The
People’s
Ballot

The one measure on this ballot that is not a trap. This tax is why admission to Missouri’s state parks is free, for everybody, on equal terms. First approved in 1984, renewed every ten years since, 80 percent support last time. Do not let a no-on-everything mood kill the one good thing on the page. Read your ballot line by line; the next two amendments are where they are counting on your fatigue.

Jackson County voters already made the assessor an elected office, themselves, through their own charter, which they can amend again if the fix needs fixing. Amendment 2 lifts that local decision into the state constitution, where Jackson County alone can never touch it again. The question was never whether the assessor should be elected. It is who owns Jackson County’s charter: its voters, or Jefferson City. The state already runs this city’s police department. Read this amendment in that lineage.

The resolution behind this measure carries foreign-money and petition-fraud provisions that duplicate existing law, though the certified ballot title voters will see never mentions them. The engine, and the only thing the title describes, is the district rule: citizen amendments would need a majority in every one of eight congressional districts, on a map gerrymandered last year for exactly this purpose, so one district could veto the whole state. The legislature exempted its own amendments. First they drew the districts. Then they made the districts the judge of your petitions. Medicaid expansion, the minimum wage, reproductive freedom: everything the initiative ever won dies under this rule. That is not a side effect. That is the product.

The income tax scales with what you earn. The sales tax takes the same cut from everyone at the register, so the poorer you are, the larger the share of your life it takes. This amendment moves the cost of the state off wealth and onto consumption, and writes the experiment into the constitution where no future legislature can easily undo it. Kansas ran this play in 2012 and it broke the state. Half this metro lived across the street from the wreckage. Paired with Amendment 4, the design is complete: lock the door, then set the fire.

Real money for affordable homes through the fund that has already backed nearly 3,000 units since 2018. Needs a four-sevenths majority, so it needs you specifically.

Renovations for Municipal Auditorium, the Music Hall, Bartle Hall, and City Hall. Historic public buildings, and also the question on this ballot with the least to say to a family fighting a rent increase. We give you the facts and leave this one to you.

The one-eighth-cent tax that funds development inside the historic Black core, roughly $10 million a year since 2017. Renew the fund, then watch the board that spends it like it answers to you, because it does.

Honesty first: your rates repay these, and rates are a tax by another name. But the sewer work is ordered by a federal consent decree and happens either way; rejection just forces costlier borrowing and faster rate hikes. The bond is the cheaper path through a bill you cannot refuse.