CLAYTON — ºüÀêÊÓƵ County Council Chairwoman Lisa Clancy said Monday she was dropping a proposal for a countywide sales tax to support early childhood education.
Bill 188 will be dropped from the Council's agenda at tomorrow night's meeting. The commitment that & share to kids & families isn't wavering, but it's clear there's more work to do to build consensus about the path forward. (1/)
— Lisa Clancy (@lisadclancy)
But discussion of the proposal will not end there. Two Missouri House committees will convene a joint hearing on Tuesday to look into the proposal, which has drawn harsh criticism from several state legislators, including Rep. , D-Ferguson, Rep. , D-University City, and Rep. , R-Eureka. Chappelle-Nadal hinted on social media there could be a wider inquiry about how government operates in the state’s most populous county.
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The measure, which Clancy introduced earlier this month, would have asked ºüÀêÊÓƵ County voters on Nov. 3 if they wanted a half-cent sales tax to raise tens of millions of dollars per year to educate children up to age 5. Clancy appeared to have the support of her three Democratic colleagues at first, but it slipped amid an uproar over how she had worked closely with advocates on the proposal then waited until the last minute to submit it to the council.
The bill’s language also raised questions about how the revenue would be used. Some people criticized the idea to impose a tax that would disproportionately affect poor people, and others questioned whether it would divert public money to private groups with little or no oversight.
Clancy, D-5th District, and advocates for the bill have insisted the attention should be on the area’s dire need for early childhood education.
Emails discovered through a public records request show Clancy helped develop the proposal with early education advocates in the Ready By Five campaign, who asked her to shepherd the project through the government approval process.
After bill co-sponsor Rita Heard Days, D-1st District, said she no longer supported the bill, Clancy tabled a vote on Tuesday but said she would continue to pursue an amended version. On Friday, Ready By Five campaign coordinator Gloria Nolan in Bel-Nor on Thursday night to try to get the councilwoman on board. But Days would not change her mind.
Days said in an interview on Monday that Nolan brought two other Ready By Five advocates, Charli Cooksey, the chief executive of WEPOWER, and Ellicia Lanier, executive director of University City-based Urban Sprouts Early Childhood Learning Center. She gave them one hour.
Days said she told the advocates that she could not see how the bill met their stated goal of helping disadvantaged children. “I saw a lot of expansion in there, economic development and building parks, but I don’t see where the money is going to ... help children in need.â€
She said she was against a regressive tax and encouraged the advocates to expand their circles to find people who will challenge their ideas “so you can come out with a better project.†Days said the advocates “vehemently denied†they were part of a larger effort to support the expansion of charter schools, but she said she told them, “Generally, when you get funding from someone, you take on their positions in some way.â€
Nolan wrote: “We told her our plan to reengage in our community-led design process to make sure our policy is the strongest it can be and she challenged us and also assured us that she, too, wants to fight for our children in the county to access a more equitable early childhood education system.â€
Ready By Five said it planned to regroup “.â€
Clancy said it was premature to say what a revived proposal might look like. “We have to go back and continue to do due diligence in the community†and “work toward building a broader consensus.â€
The tax would raise about $85 million a year and direct part of the funds to land acquisition, wastewater treatment and other economic development projects in or outside of the county, according to the bill. There are no mandates in the bill to lower the cost of child care, a stated priority of the campaign.
‘Potential for abuse’
Ken Warren, a political scientist at ºüÀêÊÓƵ University who tracks local politics, said in an interview Monday there was nothing wrong with a legislator working with lobbyists toward a common goal, as long as there were not friends benefiting from a legislative action.
Warren said he was alarmed when he read a bill “with so much flexibility in it you don’t know where the money is going to be spent. They could even spend it outside the county.â€
He said the bill “smells with potential for pay-to-play politics. ... and the potential for abuse†because it did not lay out how money would be spent on education. “It was not well thought out; it was just being rammed through.â€
Days said she was also uncomfortable with how much direction Clancy appeared to take from advocates for the tax. “I knew that she had probably worked with some Ready by Five people but I didn’t realize how close the relationships were ... a little too close for me.â€
In a joint statement on Monday, Clancy, Days and Kelli Dunaway, D-2nd District, said they “acknowledge the need for continued exploration of revenue options, as well as the need to build a broader consensus among community stakeholders about the pathway forward.â€
County Executive Sam Page said in on Monday that as to whether Clancy’s sales tax proposal was the “right mechanism†to fund early education, “I guess that’ll be a question for a future conversation, but she’s identified a topic that needs a great deal of attention from our regional leaders, from our local leaders and from our state.â€