Politics
Missouri and Iowa foster homes struggle with space for girls
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As a child in Missouri, Anoela Martin sometimes lived in another person’s garage. At other times, home was under a bridge. Occasionally, it was in an unsafe home with a parent. She bounced back and forth between her mom’s care in Kansas City and her dad’s in St. Joseph.“My dad was a raging alcoholic at that time, and my mom was a drug addict,” she said. “We didn’t really get to eat as much as we probably should have. He wasn’t home a lot. We kind of had to take care of ourselves.”When Martin was 11, she entered Missouri’s foster care system. And at 14, she was adopted, but the relationship with her adopted mother soured.“I was becoming a rebellious teenager; I didn’t have any freedom at home; I was locked in a bedroom at night,” she said. “So I started sneaking out of the house. After the third time of sneaking out and going to school the next day and the cops showing up at school to arrest me, my adopted mom decided to place me in Missouri Girls Town.”
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioA girl draws a yin-yang symbol with chalk last April at Missouri Girls Town in Kingdom City. (Photos by Eric Lee / St. Louis Public Radio, Lead Photo Illustration by Brian Munoz / St. Louis Public Radio)
Few alternativesMissouri Girls Town is a residential home primarily for girls in the foster system with specialized needs. They may have behavioral problems stemming from PTSD or need treatment for bipolar disorder and other mental health conditions.The 23-acre property was designed to accommodate up to 50 girls but only can take 12 because of staffing and funding challenges. The Kingdom City facility – about halfway between Kansas City and St. Louis – is one of about 10 centers in Missouri that provide beds solely for girls. Martin landed there in 2011.In the Midwest, many states have space – or beds – for boys who need a spot in a foster residential home, but there are not as many beds for girls. In Missouri, Missouri Girls Town and other Qualified Residential Treatment Programs collectively have about 120 beds specifically designated for boys but only about 60 for girls.QRTPs are designed to offer a higher degree of behavioral and mental health care than other facilities. In fact, there are nearly 2,400 beds for youth in Missouri residential facilities as of early July. But, most are for youth experiencing homelessness or are at centers without accreditation or where licensing isn’t required.QRTP is a designation created by the federal 2018 Families First Prevention Services Act. It means the residence uses a trauma-informed treatment model, described by the Substance Abuse and Mental Health Administration as “a multi-pronged, multi-agency public health approach inclusive of public education and awareness, prevention and early identification, and effective trauma-specific assessment and treatment.”A QRTP facility has a round-the-clock nurse on staff, families are included in the treatment when possible, and follow-up services are provided after the child is discharged.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioA child works on a computer last April at Missouri Girls Town in Kingdom City.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioThe halls of the Missouri Girls Town school building last April in Kingdom City.
Janee Harvey, Iowa’s director of Family Wellbeing and Protection, said a growing understanding about how trauma affects behavior in girls has led to greater demand for QRTP beds for them. According to a Stanford University study, girls and boys experience PTSD differently.“It is important that people who work with traumatized youth consider the sex differences,” said Megan Klabunde, the study’s lead author and an instructor of psychiatry and behavioral sciences. “Our findings suggest it is possible that boys and girls could exhibit different trauma symptoms and that they might benefit from different approaches to treatment.”Demand at QRTPs can swell because residential programs are sometimes used as the final safety net for foster girls with critical mental health or behavioral health needs. And the centers can act as transitional spaces for girls – between juvenile detention and life outside the criminal justice system, said Deanna Barger, the Missouri Girls Town director of development. The average age of girls at that center is about 14.Occasionally, Missouri Girls Town receives a girl as an emergency placement who doesn’t really need residential care, Barger said.“And that’s not fair to the child, is it?” Barger said.If there is no space for a girl seeking a residential bed in the state or there isn’t a center that can provide the particular care that she needs, she may stay in a shelter without specialized care or be sent to an out-of-state provider that does have that service. In aggressive behavioral situations, or when the girl has committed a criminal act, she may end up in the juvenile justice system that may not have specialized care.In any situation where a girl moves around in the child welfare or juvenile justice systems, she isn’t able to build relationships and trust with caretakers. That disruption of stability can lead to increased risks of emotional and behavioral issues and poorer educational outcomes, according to the Annie E. Casey Foundation, a children’s welfare organization.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioDeanna Barger, director of development at Missouri Girls Town Foundation, last April in Kingdom City. Barger said QTRP centers can act as transitional spaces for girls between juvenile detention and life outside the criminal justice system.
