Global Courant
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (AP) — A constitutional amendment to restore abortion rights in Missouri will proceed after a judge broke Tuesday a standoff between two Republican officials that would have stopped the process.
Cole County Presiding Judge Jon Beetem ordered Attorney General Andrew Bailey approves fellow Republican auditor Scott Fitzpatrick’s estimated $51,000 price tag within 24 hours.
Bailey had refused to approve the price estimate, arguing that if the proposal were successful, it could cost the state a million times more than that figure because of lost Medicaid funding or lost income that would not be collected from people who would have been born otherwise.
But Beetem said Bailey “has no authority to substitute his own judgment for that of the auditor.”
“There is absolutely no authority to conclude that the Attorney General is allowed to return the accountant’s summary tax bills for review simply because he disagrees with the estimated costs or savings of the accountant of a proposed measure,” Beetem wrote in his ruling.
A spokesman said the attorney general’s office will appeal.
If approved by voters, the proposal enshrined in the constitution the individual right to make decisions about abortion, childbirth and contraception.
Republican-led Legislature and Republican Governor of Missouri banned almost all abortions after the US Supreme Court overturned Roe v. Wade last summer. The state now allows exceptions for medical emergencies, but not rape or incest cases.
In Missouri, the auditor must calculate how much taxpayer money it could cost to implement ballots. The Attorney General then reviews and approves the cost estimate in an administrative step that has historically gone without a hitch.
Fitzpatrick’s office found in March that the proposal would have no known impact on state funds and an estimated cost of at least $51,000 a year in reduced local tax revenue, though “opponents estimate a potentially significant loss to state revenue.”
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Bailey said the cost estimate was so low it would bias voters and told Fitzpatrick to change it.
Fitzpatrick declined, arguing that a multibillion-dollar projection for the initiative petition would be inaccurate, despite Fitzpatrick’s personal opposition to abortion.
“As much as I would like to say that this IP would result in a loss to the state of Missouri of $12.5 billion in federal funds, it would not be,” Fitzpatrick wrote to Bailey in an April 21 letter. “Filing a summary of tax notes that I know contains inaccurate information would violate my duty as a state auditor to produce an accurate summary of tax notes.”
The deadlock had prevented the secretary of state from allowing the pro-abortion rights campaign to collect voter signatures. The campaign would need to collect signatures from 8% of legal voters in six of the state’s eight congressional districts to get the bill on the 2024 ballot.
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For more AP coverage of the abortion issue:
