Jason Hancock
Editor, The Missouri IndependentJason Hancock has been writing about Missouri since 2011, most recently as lead political reporter for The Kansas City Star. He has spent nearly two decades covering politics and policy for news organizations across the Midwest, and has a track record of exposing government wrongdoing and holding elected officials accountable.
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Dean Plocher, the top lawmaker in the Missouri House, filed false expense reports numerous times since 2018 and began paying back the money he received last week.
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Plocher's bid for the seat of Missouri Lieutenant Governor comes as he faces accusations of “unlawful” conduct over his unsuccessful push to hire a private company to manage constituent information for the House.
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The attorney general’s office says it has five staffers working on the Sunshine Law backlog and a policy of not charging fees for processing requests. But the first come, first serve strategy has meant hundreds of requests wait in limbo for months — even years.
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Missouri House Speaker Dean Plocher denies accusations uncovered in public records that he threatened staff when pressing for the legislature to award a lucrative contract to a private company.
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The 5th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals concluded a lower court’s wide-ranging order barring the federal government from communicating with social media companies was “vague and broader than necessary.”
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The litigation asks a Cole County judge to reject the proposed constitutional amendments or rewrite the summary and fiscal note.
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The lawsuit from Republican lawmakers uses an argument from Missouri Attorney General Andrew Bailey that legalizing abortion will cost the state billions of dollars. State Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick concluded that reasoning has no merit, and the state supreme court rejected Bailey's attempt to interfere with the cost estimate.
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The unanimous verdict was scathing in its assessment of Attorney General Andrew Bailey, who refused to sign off on the work of Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick. The court concluded that nothing in state law “gives the attorney general authority to question the auditor’s assessment of the fiscal impact of a proposed petition.”
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State Rep. Crystal Quade is the first major Democratic candidate to enter the field to replace Gov. Mike Parson next year. In an video announcing her campaign, she discussed being raised by a single mom and relying on food stamps before touting her record in the legislature.
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A Cole County judge in November concluded Josh Hawley’s staff illegally refused to turn over public records out of concern it could have hurt his 2018 Senate campaign