Resources and realityIt’s hard to nail down the exact number of beds the Midwest needs to meet demand because the number of girls who seek space at a residential center is always in flux and each person may have a specific or complex treatment need. Some facilities have beds that aren’t gender specific but lack the specialized care that a bed designated for a girl requires.Most girls stay at Missouri Girls Town from anywhere between six months and a year, Barger said. But, in both Missouri and Iowa, stays can be as short as a few days in emergency situations.“We do not have enough female QRTP beds,” Harvey said. The state has two providers serving girls, Harvey said, one in the juvenile justice system and one in the child welfare system.“Both are struggling significantly with workforce stabilizing and implementing the appropriate treatment plans,” Harvey said. The demand for girls’ beds recently has appeared as a problem in part because there is a better recognition of the services needed for girls who have experienced trauma, often sexual trauma, according to Harvey.Martin stayed at Missouri Girls Town for two years. In addition to receiving therapeutic services, she said she had a strict routine that many teenagers in families have. She took classes, ate lunch at a cafeteria and spent recreation time outdoors. There was often a group activity in the evening. One of the most valuable classes she said she learned from was money management.“I don’t think that I would have learned everything that I learned that got me to where I am today,” she said. “The only thing I would have known is to follow the same path (as my parents), I wouldn’t have known any different.”The goal of the federal law is to focus on preventative services to keep kids out of the foster care system and with their families. The number of children entering the foster system in the U.S. declined by nearly 77,000 from fiscal 2018 to 2022, according to a report from the federal government’s Children’s Bureau.Some Midwestern states, including Iowa and Kansas, have seen a decrease in foster care numbers. Missouri’s numbers have dipped slightly, and Nebraska actually has increased its number of children in foster care.
Whatever the reason for a child entering foster care, each state’s responsible agency assesses the best course for the child. This might mean placement with relatives as a start. Other options include foster parents and then – as a last resort – a foster group residence.The FFPSA prioritized this order because outcomes improved when children maintained consistency of care in the family, according to research by the Annie E. Casey Foundation, among others.There are different types of residences, but often, the children who are placed at emergency shelters, group homes or licensed QRTPs have severe mental health and behavioral issues and trauma. The children may only number in the dozens in a state, but they need specialized care.Iowa’s Department of Health and Human Services sees the QRTPs and shelters as necessary services for children with “extraordinary needs,” according to Matt Highland, a previous HHS director of strategic operations, who said so in a May 2022 meeting of the Department of Human Services Council.And while the number of kids in these centers is trending downward and could be seen as a sign that the law is working, many Midwest centers have closed over the past few years, taking with them bed space for girls. That’s left the remaining centers struggling to meet demand.“Treatment options that are available through QRTP placement are essential,” Highland said at the 2022 meeting. “They include substance abuse treatment, psychiatric and mental health treatment, sexual abuse and perpetrator treatment. And the permanent closure (of several homes) accounted for an unexpected loss of approximately 50 QRTP beds and 25 shelter beds.”Missouri has also seen several facilities with female-specific programs close over the past few years, said Sara Smith, residential services director for the Missouri Department of Social Services.“Missouri definitely needs more girl beds available. We almost have double the amount of beds for a male than we do for a female,” Smith said. “Over the last year, we’ve had about a 450 reduction in the number (of beds overall) we have available.”
