November 2012 Ballot Issues


Issue	Official Ballot Description	Links
Constitutional Amendment 3 Non-partisan judges	Shall the Missouri Constitution be amended to change the current nonpartisan selection of supreme court and court of appeals judges to a process that gives the governor increased authority to: appoint a majority of the commission that selects these court nominees; and appoint all lawyers to the commission by removing the requirement that the governor's appointees be nonlawyers? There are no estimated costs or savings expected if this proposal is approved by voters.

Proposition A: St. Louis Police Local Control	Shall Missouri law be amended to: allow any city not within a county (the City of St. Louis) the option of transferring certain obligations and control of the citys police force from the board of police commissioners currently appointed by the governor to the city and establishing a municipal police force; establish certain procedures and requirements for governing such a municipal police force including residency, rank, salary, benefits, insurance, and pension; and prohibit retaliation against any employee of such municipal police force who reports conduct believed to be illegal to a superior, government agency, or the press? State governmental entities estimated savings will eventually be up to $500,000 annually. Local governmental entities estimated annual potential savings of $3.5 million; however, consolidation decisions with an unknown outcome may result in the savings being more or less than estimated.

Proposition B: Cigarette Tax Increase	Shall Missouri law be amended to: create the Health and Education Trust Fund with proceeds of a tax of $0.0365 per cigarette and 25% of the manufacturer's invoice price for roll-your-own tobacco and 15% for other tobacco products; use Fund proceeds to reduce and prevent tobacco use and for elementary, secondary, college, and university public school funding; and increase the amount that certain tobacco product manufacturers must maintain in their escrow accounts, to pay judgments or settlements, before any funds in escrow can be refunded to the tobacco product manufacturer and create bonding requirements for these manufacturers? Estimated additional revenue to state government is $283 million to $423 million annually with limited estimated implementation costs or savings. The revenue will fund only programs and services allowed by the proposal. The fiscal impact to local governmental entities is unknown. Escrow fund changes may result in an unknown increase in future state revenue.

Proposition E: Health Insurance Exchanges	Shall Missouri Law be amended to prohibit the Governor or any state agency, from establishing or operating state-based health insurance exchanges unless authorized by a vote of the people or by the legislature? No direct costs or savings for state and local governmental entities are expected from this proposal. Indirect costs or savings related to enforcement actions, missed federal funding, avoided implementation costs, and other issues are unknown.

Note:	The full text version uses different text-format settings to indicate what language gets retained, added or deleted in existing law or the Constitution. Retained: Existing language that would be retained is shown in normal font. Added: Language that is underlined and/or in bold face is new language to be added to the statutes or constitution. Deleted: Language that is in brackets (between [ and ]) is existing language that would be deleted.
Note:	The Missouri Senate encodes its official government documents into a PDF format that does not have built-in support for display by standard browsers. As a result, Adobe's proprietary PDF reader must be loaded for display. This usually leads to a substantial delay in loading the document and can frustrate your ability to cut/paste/print selected portions of a document. It is a real pain. Unfortunately, however, MDN has no control over this unnecessary annoyance.

Note:

The full text version uses different text-format settings to indicate what language gets retained, added or deleted in existing law or the Constitution.

Retained: Existing language that would be retained is shown in normal font.

Added: Language that is underlined and/or in bold face is new language to be added to the statutes or constitution.

Deleted: Language that is in brackets (between [ and ]) is existing language that would be deleted.

Note:

The Missouri Senate encodes its official government documents into a PDF format that does not have built-in support for display by standard browsers. As a result, Adobe's proprietary PDF reader must be loaded for display. This usually leads to a substantial delay in loading the document and can frustrate your ability to cut/paste/print selected portions of a document. It is a real pain. Unfortunately, however, MDN has no control over this unnecessary annoyance.