SPEAKOUT

Saturday, July 5, 2014

For or against?

I read the article by reporter Scott Welton in the Wednesday Standard Democrat about voting to cut the income of the city of Sikeston by hundreds of thousands of dollars. I further read at the end that our state representative was unavailable for comment as of press time. What I'd like to know is did she vote for us or against us? If you could print that, I'd be grateful.

"Out of the 10 bills the Governor vetoed, I voted for all but one," said Rep. Holly Rehder, R-148th District. "I voted against Senate Bill 693 because it does have the potential to hurt our local tax base. This is the one that has the no tax on sales of vehicles over 10 years old. Three of the others didn't have a fiscal note. The combined fiscal note, including the one I voted against, at our truly agreed and finally passed date was approximately $233 million. However, the Governor is now threatening withholds of $425 million -- it doesn't make sense. The information his office has sent out to our cities and counties is simply incorrect. The fiscal notes for each bill are carefully put together, reviewed and worked through by a bi-partisan department. There is no way the fiscal notes given during session are this far off the Governor's numbers. Basically, this Governor doesn't believe in tax cuts and he is using gimmicks and accounting tricks to scare our local governments and also try to keep our state government as big and bloated as possible."

Exactly right

I disagree with the person that said they need to get their priorities straight about these houses. Whoever wrote the thing in the paper about who lives in the houses was right. I know for a fact. I'm an elderly person. I do not live in the houses, but I know exactly what is going on.

A good masked bandit

It was so good to see the picture of the little masked suspect peaking out of the sewer in the Sunday, June 22 paper. Sure beat seeing all those people in the orange suits we've been seeing on the front page.