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioClinical, nursing and administrative staff gather for a meeting last April at Missouri Girls Town in Kingdom City.
Staffing woesKeeping staff on board is a challenge many health care systems – like nursing homes and assisted-living facilities – deal with, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic. Even though Iowa and Missouri have both seen increased reimbursement rates for services through their legislatures, many service providers struggle to retain staff.“Finding qualified individuals to be interested in this type of work has been difficult,” said Smith of Missouri’s Residential Services. Based on provider feedback, she said, “Often it costs more to provide these services than the rate that they are getting paid.”Nearly all service providers, state employees and child advocacy groups interviewed for this story said reimbursement rates, or what the state pays a provider for a child’s care, while improving, still need to catch up with the physical and emotional demands of the positions at the residential homes. That responsibility lands on the shoulders of state lawmakers.“Trying to be able to recruit a workforce, train a workforce, support a workforce, we’re going to have to be looking at those rates again,” said Kim Scorza, CEO of the Crittenton Center near Sioux City, Iowa.Scorza was hired as CEO in 2021 after the emergency youth homeless shelter shut down because of the COVID-19 pandemic. The shelter reopened in January 2022 with 22 beds, a trauma-informed and mental health focus, and a mission to keep employees. Today, the shelter has 27 beds for boys or girls.Scorza said it’s hard to compete with other hiring industries when residential staff are asked to take on a physically and emotionally demanding job caring for the girls.“You can come to a facility where you’re dealing with kids with pretty significant mental health issues and behavioral disorders and risk potentially getting, you know, hit by a child or yelled at by a child. I mean, that takes a toll,” she said.
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St. Louis Public RadioMindy Detienne, 53, prepares breakfast for the Missouri Girls Town residents in Kingdom City. She has worked almost 10 years at the center.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioThe cafeteria at Missouri Girls Town in Kingdom City
Scorza said the Crittenton Center has been fairly successful at retaining employees by recognizing that staff come in with their own lives, grief and traumas, and supporting them.“That’s not a game-changer, right? I may not be able to give you $100,000 a year, but what I can give you is support, training, flexibility. I can give you a lot of these things and truly be there for you,” she said.The organization YSS in Iowa provides statewide services in child welfare, mental health and substance use disorder treatment. It runs an emergency youth shelter in Mason City and another in Ames. Each has 10 beds for boys or girls. YSS also operates two residential substance use disorder addiction treatment programs for adolescents – one for boys and one for girls.“I think we have a small waiting list right now,” President and CEO Andrew Allen said of the adolescent program. “That really fluctuates.”The workforce is also one of the biggest challenges for YSS. Allen said a few years ago staff made $11.25 an hour. Now it’s $17 as reimbursement rates have improved.“But the increase in our costs has not necessarily kept up with the reimbursement rates across the state and our different contracts,” he said. “The youth that we are seeing, the acuity has increased, which makes them just that much more difficult to manage from a behavior standpoint. It’s that much more work for staff, who are dedicated, who are passionate.”“So the more passionate people that we have that want to make $17 an hour, four and a half weeks of vacation, and work for an organization that has the goal to create hope and opportunity, purpose-driven work, we need people in this field to do this important work.”Allen said YSS is expanding this fall by opening the Ember Recovery Campus, a 70-bed center that will focus mostly on addiction treatment for adolescents and young adults from age 12 to 24. At least 24 beds will be for girls: 12 for adolescents and 12 for young adults.“We see a balance of boys and girls that need access to shelter service,” Allen said. “And while addiction has similar prevalence for both males and females, boys and girls, in Iowa, we see fewer girls pursuing substance use disorder treatment than we do boys. And it’s a concern.”Missouri Girls Town has frozen its admissions for the summer in order to train new hires so the home can take more girls in the fall. The organization relies on government programs for about 50% of its funding, with the rest coming from fundraising and donations, Barger said.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioPhotos of artist Tate McRae are pasted on a Missouri Girls Town dorm wall.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioA Missouri Girls Town resident counted down the days to Taylor Swift’s new album.
Specialized for girlsAt Missouri Girls Town, the girls decorate their desks and dressers with pictures of famous celebrities, like Taylor Swift, cute boys and notes from friends.In addition to the activities that Martin remembers, they have regular appointments with their caseworkers and therapists. Those who are young mothers may visit their babies. Some have physical and emotional scars.“Trauma can really manifest in psychosomatic responses. So a lot of our kids can deal with chronic pain because they are constantly in this fight or flight mode,” Barger said.The majority of the girls in residential centers have some form of PTSD, according to Barger. She said they’ve been in abusive and neglectful situations. Others have anxiety, depression and bipolar disorder. Some girls have been sexually assaulted. Others have eating disorders. Some self-harm by ingesting things or cutting themselves.“Girls are different than boys. Just how they’ve responded to trauma is different; their needs are different,” said Kristie Oliver, executive director of the Coalition for Family and Children’s Services in Iowa. “And providers will tell you that it costs more to serve girls. Currently, our system does not have a specialized rate for girls.”The limited number of staff with specialized training needed for treating girls in foster residential centers plays into the disparity between the number of beds for boys and the number for girls. And conditions found in boys have been more commonly treated.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioThe morning light reflects onto the names of donors in a reception hall.
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioChildren pose for a portrait in the halls of a Missouri Girls Town dormitory.
Scorza said that often it’s been easier for people to say “boys will be boys” when they get into trouble, and then boys sometimes get a free pass. “But when a girl does that, it’s viewed differently. And so we’ve got some girls that can really struggle and how they express that is through violence.”Historically, that meant sending girls to juvenile detention or psychiatric facilities.“Girls who end up going to group home-level of care, so QRTP, many of their behaviors require a lot more intensive staffing,” Havey said. “So while the majority of the beds are occupied by the boys, when a girl is reaching that level up placement, what the providers will say is the acuity of those girls is incredibly heightened.”Harvey also points to better recognition of the trauma that girls go through when sexually assaulted and the higher risk they face than boys.One in nine girls under age 18 experiences sexual abuse or assault, according to the Rape, Abuse and Incest National Network. The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates it’s more likely one in four girls experience sexual abuse. With that comes higher risks of drug abuse, PTSD and depression.“This is more of a contemporary understanding of how trauma affects behavior,” Harvey said. “It’s a better understanding of some of the gender-based violence and exploitation that we see present in society.”
Eric Lee
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St. Louis Public RadioChildren complete a puzzle in a classroom last April at Missouri Girls Town in Kingdom City.
What’s being done?At the end of 2022, Iowa’s Health and Human Resources Department vowed to overhaul the child welfare system in the wake of several child abuse cases. At the time, Harvey told Iowa Public Radio, “We have missed opportunities to connect families to concrete goods and economic support, or maybe community-based programs that can provide stability within their homes.”Today, Scoza, Harvey and Oliver say there is at least a relationship between the providers and the state, with many people at the table figuring out how to advocate collectively for their needs going forward.Scorza said a lot of progress has been made since 2022 and praised Director Kelly Garcia and her HHS team. “But she can only do so much, and her team can only do so much,” Scorza said. “They need the help of the governor’s office, and they need the help of the legislators to say these kids are important.”In May, Iowa Gov. Kim Reynolds signed a behavioral health bill she championed into law. It unifies mental health, substance abuse and recovery services into the Behavioral Health Services System. The law created behavioral health districts and opened up federal funding opportunities for treatment centers, like Crittenton Center or Embed Recovery Center, that want to expand their mental health care for residents.
“We want to reduce the number of pillow changes the child is having and make sure they’re in the fewest placements possible.”
