Archbishop’s call helps sink oversight changes to Missouri private school voucher program
Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski of the Archdiocese of St. Louis called House Fiscal Review chairman Jim Murphy, a Republican from St. Louis County, Friday morning in a request to kill an education bill that would change oversight of MOScholars. In March, Rozanski spoke in a press conference in favor of Murphy’s legislation seeking to end the death penalty (Steph Quinn/Missouri Independent).
A plan to move oversight of Missouri’s private school voucher program out of the State Treasurer’s Office fizzled on the last day of legislative session Friday after the chairman of the House Fiscal Review Committee refused to bring it up for a vote following a call from St. Louis Archbishop Mitchell Rozanski.
The proposal to switch control of MOScholars to the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, included in a wide-ranging education bill, cleared the Missouri Senate Thursday. It needed to pass fiscal review for the House to take it up and send it to the governor before the legislature adjourned for the year.
But state Rep. Jim Murphy, a Republican from St. Louis County, refused to bring up the legislation in Friday’s fiscal review hearing after speaking to Rozanski Friday morning.
In March, Rozanski traveled to the State Capitol to back Murphy’s bill that sought to end the death penalty.
Murphy told The Independent that the archbishop’s call only solidified his view of the legislation, which he labeled “not fiscally sound in any way.”
The Archdiocese of St. Louis did not return a request for comment. The archdiocese runs one of seven organizations that accept donations and administer scholarships as part of the MOScholars program.
Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, a Democrat from Affton, said the archbishop’s interference and the lobbying surrounding the program “makes my stomach turn.”
“I’m not sure why the archbishop is calling education policy for the state of Missouri,” he told The Independent.
The legislation was the result of talks with lawmakers from both sides of the aisle who shared concerns about how the treasurer’s office was handling the MOScholars program, Beck said. Among those in support of stripping oversight of the program from State Treasurer Vivek Malek was Senate Appropriations Chairman Rusty Black, a Chillicothe Republican.
Ire at how the treasurer has run the program has percolated for years.
Last month, The Independent reported that the treasurer’s office inadvertently leaked the names, parent email addresses, scholarship amounts and schools of MOScholars participants. And last summer, a report from the State Auditor’s Office revealed that the treasurer had neglected the requirement to conduct annual audits of the program and lacked procedures to “adequately review or monitor annual reports” from the organizations that administer the scholarships.
Negotiations to give the program better oversight had gone on “for a while,” Beck said, adding that “these things don’t happen overnight.”
Though it may have taken time to develop the legislation, its undoing came in a matter of hours.
When the House Fiscal Review Committee met Friday morning, many anticipated that it would take up the MOScholars legislation, including Malek, who attended the hearing with two staffers. But the bill wasn’t quite ready for the committee because the fiscal note had an error. A House staff member told Malek that the legislation would be discussed when the committee reconvened during the House’s next recess.
But when the opportunity came later in the afternoon, Murphy refused to call it up for a vote on two bills, including the education legislation. When state Rep. Betsy Fogle, a Springfield Democrat on the committee, asked him about the omission, he told her: “Those two are not moving.”
With a 6 p.m. deadline Friday for all legislation to pass, Murphy’s refusal would leave no path forward for the legislation.
Murphy told The Independent that the archbishop’s call was one of 13 he fielded about the education bill prior to Friday morning’s hearing.
“I asked for a special dispensation from the archbishop if I kill the bill,” he said with a laugh and a sign of the cross. In Catholic tradition, a dispensation is a special permission from the church to break a rule or tradition.
The 90-page bill included other education proposals, like a provision requiring schools to screen students for gifted education and legislation creating an optional agriculture education program.
Malek declined The Independent’s request for comment immediately prior to Friday morning’s hearing, saying he wasn’t going to answer questions.
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