By Michael Smith
Michael Davis, Missouri State Representative for the 51st District which includes part of Cass County and Martin City, says he hopes to phase out personal property taxes on vehicles during the upcoming 2022 session.
“My legislative priority will be working to pass legislation to phase out Missouri’s personal property tax, which local governments levy on motor vehicles, campers, boats and aircraft,” he says. “This would be accomplished by tying the reductions to the increase in revenue generated by increased real estate property assessments. As real estate property taxes increase, personal property taxes would decrease by that amount.”
Issues he believes will be important to Republicans are Congressional redistricting, Covid-19 policies, election reform, including changes to the initiative petition process and education policy, such as guidelines for Critical Race Theory.
“Congressional redistricting will be one of the first issues,” says Davis. “The level of strife will depend on whether the map will be drawn to put most of Kansas City in a single congressional district that would lean Democrat or have parts in multiple districts that would all lean Republican.”
Davis says Republicans uniformly agree that government bodies should not have the power to implement vaccine mandates.
Davis says the initiative petition process has been used to push Democrat priorities, such as increasing the state minimum wage, repealing Right to Work and Medicaid expansion, and should be reformed.
Republicans also seek to establish guidelines regarding Critical Race Theory. CRT questions how history is taught to children, such as painting whites as oppressors and Blacks as victims. Davis says Republicans would like to either ban or restrict the instruction of CRT along with other race-based education curriculum.