A proposal before the Legislature would spend nearly $3.2 million to remodel two floors of the Broadway State Office Building used by staff for Attorney General Chris Koster.

Koster, a Democrat, said Wednesday that the remodeling won’t be fancy and is intended to make the facilities equivalent to a modest law office. The remodeling would remove a low ceiling, replace worn carpet and cubicles and improve the heating and cooling system.

But Republican Sen. Will Kraus, of Lee’s Summit, questioned whether it is a wise use of money to remodel an office while the state is considering cuts to higher education and other programs because of a budget shortfall.

(© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Speaking as a guest on Total Information AM, Chris Chinn explained how she recently traveled to Washington to speak out against a proposed ban on children 15 and under working on a farm that’s not wholly owned by their family.

Her own son is 10 years old and loves helping out on the farm.

“If these rules were past he wouldn’t be allowed to help around any of our livestock,” said Chinn. “And that really concerns me because right now that is were he’s going to learn a lot of the small details.”

She’s worried a lack of exposure to farm work at an early age would mean children won’t have the skills to continue the farming tradition once they reach age 16.

Listen to Chris Chinn’s full interview below:

Copyright KMOX Radio

State Senator Jim Lembke is an opponent of red light cameras, feeling they violate the right to due process, laws against self incrimination and the right to face an accuser.

“I’m just glad the judge had the courage to rule on this very controversial issue in our state, in many years” said Sen. Lembke.

This effectually means the court finds the use of the cameras to be unlawful, and could potentially mean all those red light tickets are null and void.  The issue could still go to the supreme court.

Despite the recent ruling St. Louis City Counselor Pattie Hageman sent KMOX News this statement:

“Friday’s ruling has no impact on the current operation of the St. Louis City’s red light safety camera program. We had been waiting for a final judgment from the trial court so that we could appeal, and we now have that.

We believe Missouri law is clear that Missouri cities, including St. Louis, have the right to enact red light safety ordinances such as this one, and we look forward to bringing this case to the appellate courts.  We note also that a similar ordinance was upheld recently by the Missouri Supreme Court in Creve Coeur v Nottebok.”

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“We’re going to put in place starting in the next few months security cameras,” Durbin announced during a mid-morning press conference outside the Orr Weathers Senior High Rise at Missouri Ave. and 14th Street. “So we can monitor those coming and going and have the information necessary to keep these places safe.”

In addition, a system involving photo I.D. tags for residents will be instituted “so that those who shouldn’t be hanging around will be leaving, or if they don’t, charged with trespass,” Durbin explained.

New lighting and fencing will also be installed, and Cortez Slack was introduced as the man who will oversee it all as the new “security coordinator”.

The initial investment for the program is said to be $400,000.

This all stems back to last summer when Durbin met with residents of the John DeShields Housing Development and the Working Against Violent Elements (WAVE) Task Force, a collaboration of federal, state and local law enforcement agencies to discuss measures that could be taken in order to address violent crime in East St. Louis, Durbin’s home town.

“When I was at the DeShields housing project a woman came up to me with a little child and she said to me ‘Senator you’ve got to do something about this,” Durbin recalled. “They’re hiding the drugs in the telephone boxes here, the liquor store right across the street just stays open all night with people coming and going that are no good for us and for our children.”

Durbin used that story to renew his call for East St. Louis mayor Alvin Parks to enforce the 1 am cutoff for liquor store sales, something the Senator called a “contributing factor” in the growing number of violent crimes.

Parks, who was in attendance for the press conference but not invited to speak at the podium, said later that the new measures are a terrific starting point but he wishes some of those federal funds were coming more directly to his underfunded, understaffed and overworked police department.

“It really would have been good to get money for police officers to help patrol the areas in and around the Housing Authority properties,” Parks told KMOX News. “That’s what we’re missing.”

Watching it all unfold from across the street was longtime East St. Louis resident Gerald Harris.

He believes it shouldn’t have to cost a dime to start down the path toward a safer city — he believes it’s up to the people who live there.

“Don’t be afraid to tell (police) what you see,” he advised his fellow East St. Louisans. “Eventually what’s going to happen is those people are going to get caught.”

<<PHOTO GALLERY>>

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The Springfield City Council voted Tuesday night to certify the results of the Feb. 7 election in which voters approved the ordinance requiring Springfield businesses to use the federal E-Verify system to check employees’ immigration status. Businesses will be subject to fines if they don’t use the system.

Certifying the election means the ordinance cannot be amended for six months and then only by a unanimous vote of the council, The Springfield News-Leader reported .

City officials have repeatedly said that the ordinance, drafted by the Ozarks Minutemen, is likely to be challenged in court because parts of it are illegal and it raises many questions about how the city should enforce it.

“I’m praying that we’ll be sued so there will be a stay on enforcement,” City Manager Greg Burris said after Tuesday’s meeting.

Burris said the city may be able to avoid enforcing sections of the ordinance that are illegal, such as fines forbidden by federal law.

“The challenge is going to be the gray area where something is legal but untenable,” he said.

For example, Burris said, the ordinance requires the city to suspend the business license of any employer found to have workers prohibited by law from working for any reason. The penalty applies if a business doesn’t provide an affidavit to the city that it has enrolled in the E-Verify program, or fails to provide E-Verify paperwork to the city within three days of receiving a complaint.

The ordinance is so broad that it could apply to employers of any size, from a homeowner hiring a housekeeper to a hospital, Burris said.

“How do you shut down a hospital for even one hour? How do you shut down City Utilities?” he asked. “This would obviously be a worst-case scenario, but this is the way the bill approved by voters was written. These are the things we’re trying to work through.”

Although City Attorney Dan Wichmer said the council had an administrative duty to certify that the election was conducted properly, Mayor Jim O’Neal and Councilmen Scott Bailes and Doug Burlison still voted no.

“I will not vote to certify this unless a court of law forces me to,” O’Neal said. Others voted “yes” reluctantly, providing the five votes needed to pass.

O’Neal said the ordinance was “crafted to fit one narrow-minded point of view” and was inaccurately portrayed as a vote on illegal immigration.

“I think (the public) voted for something other than what they’re getting,” he said. “We cannot fix this. It cannot be fixed … It’s just a dark day for the city that we have to go down this road.”

Jerry Wilson, a spokesman for the Ozarks Minutemen, said he was disappointed but not surprised by some of the statements made Tuesday.

“What it sounds like to me is City Council and city staff are looking for ways to make this not work, instead of looking for ways to make the ordinance work,” he said. “Even though this wasn’t a perfect ordinance, it was and is our best opportunity to eliminate the job magnet that attracts illegal aliens to Springfield.”

(© Copyright 2011 The Associated Press. All Rights Reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.)

Both the scouts and Planned Parenthood dismissed Rep. Bob Morris’ comments as absurd, as did Republican House Speaker Brian Bosma. But the Fort Wayne Republican told The Associated Press his critics need to do more research into the 100-year-old scouting organization.

“My family and I took a view and we’re sticking by it,” Morris said, adding that his daughters were joining an alternative group for young girls run by conservative Christians. “My girls are no longer Girl Scouts. They’re now going to join American Heritage Girls.”

Morris’ comments were the butt of jokes inside the House on Tuesday, with Bosma spending much of the day handing out Thin Mints to lawmakers. He joked that Morris’ comments led him to buy hundreds of cases of the famous Girl Scout cookies.

“I purchased 278 cases of Girl Scout cookies in the last four hours,” said a clearly sarcastic Bosma, who closed Tuesday’s session by asking the former Girl Scouts in the chamber to stand up.

Morris’ comments about the Girl Scouts came in a letter he sent to House Republicans on Saturday that accused the scouts of being a “tactical arm” of Planned Parenthood. The Girl Scouts flatly denied Morris’ charges, and Planned Parenthood of Indiana issued a separate statement calling Morris’ charges “woefully inaccurate.”

“On the national level, inflammatory and generally inaccurate claims about a partnership between the Girl Scouts and Planned Parenthood have been promoted primarily by anti-choice lawmakers seeking to place pressure on organizations to disassociate or distance themselves from Planned Parenthood,” Betty Cockrum, the chief executive of Planned Parenthood of Indiana, said in a statement.

Morris, in his letter to lawmakers, said some Christian conservatives who share his concerns have pulled their children out of Girl Scouts. He also pointed to a Colorado Girl Scout troop’s acceptance of a transgender child last month as another reason to leave the group.
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Tom LoBianco can be reached at http://www.twitter.com/tomlobianco

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Tonight’s meeting at Oakville High in south County will be the third of at least four town hall meetings on the subject. The first two meeting were held in north county at Pattonville and Hazlewood Central High Schools. However Fitch says the majority of the heroin epidemic is in west and south St. Louis county.