Sara Smith, residential services director for the Missouri Department of Social Services
Missouri partnered with Home State Health, a subsidiary of managed health care company Centene, to launch a statewide single-managed care plan called Show Me Healthy Kids for all its foster youth in 2022. The program assigns a case manager to a child to help identify what specific services should be in place for a child leaving a group home setting and returning to a foster home.Missouri has also put together a ”multidisciplinary team” that includes representatives of the Department of Mental Health, Show Me Healthy Kids, Division of Youth Services, Children’s Division and juvenile courts. Each month, the group reviews three to five cases in which the placement of a child has been a struggle.“I think we’re on the right trajectory as a state, I mean, one thing that I’ve seen is really beneficial is that everybody’s coming to the table,” Smith said. “Because we need more services to offer these youth.”“In Missouri, we use the term ‘pillow changes.’ We want to reduce the number of pillow changes the child is having and make sure they’re in the fewest placements possible,” Smith said.For Anoela Martin, Missouri Girls Town was the right place at the right time. She’s now 28 and has two kids.“I think that girls going into their teenage years face a lot more emotional struggles, and therefore, rebellion and negative behaviors than maybe boys do from what I had seen and saw growing up,” she said. “And if there is nowhere for them to run, to learn how to be a better person, or how to grow up, you know, and put themselves in a better situation, they’re just going to continue the same family cycle. They’re not going to be as lucky as I was to be able to change my own future generations.”“For me, one open bed changed the rest of my life.”St. Louis Public Radio’s Eric Lee contributed reporting and visuals to this report.This story comes from the Midwest Newsroom, an investigative journalism collaboration that includes Iowa Public Radio, KCUR, Nebraska Public Media, St. Louis Public Radio and NPR.Do you have a tip or question for us? Email midwestnewsroom@kcur.org.
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Poll: Support for Missouri abortion rights amendment growing

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A proposed constitutional amendment legalizing abortion in Missouri received support from more than half of respondents in a new poll from St. Louis University and YouGov.That’s a boost from a poll earlier this year, which could mean what’s known as Amendment 3 is in a solid position to pass in November.SLU/YouGov’s poll of 900 likely Missouri voters from Aug. 8-16 found that 52% of respondents would vote for Amendment 3, which would place constitutional protections for abortion up to fetal viability. Thirty-four percent would vote against the measure, while 14% aren’t sure.By comparison, the SLU/YouGov poll from February found that 44% of voters would back the abortion legalization amendment.St. Louis University political science professor Steven Rogers said 32% of Republicans and 53% of independents would vote for the amendment. That’s in addition to nearly 80% of Democratic respondents who would approve the measure. In the previous poll, 24% of Republicans supported the amendment.Rogers noted that neither Amendment 3 nor a separate ballot item raising the state’s minimum wage is helping Democratic candidates. GOP contenders for U.S. Senate, governor, lieutenant governor, treasurer and secretary of state all hold comfortable leads.“We are seeing this kind of crossover voting, a little bit, where there are voters who are basically saying, ‘I am going to the polls and I’m going to support a Republican candidate, but I’m also going to go to the polls and then I’m also going to try to expand abortion access and then raise the minimum wage,’” Rogers said.Republican gubernatorial nominee Mike Kehoe has a 51%-41% lead over Democrat Crystal Quade. And U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley is leading Democrat Lucas Kunce by 53% to 42%. Some GOP candidates for attorney general, secretary of state and treasurer have even larger leads over their Democratic rivals.
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St. Louis Public RadioHundreds of demonstrators pack into a parking lot at Planned Parenthood of St. Louis and Southwest Missouri on June 24, 2022, during a demonstration following the Supreme Court’s reversal of a case that guaranteed the constitutional right to an abortion.
