50th House District: Sara Walsh
Party: Republican
Age: 39
Residence: Ashland
Occupation: State representative
Education: Master’s in public affairs from University of Missouri Truman’s School; undergrad from Columbia College in business and marketing
Political experience: 10 years experience volunteering for local Republican candidates; currently serves on the Republican Party State Committee; delegate to the Republican National Convention (2016)
Opponent: Michela Skelton
Recent state income tax cuts have been hailed by some as an economic jumpstart and derided by others as taking money that’s needed for social services and education. What’s your opinion?
So, what I’m hearing from citizens in the district is they’re very happy about President Trump’s tax cuts and also those that we passed in the Missouri General Assembly, seeing our economy doing so well is something that our district is very proud of and something that I’m very proud of supporting as well.
Voters will decide Nov. 6 whether to raise Missouri’s gas tax. Do you support raising the tax?
I sent out a survey shortly after being elected last August to citizens in my district, asking them, ‘how do you feel about issues?’ ‘What are your thoughts?’ And that was one issue that there … a task force that went throughout the state and Rep. Kevin Corlew led that. And what they did was they held like town hall meetings and asked people ‘what are your solutions for taking care of our roads and bridges?’ because so many of our bridges are getting in poor repair throughout our state and they’re very expensive to replace. And so that’s one thing for the most part people said tolls, some people said different things but most people could agree on a gas tax, and I found the same thing from the results of the survey that I sent out to citizens in my district of those who responded, most were in favor of a gas tax.
… That was something we put forth in the legislature, a solution to our infrastructure and to having strong infrastructure I voted to put that on the ballot, I support that. Lt. Gov. Mike Kehoe and Gov. Mike Parson have been explaining about the benefits of that. But, what I’ve been hearing from citizens in the district is that what’s really, what’s good about it is that rather than like a sales tax this is going to be more fair because it’s going to be a gas tax, so the people that are using the roads are the ones that are going to be paying for, paying the tax.
So it’s more like a user fee rather than it being people that are not, maybe don’t drive or things like that, that are paying the tax. So, it’s more fair of a solution plus a portion of it is going to go back to the counties and towns, so that’s really great that about a third of it is going to go back there and so that will give them the ability to have a little more local control over road repairs and that’s been something that citizens in my district have been very supportive of. So, we’ll see what happens. It’s up to the people of Missouri in November.
Voters will also decide whether to approve any of three medical marijuana proposals. What are your thoughts on the issue?
So I’m very careful to amend the state constitution.
You know our constitution, our U.S. constitution and our one here in the state, it’s more of like a governing document and ours has been amended many times over the years. Some people might say maybe it’ too easy to amend our constitution because generally legislation is more flexible. It’s very difficult to change our constitution once we do.
So the first two proposals are amendments to our state constitution. So I’m going to be a ‘no’ on those two. I think that this issue is an issue, I’ve talked to people in the medical field, I’ve talked to law enforcement, I’ve talked to a lot of people and there’s a lot of concerns with just the issue of medical marijuana. Now, there’s people that really feel like it’ll benefit them, maybe get them off opioids, which is a stronger drug and there’s a lot of problems with addiction. But, there’s a lot of other concerns to that I don’t think are quite fully hashed out yet and so I think that, that’s better for it to go through a legislative process rather than for us to immediately put it in the constitution, where we can’t easily change it. Because, as with anything else, a lot of times there’s unintended consequences and so I think that, that’s a concern.
So as far as the third one, that’s basically legalizing recreational marijuana and I’m not supportive of that. I spent a lot of time talking to the youth community coalition, which is here in Columbia and we have an Ashland group of parents and teachers and others that are members of the community, there’s a huge problem with substance abuse and also if you look at Colorado and some of things that are happening in these other states, I just think that that’s a concern. You know it’s still federally illegal, I think we’ll see again what the voters decide and where we go from there. But there’s a lot of concerns and I spent a lot of time last session studying those issues and I think there’s medicinal value to some of it, but I think we need to be very careful with how we approve it and what regulations and things we have around it.
What other key issues do you see facing the state?
Our Gov. Mike Parson and Lt. Gov Mike Kehoe are spot on with the fact that they are focused on workforce development and infrastructure. Those are issues, in addition to education, that I’m hearing throughout the district that are very important, especially in our rural areas.
One of the topics that will come up and people will say, ‘well how do we help the rural areas and rural poverty and different types of issues like that,’ well just like myself, I went through a factory layoff, experienced a factory layoff when I worked for Maytag. The jobs left, they went to Mexico and we lost out jobs there. That’s very, very difficult, many of those people worked at Maytag and lived in the rural community.
As I’ve been out in the 50 th district, many of the people in the rural areas, have also experienced layoffs from different factories and that’s very difficult. So, jobs is something, more jobs in these rural communities, more workforce development opportunities, some of the economic development groups in the district are working on things such as apprenticeship programs and workplace readiness certifications and different types of things, so workforce readiness. And those types of things are very important to be able to help ensure that we’ve got the workforce to be able to work at the jobs and bring the jobs to the communities.
In addition to that, education is a top priority for citizens in the district. That’s going to continue to be one of my top priorities and I trust that it will also be the legislature’s top priorities. We fully funded the foundation formula for two years in a row, and with record funding levels, as well as restoring cuts to the University of Missouri and President Mun Choi and Chancellor Alexander Cartwright have been incredible to work with. They have been down at the capitol there, President Choi was sitting in budget hearings. I don’t know when, I mean it’s my first year in the legislature, but I don’t know when the last time was that you have the president of a university sitting in a budget hearing for hours, and it was incredible, just his passion. As everyone knows here in the mid-Missouri area, the University of Missouri is an economic engine, and you know they have the research reactor and so much that they do, and University of Missouri Extension, and so many things. And so, a strong University of Missouri will be a strong community. But yet at the same time, asking the tough questions and he’s not shy to be able to just hit things head on and so, good leadership there. It will be a pleasure to work with him next session.
So, workforce development, education and infrastructure. You know if the gas tax doesn’t pass, we’re going to have to go back to the drawing board and figure out, well do we do a 2-cent gas tax in the legislature? I’m going to be putting out a survey to citizens if this doesn’t pass to be able to say, ‘well okay, this did not pass, would this be something you’d support?’
Just keeping the constant feedback with citizens in the district and talking to the community and keeping them engaged. I’ve been very proud to be very active in the community and so citizens know that I’m easily accessible and making this a full-time job is really important because that way people know that I’m working full-time for them. I’m there in the community, I’m sitting next to them at the ball game, I’m at the city clubs and so that’s important.
One of the things I worked on was … to restore $63,000 that were cut from Missouri Task Force One. They’re located here in Boone County, volunteers, just incredible people that work for urban search and rescue operations. And the work that these men and women do is just phenomenal. Right now, they’re responding to the hurricane, and they’re doing such great work for us as Missourians and so I was proud to be able to introduce an amendment that restores $63,000 in funding. I want to work to get them some more funding next session.
