06.01.26
Kansas City Star

I am proud to call Blue Springs — and the entire Kansas City area — my home. It’s where I grew up and where my children are growing up, learning to ride bikes, making friends and attending school. It’s where my family is investing our time, energy and future. I love this community and I love this state, but I fear the direction our government is heading is drifting further and further away from the needs of working people.

Families across our community are already paying more for groceries, utilities, housing, health care, child care and just about everything else imaginable. Yet the priorities coming out of Jefferson City are more focused on pushing a national political agenda — one that is dictated by billionaires, corporate lobbyists and out-of-state political interests — than helping everyday Missourians.

That’s why I believe it’s important to take an honest look at the record Missouri House Speaker Jon Patterson leaves behind as he seeks higher office in the state Senate this fall.

Under Patterson’s leadership, Missouri Republicans advanced one of the most extreme tax proposals in our state’s modern history, a plan that would force working families to pay an extra $500 or more every year on everyday on essentials such groceries, gas, medicine, diapers, school supplies and other basic necessities — all to bankroll massive tax breaks for Missouri’s eight billionaires and wealthiest households.

Families like mine are already stretched thin. Every extra dollar matters. This tax increase is not pocket change — it’s a few months of utility bills, groceries for the dinner table, school clothes for our kids or money set aside for emergencies. For many families, it’s the difference between getting ahead and falling behind.

I’ve watched as my daughters’ public school struggles to keep pace with inflation, staffing shortages, and rising operational costs. For the Blue Springs R-VII district alone, Patterson’s tax plan would mean losing more than $21 million a year — a 6% cut that translates to roughly $1,300 less per student. Statewide, that’s an average hit of more than $1,800 per kid. We’re talking about hundreds of teachers and support staff. These aren’t abstractions. These are the people who notice when your child is struggling, who run the after-school programs, who keep the lights on.

As a parent and taxpayer, I cannot understand why our leaders would choose to undermine classrooms while claiming to support families and children.

Patterson also didn’t seem to trust us very much as voters. When nearly 60% of Missourians approved paid sick leave in 2024, he led the effort to overturn it — invoking his medical background to argue, remarkably, that sick nurses should keep begging employers for time off rather than use the leave they’d just earned by law. When voters overturned Missouri’s abortion ban, he said lawmakers must respect the people’s decision — then turned around and used his speakership to push a new ban through the House anyway. When the largest rally in Missouri Capitol history showed up to oppose gerrymandering, he ignored them and rewired the congressional map for Washington politicians instead.

This is a pattern, not a series of isolated votes. Patterson’s tenure has been defined by a willingness to override voters when they get in the way of the agenda, cut services families depend on, and hand the bill to working people while protecting those at the top.

And yes — the Chiefs are leaving. Patterson himself admitted that state leaders failed to build the coalition needed to keep them here. For the stadium workers, the game-day staff, the people who park cars and pour drinks and make the experience possible, that failure has real consequences. It’s one more symbol of leadership that talked about Kansas City but didn’t fight for it when it counted. I’m still proud to be from this city.

I’m still proud to be raising my kids in this community. But we deserve leaders focused on lowering costs, strengthening public schools, protecting health care access and standing up for working families — not politicians more interested in carrying out a national political agenda that leaves everyday people paying the price.

Read more at: https://www.kansascity.com/opinion/readers-opinion/guest-commentary/article315912967.html#storylink=cpy