One of the biggest challenges for foes of Amendment 3 could be financial.Typically, Missouri ballot initiatives with well-funded and well-organized campaigns have a better chance of passing — especially if the opposition is underfunded and disorganized. Since the end of July, the campaign committee formed to pass Amendment 3 received more than $3 million in donations of $5,000 or more.That money could be used for television advertisements to improve the proposal’s standing further, Rogers said, as well as point out that Missouri’s current abortion ban doesn’t allow the procedure in the case of rape or incest.“Meanwhile, the anti side won’t have those resources to kind of try to make that counter argument as strongly, and they don’t have public opinion as strongly on their side,” Rogers said.There is precedent of a well-funded initiative almost failing due to opposition from socially conservative voters.In 2006, a measure providing constitutional protections for embryonic stem cell research nearly failed — even though a campaign committee aimed at passing it had a commanding financial advantage.Former state Sen. Bob Onder was part of the opposition campaign to that measure. He said earlier this month it is possible to create a similar dynamic in 2024 against Amendment 3, if social conservatives who oppose abortion rights can band together.“This is not about reproductive rights or care for miscarriages or IVF or anything else,” said Onder, the GOP nominee for Missouri’s 3rd Congressional District seat. “Missourians will learn that out-of-state special interests and dark money from out of state is lying to them and they will reject this amendment.”Quade said earlier this month that Missourians of all political ideologies are ready to roll back the state’s abortion ban.“Regardless of political party, we hear from folks who are tired of politicians being in their doctor’s offices,” Quade said. “They want politicians to mind their own business. So this is going to excite folks all across the political spectrum.”
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Democrat Mark Osmack makes his case for Missouri treasurer

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Mark Osmack has been out of the electoral fray for awhile, but he never completely abandoned his passion for Missouri politics.Osmack, a Valley Park native and U.S. Army veteran, previously ran for Missouri’s 2nd Congressional District seat and for state Senate. Now he’s the Democratic nominee for state treasurer after receiving a phone call from Missouri Democratic Party Chairman Russ Carnahan asking him to run.“There’s a lot of decision making and processing and evaluation that goes into it, which is something I am very passionate and interested in,” Osmack said this week on an episode of Politically Speaking.Osmack is squaring off against state Treasurer Vivek Malek, who was able to easily win a crowded GOP primary against several veteran lawmakers including House Budget Chairman Cody Smith and state Sen. Andrew Koenig.While Malek was able to attract big donations to his political action committee and pour his own money into the campaign, Osmack isn’t worried that he won’t be able to compete in November. Since Malek was appointed to his post, Osmack contends he hasn’t proven that he’s a formidable opponent in a general election.“His actions and his decision making so far in his roughly two year tenure in that office have been questionable,” Osmack said.Among other things, Osmack was critical of Malek for placing unclaimed property notices on video gaming machines which are usually found in gas stations or convenience stores. The legality of the machines has been questioned for some time.As Malek explained on his own episode of Politically Speaking, he wanted to make sure the unclaimed property program was as widely advertised as possible. But he acknowledged it was a mistake to put the decals close to the machines and ultimately decided to remove them.Osmack said: “This doesn’t even pass the common sense sniff test of, ‘Hey, should I put state stickers claiming you might have a billion dollars on a gambling machine that is not registered with the state of Missouri?’ If we’re gonna give kudos for him acknowledging the wrong thing, it never should have been done in the first place.”Osmack’s platform includes supporting programs providing school meals using Missouri agriculture products and making child care more accessible for the working class.He said the fact that Missouri has such a large surplus shows that it’s possible to create programs to make child care within reach for parents.“It is quite audacious for [Republicans] to brag about $8 billion, with a B, dollars in state surplus, while we offer next to no social services to include pre-K, daycare, or child care,” Osmack said.Here’s are some other topics Osmack discussed on the show:How he would handle managing the state’s pension systems and approving low-income housing tax credits. The state treasurer’s office is on boards overseeing both of those programs.Malek’s decision to cut off investments from Chinese companies. Osmack said that Missouri needs to be cautious about abandoning China as a business partner, especially since they’re a major consumer of the state’s agriculture products. “There’s a way to make this work where we are not supporting communist nations to the detriment of the United States or our allies, while also maintaining strong economic ties that benefit Missouri farmers,” he said.What it was like to witness the skirmish at the Missouri State Fair between U.S. Sen. Josh Hawley and Democratic challenger Lucas Kunce.Whether Kunce can get the support of influential groups like the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee, which often channels money and staff to states with competitive Senate elections.
