By SCOTT MILLER
Staff Reporter
South county candidates seeking legislative seats in Novem-ber disagreed on some issues, but the overwhelming message at a recent forum seemed to be unanimous — scrap the state’s education funding formula.
More than 100 residents attended a public forum last week to hear the various candidates for the Missouri House and Senate hash out their differences on concealed weapons, health care, tort reform and highway funding, among other topics.
The South County Chamber of Commerce sponsored the event at the Holiday Inn on South Lindbergh Boulevard.
District 1 Senate candidates Bob Yeckel of Sunset Hills and Sen. Harry Kennedy of St. Louis participated in the forum, while Green Party candidate David Sladky of Le-may did not attend. Yeckel, a Republican, and Kennedy, a Democrat, are vying for the seat currently held by Yeckel’s wife, Anita, who cannot seek re-election because of term limits. Kennedy currently serves as the District 3 state senator, but cannot seek re-election in the 3rd District be-cause of redistricting.
House candidates who participated in the forum included:
District 85 — Libertarian Jim Craig of Lemay, Demo-crat Jim Wagener and Republican incumbent Jim Lembke.
District 96 — Republican Mike Becker of Lemay. Dem-ocratic incumbent Pat Yaeger of Lemay did not attend. She told the Call the next day she didn’t know of the forum and that she didn’t represent many of the people in that area anyway.
District 97 — Republican incumbent Walt Bivins of Oakville and Democrat Jane Koeller of Oakville.
District 100 — Democratic incumbent Sue Schoemehl of Oakville and Republican Mike Rohrbacker of Oakville.
The candidates agreed that the state’s education funding formula needs to be trashed or at least fixed, particularly for such hold-harmless school districts as Mehlville, Lind-bergh, Affton and Bayless where state funding remains frozen at 1993 levels. Everyone said they were optimistic legislation would handle the issue in the spring.
While the candidates who participated seemed to agree on education funding, residents’ questions brought out a wide range of opinions on issues ranging from gun control to vehicle emissions testing.
The 85th district candidates responded to questions about the state law allowing citizens to carry concealed weapons.
Craig said, “I believe a well-qualified person should be able to have a concealed weapon. Well-qualified means, of course, no felony convictions and having lots of training and classroom time with that weapon.”
Wagener said, “I oppose conceal-and-carry. What I find more appalling is that the vast majority in the 85th District voted against conceal-and-carry, and then our state Legis-lature, including my opponent, voted to allow conceal-and-carry and then voted to override the governor’s veto. If conceal-and-carry won and the voters wanted it, I would have lived with it. But when the Legislature asked the people to vote on something, they ought to have the courtesy and respect to follow the decision of the voters.”
Lembke said, “The law that was defeated by referendum wasn’t overwhelming, and it was a much different piece of legislation than was passed in the House four years later. This is a Second Amendment rights issue. I certainly campaigned two years ago that I would support Second Amend-ment rights. And we have passed a piece of legislation that is the most restrictive in the nation.”
Residents asked 96th District candidate Becker his opinion of medical malpractice tort reform.
Becker said, “Based on our numbers, the St. Louis area is currently serviced by about 34 neurologists, and they say if we do not have tort reform, all of them are going to leave. I think it’s a serious issue not only for jobs and economic growth in Missouri, but I think it’s serious as far as Mis-souri’s health-care system maintaining quality health care.”
97th District candidates responded to questions about small businesses and their inability to offer health insurance.
Koeller said, “I do believe small businesses should be able to write off the costs of health insurance. In today’s society, we all need health insurance.”
Bivins said, “I support that as well. Of course, one of the problems that we have throughout the country, and it’s not unique to Missouri but it includes Missouri, is the issue of medical malpractice insurance and it relates to tort reform as mentioned earlier … (Plaintiffs) can get awards that are out of line with anything. The problem is the (expensive) medical malpractice insurance rates that we have here in Missouri (driving up the cost of health care).”
The 100th District candidates were asked how to adequately fund education.
Rohrbacker said, “The first thing I would do is revamp the foundation formula so Mehlville was no longer hold harmless since Mehlville has gone a decade without an increase and that’s just a ridiculous way to operate. Secondly, I would draft and introduce legislation making all the gambling revenue be new money for education. What they did years ago was rob Peter to pay Paul. They put gambling money in and they took general revenue money out. So we need to mandate that that is new money for education.”
Schoemehl said, “The funding for the Mehlville School District, the community that we have here, the hold harmless, has been a problem, not having an increase since 1993 has been a problem. Our school district has functioned and they’ve done a great job … I feel as a part of the community we are in here in a hold-harmless district, we don’t have to listen to the rural districts and the state as far as property taxes. The assessments we have here in the county and Kansas City need to be the same throughout the state. The rural areas need to do their fair share.”
Residents asked the 1st District Senate candidates if state budget problems were more revenue or spending created.
Yeckel said, “I think we still have plenty of income. We have just increased spending haphazardly and out of control, and we have to get a handle on it.
Kennedy said, “When people get cut off of different programs because of the revenue, I would say it’s a problem for all of Missouri. It has been a revenue problem. Rev-enue has gone down because of our investments, because of problems with the stock market.”
97th District candidates responded to questions regarding to the vehicle emissions testing program:
Bivins said, “Well, the problem with the emissions program today is the inconvenience that it places on individuals that own vehicles. Another thing that we have going today is most automobiles that were made since 1996 have an on-board computer where all any mechanic that has the equipment, and most do, has to do to find out whether it meets the emissions standard is plug in their computer and in 15 seconds they can tell you whether it meets the emissions standard or not. We really need to make the emissions testing program a lot more convenient for vehicle owners.”
Koeller said, “We will lose federal funding if we don’t keep this program. We have to abide by it. We’ve got to get our cars checked whether we like it or not. But we do need to change the testing program to make it more convenient.”
The 100th District candidates were asked about Amendment No. 3, designed to benefit highways, on the Nov. 2 ballot.
Schoemehl said, “I’m concerned about the way it’s written. It’s devoted and where is it going to come from? It’s going to come from general revenue, which is also the same pot that public school money comes from. We’re already $600 million in the hole with education.”
Rohrbacker said, “It would make highway money go to the roads like it was originally supposed to. We can do this if we focus on cutting the waste and the fraud and the crumbs of the government. We have more state employees than the state of Illinois and a heck of a lot less population. The Department of Transportation has 39 public relations officers. They don’t need that many. It’s a waste of money. That can stack up the cost of an operation of a de-partment building highways.”
