A Brilliant One-Voter Business-District Election; Bypassing Legislative Gatekeepers on Gun Control

Here’s some of what we’ve been reading today …

COLUMBIA, Missouri: The representatives of this college town’s Business Loop 70 Community Improvement District thought they had it all worked out. The district was drawn to include no residents so that the absentee property owners would become by default the district’s only voters. Except that University of Missouri student Jen Henderson, 23, lives in a guest house in the district and she registered to vote in February. That means the absentee property owners don’t get to vote. It also means Henderson would be the only person to cast a ballot in an election scheduled for this month that includes a half-cent sales tax increase that the district reps were banking on to pay off debt that threatens to ruin the Business Loop organization. As The Columbia Daily Tribune reports, the organization’s executive director, Carrie Gartner, approached Henderson and asked her to “unregister” to vote. Nah, I don’t think so, said Henderson. Instead, she researched the district, the Business Loop organization and the proposed tax increase and thought she smelled a rat. “[Gartner] tried to get me to unregister, and that’s pretty manipulative. The district plan and the district border is manipulative, too,” she told the paper. She says Gartner is being paid too much and that the tax will mostly affect poor people.

Gartner isn’t optimistic about her organization’s options. She said it has to convince the city to call off the election and succumb to the ravages of debt or go on with the election and hope Henderson votes in favor of the tax. [The Columbia Tribune]

PORTLAND, Maine: Residents Judi and Wayne Richardson submitted paperwork Monday for a ballot initiative proposing that anyone who purchases firearms at gun shows or from private sellers in the state undergo a background check, reports The Portland Press Herald. The Richardsons are taking their proposal directly to the people because they know it would be crushed by the powerful gun lobby at the capitol, like so many similar gun-control proposals have been crushed there before. The initiative is backed by national group Moms Demand Action. The group will have to collect more than 61,000 valid signatures to land a spot on the state’s presidential-election-year ballot.

Meantime, at the other end of the continent: Three national gun rights groups and two local gun dealers on Monday leaned on pro-gun state statutes in an attempt to overturn a $25 local tax on gun purchases passed recently by the Seattle City Council, according to The Seattle Post-Intelligencer. “Using an analogy to the civil rights movement, Alan Gottlieb, founder of the Second Amendment Foundation, argued: ‘We’re battling what amounts to a poll tax.’”

Also related: The Christian Science Monitor reports on a petition launched online this week by the family of Charlie Vacca, the Arizona gun-range instructor killed last year by a 9-year-old New Jersey girl in pink shorts who lost control of an Uzi automatic rifle.

At a time when gun-control laws of any kind are virtually impossible to get through Congress, the petition hints at a more nuanced picture of what America’s gun owners want. Though the National Rifle Association (NRA) has had remarkable success in opposing all forms of gun control, polls suggest that a majority of gun owners are open to a variety of gun laws.

Twenty-seven states have some form of age restrictions for gun use, reports the Monitor. Louisiana and Arizona lawmakers recently tried and failed to pass age-limit bills for automatic weapons use. [The Portland Press Herald, Seattle Post-Intelligencer, Christian Science Monitor]

BALTIMORE, Maryland: Lead poisoned and now preyed upon in Charm City, poor residents are being swindled into giving away settlement payments for pennies on the dollar. The Sun reports on the con beginning with Rose, whose family settled a lead-paint lawsuit against a slumlord in 2007 that guaranteed her monthly payments of nearly $1,000 for the next 35 years. But a fancy-talking man came to the door this spring, took her out to dinner at Longhorn Steakhouse,] and had her sign a contract.

Rose, who can scarcely read or write, calls herself a "lead kid." Her childhood home, where lead paint chips blanketed her bedsheets like snowflakes, "affected me really bad," she says. "In everything I do."

A company called Access Funding took $338,000 from Rose and paid her less than $63,000. [The Sun]

CHICAGO, Illinois: If, as Route Fifty Editor-at-Large Timothy Clark reported yesterday, New England states are moving to counter growing heroin abuse by embracing treatment programs, Illinois is moving in the other direction. As The Chicago Tribune reports, Republican Gov. Bruce Rauner amended a bill to eliminate Medicaid funding for medication and therapy programs to treat addiction. Rauner “applauded the bill’s multifaceted approach to combating this epidemic in Illinois" but he also thought the “very costly mandate" the bill imposed was too high. Rep. Lou Lang, a Skokie Democrat, said the governor is “looking at one side of the ledger,” as the Tribune put it, “failing to take into account savings the state would reap from provisions that would divert addicts from hospitals and the criminal justice system.” Illinois saw 633 residents die from overdoses last year. [The Chicago Tribune]

HONOLULU, Hawaii: Rains tied to Tropical Storm Kilo poured down on the islands Monday, forcing half a million gallons of sewage to gush out of blown manhole covers on streets near a Waikiki Beach pumping station, reports SkyNews. Authorities are warning people off a four-mile stretch of prime waterfront between Kapahulu Avenue to Point Panic. They say it could be days before it’s safe again for people to enter the contaminated ocean. Former Mayor Mufi Hanneman, now an executive at a tourism association, is doing state-brand damage control. He advises fast action and distraction. “Yes, we're known for our sun sand sea and surf, but we have other attractions people can go to while they have to stay out of the water,” he told Hawaii News Now. “There's Pearl Harbor, Arizona Memorial, Punchbowl.”  [SkyNews, Hawaii News Now]

(Photo by KOMUnews / Flickr.com)