State Reps. Keri Ingle and Rudy Veit are the latest guests on Politically Speaking. They talked with St. Louis Public Radio’s Jason Rosenbaum and Sarah Kellogg about a recently enacted law that provides oversight for unlicensed residential youth homes.
Ingle is a Lee’s Summit Democrat and Veit is a Wardsville Republican.
Here’s what the two legislators talked about on the program:
- Ingle explained why certain residential facilities, which can house children with behavioral issues, needed to have regulation. She pointed to media reports, including from the Kansas City Star, about residents being abused.
- Both lawmakers detailed some of the provisions in their legislation, including requiring background checks for employees and safety inspections. It also allows parents or guardians access to their children in the facilities without prior notice.
- Ingle noted that there was an attempt to provide oversight of these facilities in the early 2000s, but those efforts were quickly rejected. One source of opposition was that some facilities with a religious orientation felt it was an affront to their liberty to be regulated by a governmental entity.
- Veit and Ingle discussed the value of bipartisanship in the Missouri House. Veit indicated that prior relationships could soften debate on the floor about particularly contentious issues.
Veit is an attorney who was first elected to the Missouri House in 2018. His district includes parts of Miller and Cole counties, including Jefferson City, Eugene and Wardsville. He was reelected to his post in 2020 without much difficulty.
Ingle has a background in social work and has investigated child abuse and neglect. She won election in 2018 in a district outside Kansas City. She flipped her House seat from Republican to Democrat. Ingle won reelection in 2020 by a larger margin than her 2018 victory.
Follow Jason Rosenbaum on Twitter: @jrosenbaum
Follow Sarah Kellogg on Twitter: @sarahkkellogg
Follow Keri Ingle on Twitter: @RepKeriIngle