The gatherings, featuring talks by law enforcers and people who have lost family members to the drug appear to be having an impact.

Chief Fitch said in 2010 St. Louis County had 60 heroin deaths, and they thought that number would grow in 2011. “We really believed that we were going to have 120, but then in March, April, May, June, and July they all were trending down.”

Tonight’s meeting is from 7 to 9:30 p.m. Fitch says he’s looking to hold the next meeting in west county.

Copyright KMOX Radio

Dr. Uwe Schmidt, an infectious disease specialist at Freeman Health System in Joplin, said three of those patients who contracted zygomycosis have since died, but he stopped short of blaming their deaths specifically on the infections.

“These people had multiple traumas, pneumonia, all kinds of problems,” Schmidt said. “It’s difficult to say how much the fungal infections contributed to their demise.”

Zygomycosis, now known as mucormycosis, is a fungal infection that spreads rapidly and can be caused by soil or vegetative material becoming embedded under the skin. It’s more prevalent in people with weakened immune systems or untreated diabetes but can affect healthy people who suffer trauma and are injected with contaminated soil.

Dr. Benjamin Park with the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention said people who have had a traumatic skin injury that is not improving should seek medical attention immediately so the infection can be identified and treated promptly.

Here is a portion of the memo from health care authorities:

“Dear Greene County Medical Providers,

The Springfield-Greene County Health Department was made aware of medical concerns associated with tornado victims. Please see the statement below:

All Medical Providers Caring for Joplin Tornado Victims

Several patients have been identified recently with aggressive fungal soft tissue infections. These patients were transferred in from the field and had lacerations that were closed at the scene. These patients have developed cellulitis followed by aggressive necrotizing soft tissue infection. Despite aggressive surgical debridement, the wounds have continued to advance. Microscopy demonstrates invasive fungal elements with capillary thrombosis. Grossly, the wounds have a cellulitic appearance with necrosis of the deeper aspect of the wound. The fat has a saponified appearance. In some cases gross fungal elements are visible with the naked eye. Despite aggressive surgical debridement, the necrosis reoccurs within 24 hours. Treatment currently consists of aggressive serial surgical debridement with IV amphotericin therapy.”

“These fungal infections are usually quite serious, and often have a case-fatality rate of 50 percent or higher,” Park said in an email to The Associated Press. “Although persons with weakened immune systems and those with diabetes are the most common risk groups, otherwise healthy people can develop infection, particularly after a traumatic wound. Skin infection usually occurs following traumatic inoculation of the fungal spores into the skin.”

Schmidt said he had seen only two cases of zygomycosis in his 30 years of practice, and both of those cases involved people with untreated diabetes.

“I never have seen personally this kind of fungal infection of the skin,” he said.

Stacy Fender, a spokeswoman for CoxHealth, said Cox South hospital in Springfield has one patient who may have a fungal infection. Overall numbers weren’t available. The health department in Springfield-Greene County, where some patients were treated, declined to release information about patients sickened by the fungus, citing patient privacy concerns.

The Springfield News-Leader reported the department sent a memo Monday to area health providers warning them to be on the lookout for the infections.

Kendra Williams, the administrator of community health and epidemiology for the health department, said the fungus likely came from soil or vegetative materials imbedded in the skin by the tornado.

In the aftermath of the tornado, Freeman Health System treated more than 1,700 patients. Doctors from St. John’s Hospital, which was hit by the twister, treated patients at makeshift facilities. Schmidt said some wounds that were stitched up had to be reopened because they weren’t adequately cleaned.

“These were very extensive wounds,” Schmidt said. “They were treated in the emergency room as quickly as possible.”

A week after the tornado patients began arriving with fungal infections.

“We could visibly see mold in the wounds,” Schmidt said. “It rapidly spread. The tissue dies off and becomes black. It doesn’t have any circulation. It has to be removed.”

Schmidt said the infection is sometimes seen in survivors of mass trauma such as the 2004 tsunami in Indonesia.

“This fungus invades the underlying tissue and actually invades the underlying blood vessels and cuts off the circulation to the skin,” Schmidt said. “It’s very invasive.”

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Copyright 2011 by KMOX/The Associated Press