Coffee, donuts, and tax reform: A look at Joplin's Donuts and Delegates brunch!

The Joplin community had a chance to hear from two local representatives on the outcome of the most recent legislative session. Missouri State Senator Jill Carter and Missouri State Representative Lane Roberts sat down with members of the Joplin Chamber of Commerce to provide an update as to what did and didn’t get accomplished in Jefferson City this year. 

“The purpose of today’s session was to do a legislative wrap up to hear from Senator Carter and Representative Lane Roberts about what happened in Jeff City and what they have been doing for our community. It went well.” Joplin Chamber President Betsy Mense told NewsTalk KZRG.

One of the major items the local leaders highlighted was a failed fight to get property tax reform to voters. “The state tax commission was leveraging your local sectors to try and increase the valuation on your taxes, which increases your taxes,” Senator Carter told the crowd, “we were trying to find some path to alleviate these tax increases.”

During that fight, lawmakers were given three options: a tax cap, a tax freeze, or do nothing at all. “Well, who would not want to come home to tell your community you gave them a tax freeze?” the Senator asked. But there was a problem: it was unclear if the property tax measure contained a bonding capacity, which is a legal limit as to how much debt a government can take to fund public projects.

“Realize that [having no bonding capacity] means no future growth,” the senator explained, “no library district, no ambulance district, if there is not a bonding capacity in your property tax reform package that means I am cutting off any growth for Jasper and Newton county for their future.” 

Because of this concern, she opted to vote for a tax cap which means your property valuations can only go up by a certain percentage as opposed to a tax freeze which would freeze the current tax rate.

“I went with the cap, not because I wanted to come home and not give you a freeze, but because I can’t in good conscience come home with pom-poms and say ‘I gave you a freeze’ and then learn there was no bonding capacity for future growth.” Carter concluded. 

But she wasn’t alone. In the end, 72 counties opted for the property tax cap as opposed to the freeze.

Despite all the effort, the bill that would have given the state an overhaul of property tax reform died on the last day of session. 

Another major issue discussed was Joplin’s Memorial Hall. A bill to try and save the historic landmark was carried by Rep. Roberts in the House and pushed along in the Senate by Senator Carter. 

“The [Joplin] Memorial Hall issue is important.” Representative Roberts said, “Somebody that I respect said, ‘I don’t know why this building is such a big deal. Just take those memorials out of it and put them in a newer building’. Well, the building is an edifice. An edifice to a promise. You can argue that it’s cheaper to tear it down and build a new one, and that is probably true, but what’s the dollar value of a hundred year old promise? For people in high school today, for people in their 20s, the Vietnam War is as distant to them as WWI was to me. That building is an edifice to a promise. And why do we need it? Because we do forget. Keeping that building is more than just a matter of protecting our history. In my opinion and in my opinion only, it is about protecting our soul.”

The effort to protect Memorial Hall in Joplin was one of the final bills to pass in the 11th hour of the state legislature before the session came to a close.