SOAR Talks Medicaid Expansion’s Impact on Education Budgets

Education funding was the primary topic at hand when SOAR met on October 15 in the Annex of the Star Theatre in Willow Springs. Missouri voters passed Amendment 2, frequently called Medicaid Expansion, in the August primary election. As an amendment to the Missouri Constitution, the legislature must fund the program from a finite budget, explained Rep. David Evans (R-154) to the assembled educators and community leaders. 

 

As a member of the Missouri House of Representatives’ budget committee, Evans explained that spending on social services and education make up roughly 80% of the state’s budget. Everything else funded by Missouri comes out of the remaining 20%. Cuts to programs in the 20% bracket will not be as significant or deep as the cuts to the education budget can be, he explained. The money for Medicaid expansion, a sum legislators can only guess at right now, will have to come from somewhere within the existing budget. Evans reported that legislators will begin looking at solutions in the session that will start after the general election in November. 

 

School districts in Missouri have already felt a pinch when legislators had to reduce the state’s budget by hundreds of millions of dollars in response to the revenue shortfalls from COVID-19’s impact on the economy. Jason Dial, superintendent of the Ava school district, asked Evans if there is any talk around Jefferson City of the release of the Governor’s withholds on the state’s education budget, implemented in July. Evans could not give an answer at that time, but asked for Dial’s information to follow up. 

 

Tim Lewis was present as well, representing Show-Me Power, the umbrella provider of electricity for Howell-Oregon, and many other regional co-ops. He gave a short presentation on the hurdles to providing rural broadband internet access. The hurdles are largely in the form of dollars and cents. 

 

The cost of running broadband wire to every single home in a co-op is prohibitively high. Many transformers in use by electricity companies are decades old and still in operation, but the transformers that could conduct both electricity and the internet have a useful life of less than five years. Finally, there may not be an extensive interest in access to high-speed internet, Lewis reported. 

 

According to surveys performed by several electric co-ops, customers interested in high-speed internet do not appear to be interested in paying the fair market value for the service, or an installation fee. Lewis suggested interested customers contact their co-ops to express both interest in high-speed rural internet and the willingness to pay for it. 

 

The next SOAR meeting will take place on November 12 at 12:00 p.m.