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As Illinois receives praise for its cannabis equity efforts, stakeholders work on system’s flaws

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Medical marijuana patients can now purchase cannabis grown by small businesses as part of their allotment, Illinois’ top cannabis regulator said, but smaller, newly licensed cannabis growers are still seeking greater access to the state’s medical marijuana customers.Illinois legalized medicinal marijuana beginning in 2014, then legalized it for recreational use in 2020. While the 2020 law legalized cannabis use for any adult age 21 or older, it did not expand licensing for medical dispensaries.Patients can purchase marijuana as part of the medical cannabis program at dual-purpose dispensaries, which are licensed to serve both medical and recreational customers. But dual-purpose dispensaries are greatly outnumbered by dispensaries only licensed to sell recreationally, and there are no medical-only dispensaries in the state.As another part of the adult-use legalization law, lawmakers created a “craft grow” license category that was designed to give more opportunities to Illinoisans hoping to legally grow and sell marijuana. The smaller-scale grow operations were part of the 2020 law’s efforts to diversify the cannabis industry in Illinois.Prior to that, all cultivation centers in Illinois were large-scale operations dominated by large multi-state operators. The existing cultivators, mostly in operation since 2014, were allowed to grow recreational cannabis beginning in 2019.Until recently, dual-purpose dispensaries have been unsure as to whether craft-grown products, made by social equity licensees — those who have lived in a disproportionately impacted area or have been historically impacted by the war on drugs — can be sold medicinally as part of a patient’s medical allotment.Erin Johnson, the state’s cannabis regulation oversight officer, told Capitol News Illinois last month that her office has “been telling dispensaries, as they have been asking us” they can now sell craft-grown products to medical patients.“There was just a track and trace issue on our end, but never anything statutorily,” she said.
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Capitol News IllinoisThe graphic shows how cannabis grown in Illinois gets from cultivation centers to customers.
No notice has been posted, but Johnson’s verbal guidance comes almost two years after the first craft grow business went online in Illinois.It allows roughly 150,000 medical patients, who dispensary owners say are the most consistent purchasers of marijuana, to buy products made by social equity businesses without paying recreational taxes. However — even as more dispensaries open — the number available to medical patients has not increased since 2018, something the Cannabis Regulation Oversight Office “desperately” wants to see changed. Johnson said Illinois is a limited license state, meaning “there are caps on everything” to help control the relatively new market.Berwyn Thompkins, who operates two cannabis businesses, said the rules limited options for patients and small businesses.“It’s about access,” Thompkins said. “Why wouldn’t we want all the patients — which the (adult-use) program was initially built around — why wouldn’t we want them to have access? They should have access to any dispensary.”Customers with a medical marijuana card pay a 1% tax on all marijuana products, whereas recreational customers pay retail taxes between roughly 20 and 40% on a given cannabis product, when accounting for local taxes.While Illinois has received praise for its equity-focused cannabis law, including through an independent study that showed more people of color own cannabis licenses than in any other state, some industry operators say they’ve experienced many unnecessary hurdles getting their businesses up and running.The state, in fact, announced last month that it had opened its 100th social equity dispensary.But Steve Olson, purchasing manager at a pair of dispensaries (including one dual-purpose dispensary) near Rockford, said small specialty license holders have been left in the lurch since the first craft grower opened in October 2022.