Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe is pushing for a state board to oversee the St. Louis police department because he says it will make the city safer in the long run.
The GOP chief executive brushed aside criticism that the idea is another example of Republican-controlled state government micromanaging the heavily Democratic St. Louis region.
“I believe we need somebody who's more sensitive to what the men and ladies in blue need in the St. Louis region,” Kehoe said. “And I think a state control board can provide that.”
In a wide-ranging interview with St. Louis Public Radio the day after delivering his first State of the State address, Kehoe touched on a number of aspects of the speech — including his support for ending city control of the St. Louis police department.
Statewide voters put control of the department in the mayor’s office in 2012.
St. Louis officials, including Mayor Tishaura Jones and Police Chief Robert Tracy, say the latest proposal is unnecessary since the city is seeing progress in reducing crime. Overall crime is down 15% in the city from 2023 to 2024, with homicides at their lowest level since 2013, according to the latest city numbers. Other offenses, however, like shootings, are up.
Jones has also said crime is up in Kansas City, where the police department is under state control.
But Kehoe said, “The data that I'm watching is will businesses feel safe enough for their employees and their customers to invest in St Louis?”
“Until the business community says, ‘This area is safe and I'm going to invest capital in it, I'm going to build my business there,’ that's the piece of information we need to be following,” Kehoe said.
All of the sponsors of the gubernatorial board plan — Rep. Brad Christ, R-St. Louis County; Sen. Travis Fitzwater, R-Holts Summit, and Sen. Nick Schroer, R-St. Charles County — don’t live in the city, but Kehoe said that shouldn’t be a reason to not support the idea, noting he was born and raised in St. Louis before he relocated to mid-Missouri.
“I know St. Louis like the back of my hand,” Kehoe said. “And those are great representatives and senators who are willing to carry the issue that understand what the region’s issues are.”
One lingering question is how the board would be constituted. During an episode of the Politically Speaking Hour on St. Louis on the Air, Schroer suggested that the governor would have to pick nominees put forward by city police unions.
“I’m open to working with folks, as long as we get good representation for the men and ladies who walk the streets and are members of the St Louis city police department now,” Kehoe said. “And if they're good with it, I'll be good with it.”
Taxes
Another major part of Kehoe’s speech included his desire to eliminate Missouri’s income tax.
He said businesses see states with no income tax, like Texas, Florida and Tennessee, as better places to relocate.
“It's not going to happen overnight. It's going to need some time to responsibly phase it in so that we do take care of essential things in the budget,” Kehoe said. “And so there's a lot of plans moving through the legislature. A lot of people have some ideas on how to do that. We're going to pay very close attention to that and try to work towards that.”
School funding
Kehoe wants to rewrite the state's K-12 school foundation funding formula. He acknowledged that overhauling the formula will likely unleash a “hornet’s nest” of opposition, which is why he created a task force to examine possible changes.
“As I tell legislators all the time, Missourians didn't send us here to be comfortable. They have sent us here to actually work,” Kehoe said. “That formula is 20 years old, and it is not doing what it was designed to do 20 years ago. The world has changed. The way we educate children has changed.”
Some Democratic lawmakers expressed wariness about changing the formula — and also criticized Kehoe’s decision not to fully fund it in his proposed budget.
“I think it's very concerning that when that foundation formula remained flat for year after year after year, as inflation was just climbing through the roof, we didn't have a problem with the formula,” said Rep. Kathy Steinhoff, D-Columbia. “But now that the formula is starting to work and the student adequacy target is starting to increase in order to get more money into our schools, now we're looking at it because we're worried we can't afford it.”
In response to that criticism, Kehoe said he’s still proposing $200 million more to public schools compared to last year — which is a much higher increase than what’s typically provided to public schools.
Diversity programs
While it only occupied a line in his speech, Kehoe reiterated during his interview that he plans to shelve diversity, equity and inclusion programs in state government.
He said House Speaker Jon Patterson, the first Asian Missouri speaker of the House, and Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, the first female leader of the Missouri Senate, “got here working hard on their own merit.”
“And that's what I want: a level playing field for people who want to work hard, no matter what their background is, no matter what their skin color is, and no matter where they came from,” said Kehoe, who pointed out his own background as the son of a single mother living in St. Louis.
During an interview with St. Louis Public Radio earlier this year, former Department of Social Services Director Robert Knodell talked about his employees getting trained to serve minority communities throughout the state. Examples he’s provided include the Congolese community in Kirksville and Amish people, and he added that his employees can serve them better if they know more about them.
“We are one of the most diverse departments in state government, overwhelmingly,” Knodell said. “I think it's important that when people come to work here, they feel like they belong. They feel like their voice is heard and that they're included.”
Kehoe stressed that whatever action he takes won’t affect those types of efforts.
“I don't believe that this will interfere with what they need to do and how we need to work with those communities to make them continue to be part of our culture,” Kehoe said.
Children’s services
Shortly after he was elected governor, Kehoe expressed support for boosting the pay for key employees at the Children’s Division — particularly child abuse investigators. Currently, the starting salary for employees who investigate allegations of child abuse and neglect is roughly $44,000 a year.
But Kehoe’s budget doesn’t significantly boost the starting salaries for those positions. It would provide raises for employees who have been with the state for a certain amount of time but wouldn’t increase salaries for people who have been hired more recently, such as child abuse investigators in the St. Louis office who came on board in 2024.
Asked why his budget didn’t include Children’s Division salary boosts, Kehoe replied, “We’re working on a process here.” He said there are some “very exciting outside-of-the-box things” to come about how to reorganize the Children’s Division.
“The budget that we started working on, a lot of it was developed already by the time we went into office,” Kehoe said. “So there's some things that we're working with the legislature that might not be in what you see today, that could be in the future.”
