Missouri’s voucher program has a records problem

By Jason Hancock | Editor-in-Chief

Good morning, and welcome to The Weekender.

For years, the argument over MOScholars has mostly followed familiar lines: school choice, public money, private education, accountability and whether Missouri's voucher program is serving the students lawmakers said it was designed to help.

This week pushed a different question to the front: Can the state office running the program keep up with what lawmakers have built?

Annelise Hanshaw reported last week that the Missouri State Treasurer's Office accidentally posted student data tied to the first three years of MOScholars on its website for nearly a year, even as the office maintained that the same kind of information was not public under Missouri's open records law.

he records — names, parent email addresses, scholarship amounts, schools — were removed after The Independent notified the office. The treasurer's position now is that what was exposed amounts to directory information not generally considered harmful to disclose. That is a different position than the one the office has taken with lawmakers who requested the same data and were told it couldn't be released.

That contradiction is now the center of the story.

MOScholars is no longer a small tax-credit experiment. Lawmakers last year put $50 million in general revenue behind it, allowing it to triple in size. State Treasurer Vivek Malek has asked for four additional full-time employees to administer the program. This summer, the office is expected to expand its reporting to include student achievement and parent satisfaction data required under state law — a task that, a state audit noted last year, the office had not been adequately staffed or structured to perform.

The questions are piling up faster than the answers.

By Wednesday, the matter had moved from a website to the Senate floor, where Minority Leader Doug Beck pressed an amendment to the treasurer’s office budget that would have withheld salaries from state officials who receive MOScholars benefits without disclosing them on financial disclosure forms. The amendment failed.

Beck has spent months trying to learn whether current or former members of the General Assembly are among the program's beneficiaries. He still doesn't know.

This is unfolding as Missouri’s broader education budget is under strain, with lottery and casino revenues falling short and Senate budget writers looking to money once set aside for Capitol renovations to help cover public school funding. In that environment, every education dollar invites scrutiny.

The MOScholars fight has always been ideological. Now it includes a more basic question: If Missouri is going to expand a private school voucher program with public money, can the state also prove it has the machinery to run it?

Now on to this week’s top stories.

by Annelise Hanshaw

Records tied to the state’s private school voucher program were removed after The Independent’s inquiry, adding new scrutiny to how the treasurer’s office is managing a rapidly expanding program.

by Rudi Keller

Missouri’s school-funding math is getting tighter, with lottery and casino revenues falling short and Senate budget writers looking to a Capitol renovation fund to help cover the gap.

by Rudi Keller

Gov. Mike Kehoe’s top tax priority is headed to voters, setting up a campaign over whether Missouri should trade income taxes for a broader sales tax.

by Steph Quinn

A bipartisan proposal combining automatic expungement with changes to Missouri’s death penalty law has advanced farther than past efforts, but Senate leadership remains a major obstacle.

by Annelise Hanshaw

House Republicans approved restrictions on restrooms, changing areas and dorms in state-funded spaces, while opponents warned the bill’s language could carry consequences beyond its stated purpose.

by Anna Spoerre

Missouri’s only Title X grantee says Hawley’s accusations misrepresent its work, as renewed federal scrutiny threatens a network serving thousands of low-income and uninsured patients.

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