“You would think that this would be something they’re (the government) trying to help out these social equity companies with, but they’re putting handcuffs on them in so many different spots,” he said. “One of them being this medical thing.”Olson said he contacted state agencies, including the Department of Financial and Professional Regulation, months ago about whether craft products can be sold to medical patients at their retail tax rate, but only heard one response: “They all say it was an oversight.”This potentially hurt social equity companies because they sell wholesale to dispensaries and may have been missing out on a consistent customer base through those medical dispensaries.Olson said the state’s attempts to provide licensees with a path to a successful business over the years, such as with corrective lotteries that granted more social equity licenses, have come up short.“It’s like they almost set up the social equity thing to fail so the big guys could come in and swoop up all these licenses,” Olson said. “I hate to feel like that but, if you look at it, it’s pretty black and white.”Olson said craft companies benefit from any type of retail sale.“If we sell it to medical patients or not, it’s a matter of, ‘Are we collecting the proper taxes?’ That’s all it is,” he said.State revenue from cannabis taxes, licensing costs and other fees goes into the Cannabis Regulation Fund, which is used to fund a host of programs, including cannabis offense expungement, the general revenue fund, and the R3 campaign aiming to uplift disinvested communities.For fiscal year 2024, nearly $256 million was paid out from Cannabis Regulation Fund for related initiatives, which includes almost $89 million transferred to the state’s general revenue fund and more than $20 million distributed to local governments, according to the Illinois Department of Revenue.Medical access still limitedThe state’s 55 medical dispensaries that predate the 2020 legalization law, mostly owned by publicly traded multistate operators that had been operating in Illinois since 2014 under the state’s medical marijuana program, were automatically granted a right to licenses to sell recreationally in January 2020. That gave them a dual-purpose license that no new entrants into the market can receive under current law.Since expanding their clientele in 2020, Illinois dispensaries have sold more than $6 billion worth of cannabis products through recreational transactions alone.Nearly two-thirds of dispensaries licensed to sell to medical patients are in the northeast counties of Cook, DuPage, Kane, Lake and Will. Dual-purpose dispensaries only represent about 20 percent of the state’s dispensaries.While the state began offering recreational dispensary licenses since the adult-use legalization law passed, it has not granted a new medical dispensary license since 2018. That has allowed the established players to continue to corner the market on the state’s nearly 150,000 medical marijuana patients.But social equity licensees and advocates say there are more ways to level the playing field, including expanding access to medical sales.Johnson, who became the state’s top cannabis regulator in late 2022, expressed hope for movement during the fall veto session on House Bill 2911, which would expand medical access to all Illinois dispensaries.“We would like every single dispensary in Illinois to be able to serve medical patients,” Johnson said. “It’s something that medical patients have been asking for, for years.”Johnson said the bill would benefit patients and small businesses.“It’s something we desperately want to happen as a state system, because we want to make sure that medical patients are able to easily access what they need,” she said. “We also think it’s good for our social equity dispensaries, as they’re opening, to be able to serve medical patients.”Rep. Bob Morgan, D-Deerfield, who was the first statewide project coordinator for Illinois’ medical cannabis program prior to joining the legislature, wrote in an email to Capitol News Illinois that the state needs to be doing more for its patients.“Illinois is failing the state’s 150,000 medical cannabis patients with debilitating conditions. Too many are still denied the patient protections they deserve, including access to their medicine,” Morgan wrote, adding he would continue to work with stakeholders on further legislation.Capitol News Illinois is a nonprofit, nonpartisan news service covering state government. It is distributed to hundreds of newspapers, radio and TV stations statewide. It is funded primarily by the Illinois Press Foundation and the Robert R. McCormick Foundation, along with major contributions from the Illinois Broadcasters Foundation and Southern Illinois Editorial Association.
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Board Bills2 years ago
2022-2023 Board Bill 189 — Public Works and Improvement Program at the Airport
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Local News2 years ago
VIDEO: St. Louis Visitor Has Meltdown on TikTok Over Gunshots