A year ago, Missouri Speaker of the House Rob Vescovo wrote President Joe Biden a letter.
Vescovo, a Jefferson County Republican, was upset about an executive order from the White House that certain businesses would require COVID-19 vaccination as a condition of employment.
“As a citizen of this great nation, it is obvious to me, and to anyone with a rudimentary understanding of our system of government, that this directive is an egregious overreach of federal authority,†Vescovo wrote. “States enjoy general police power and are authorized to enact laws to provide for the public health, safety and morals of their inhabitants. By contrast, the federal government has no such general police power.â€
People are also reading…
That Vescovo would hold such a narrow interpretation of federal power is not surprising. When it came to the pandemic, Missouri Republicans were notoriously against any federal regulations — and local ones, too.
Vescovo also leads a House that last year passed the so-called Second Amendment Preservation Act, a gun-lover’s fantasyland that allegedly nullified the federal government’s ability to enforce gun safety regulations in Missouri.
Local law enforcement agencies in cities and rural areas , saying it has made it harder for police and sheriffs to do their jobs. A lawsuit seeking to overturn the bill, filed by leaders in ºüÀêÊÓƵ and Kansas City, is pending.
Fast forward a year. Vescovo last week wrote another letter to the federal government. This time, he wants the president’s help.
In his letter to U.S. Attorney Teresa Moore, a Biden appointee, Vescovo asks the Department of Justice to investigate “what amounts to organized crime against children†at Agape Boarding School in southwest Missouri.
That Vescovo is seeking outside help in the Agape abuse scandal is a good thing. Former students, in criminal complaints and civil lawsuits, have alleged decades of physical and sexual abuse at the Christian reformatory school.
The scandal led the Missouri Legislature to finally pass some minimal regulation allowing the Department of Social Services and the attorney general to intervene amid credible complaints of abuse.
For far too long, even before Vescovo was there, the Legislature sat idly by, allowing such religious reformatory schools to abuse children with little state oversight.
Last year, Attorney General Eric Schmitt, a Republican who is running for U.S. Senate, proposed criminal charges against 22 workers at the school. But Cedar County Prosecuting Attorney Ty Gaither filed minor charges against only a few of them.
Schmitt has filed a lawsuit to try to close the school — , according to some of the people alleging abuse at Agape — but he is being stymied by a local judge.
Outside help is needed, Vescovo says. He’s not wrong.
But to borrow some of Vescovo’s words, it seems obvious to anybody with a rudimentary understanding of the English language that his new letter completely contradicts the one he sent the federal government last year.
Perhaps he’s had a change of heart when it comes to federal “police power†or laws that provide for the “health, safety and morals†of Missouri’s residents.
If so, while he’s asking for federal aid, it would behoove Vescovo to think about his attempts to end the alleged abuse at Agape in the context of the current special session over which he presides.
A tax cut Republicans approved Thursday and sent to the governor’s desk could cost the state an estimated $2 billion in revenue, with most of the benefits flowing to the wealthy. The tax cut is being pushed by prolific , who stands to make a windfall. He tried a similar scheme in Kansas. Once it bankrupted the state, Republicans backtracked.
Missouri is already last in public health spending, second-to last in starting teacher pay and near the bottom in pay for corrections officers and state support for higher education.
Take a look at the Children’s Division, for instance, which is supposed to protect kids in the state from harm. It is so understaffed, my colleague Jesse Bogan reported this week, that the department is offering overtime and lodging to rural employees to help the shortage in the state’s cities. But those employees are balking because rural offices are understaffed also.
Over at the Department of Mental Health, things are even worse. Hundreds of patients are in jail or waiting in hospital wings for transfer to mental health facilities that can’t take them because they don’t have the staff.
This is the sad state of affairs when it comes to protecting Missouri’s most vulnerable people.
As a citizen of this great state, I agree with the Speaker of the House: We definitely need outside help.