lawmakers and Governor Kehoe must move quickly to protect the most vulnerable Missourians — those who are not-yet-born and those who are deeply confused by the culture's unhinged gender ideologies.

(To clarify, some supporters of the amendment say it only allows abortion up until "fetal viability." But the amendment language only says abortion may be restricted or banned after fetal viability -- it does not actually establish those restrictions or that ban. The outcome of the lawsuits already filed in Missouri will be the overturning of abortion laws on the books. With no abortion laws on the books, abortion would be legal through all nine months until lawmakers do something about it.)

4. Overturn the Disastrous Minimum Wage Hike

Missourians voted to raise the minimum wage on the November ballot. But lawmakers should overturn that decision. For the good of Missourians — including many of the people who voted for this — it must be done.

Read more about why this minimum wage hike will be so disastrous, here. But suffice to say this won't create more prosperity, and it won't help families. Minimum wage requirements actually kill jobs and reduce the pay for hourly employees. Again, explanation here.

Instead, how about making Missouri an even more business-friendly state? One thing that would help: an Entrepreneur's Bill of Rights. Rep. Jeff Vernetti's bill, HB 546, is a great start.

5. Abolish The State Gaming Commission & Turn Gambling Decisions Over To Communities

What an absolutely ridiculous situation. Missouri gambling is a controlled monopoly. I'm not a gambler, but I can see this is absurd.

When a group of Lake of the Ozarks investors wanted to build a casino, they had to spend millions just to get the issue on the ballot and try to convince Missouri voters to change the constitution to allow it. Turns out, most people didn't like this idea.

Gambling Table in A Casino - Cards

The casino was strongly opposed locally, but the requirement to change the constitution to get a casino meant that the investors had to hope the rest of the state would vote to allow a casino in a place where it would be pretty unpopular with locals. In fact, a LakeExpo reader poll revealed 60% opposed a casino.

LakeExpo Reader Poll: Do you support a casino at Lake of the Ozarks?

If the election were today, would you vote to change the Missouri Constitution to allow the construction of a state-regulated casino on the Osage River? (State tax revenue from that casino would be put toward teachers' salaries.)

You voted:

In the end, the proposal was defeated by Missourians, with 52% voting No. It was a win, however, for the state's 13 casinos who've managed to get a state license and now operate within a state-shielded monopoly.

Let's get House and Senate resolutions on the ballot to overturn the state constitution's silly language about gambling laws, and let those decisions rest with counties and cities. If Lake of the Ozarks residents don't want a casino, let them urge local officials to pass ordinances to prohibit it. Then allow communities who want them to fling open the doors. And let the chips fall where they may.

6. Fix The Pitiful Hunting Season

Deer are wonderful creatures.

But there can be too much of a good thing; ask any non-urban Missourian, and they'll tell you the deer situation is getting out of control. At least locally, one Highway Patrol sergeant reported they responded to more deer-collision incidents than ever before.

A driver in the Lake of the Ozarks area strikes a deer in one of the many costly instances that occurs every year. Video from fall 2024.

Meanwhile, Missouri's rifle hunting season remains stubbornly unmoved: a week-and-a-half, right as the busy holiday season begins. Archery season stretches for months on end! But most hunters aren't bow-hunters.

The overly-restrictive rifle season has had negative effects on every front. Fewer hunters are able to make it into the woods during that small window, and meanwhile, more deer are springing into the paths of hapless drivers: totaling vehicles and racking-up insurance claims, not to mention the many injuries that result from deer collisions.

This year's deer harvest was down, dramatically. The MDC blamed warm weather and too many acorns... maybe they're right, but a longer season would give hunters more chances to climb over those piles of acorns in the sweltering November heat and put a buck in the crosshairs, in spite of the odds.

So here's my extremely radical solution...

Missouri's rifle season should be expanded to at least four weeks, preferably six.

And while we're changing things, we've got to get rid of these silly rules about putting out feed. They're ostensibly about preventing Chronic Wasting Disease, but all they do is reduce a hunter's chances of success, thus perpetuating the overpopulation problem and actually worsening the CWD crisis!

Ironically: as I type this, I hear an ad playing on my coworker's Spotify, promising that the Missouri Department of Conservation cares very much about the growing CWD problem and insisting the solution is to quit putting out deer feed.

*sigh*

If our current Conservation Commissioners won't do the right thing for Missourians, then our new Governor should appoint new ones who will.

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