JEFFERSON CITY — More than 30 residents from throughout Missouri’s 143rd House District accepted state Rep. Bennie Cook’s open invitation to visit the Capitol on April 8 to meet with state officials and department leaders and provide direct input about governmental operations.

The day began with an observation of the start of the day’s House session. After Cook introduced the 143rd District residents from the House floor, the group ventured down to a basement conference room for a lineup of speakers including Gov. Mike Kehoe and Auditor Scott Fitzpatrick.

Kehoe briefly shared some of his background growing up in St. Louis as one of his single mother’s six children. He worked his way through the automobile business before entering politics as a state senator in 2010. In 2018, then-Gov. Mike Parson appointed him to serve as lieutenant governor, and he won reelection to the office in 2020. Voters chose Kehoe to succeed Parson last November.

“We want to try to bring some common sense, in a business perspective, to what government does,” Kehoe said. “The number one thing for me is to keep government out of your life.”

Examples Kehoe gave of when he believed the government should step in to improve citizens’ lives included building infrastructure, providing education and promoting public safety.

“One of our priorities campaigning was public safety,” he said. “We think that safe communities are the foundation to who we are. We’re a country and a state of laws, and if you want to work on economic development and getting communities back together, people have to feel safe.”

Kehoe said public safety issues are not exclusive to large cities such as St. Louis or Kansas City; they are a statewide concern.

“We proposed a public safety bill that had 25 components to it,” he said. “It was the first bill that the legislature passed and put on my desk, which in this building is very unusual to get something that complicated passed and done by spring break.”

Another priority Kehoe discussed was economic development. He said one goal is to examine tax policy and ensure Missouri is staying competitive among other states.

“I’m a very big advocate that you all can spend your money better than any elected official can, so any time we get a chance to make sure you have the opportunity to spend your money and make those decisions, I think that’s a good thing,” he said.

Education, especially career and technical education, is another priority for Kehoe’s administration. One program he mentioned was encouraging schools to adopt a career counselor model rather than a college counselor model.

“That could be the same person they have right now,” he said. “It’s just a different attitude. A career counselor will help you get a CDL if you want to. They’ll help you get an associate degree in welding, or they’ll help you get into a four-year school. We’re really pushing that to make sure we match young men and ladies’ desires and talents with the private sector and the business folks who need employment.”

The last priority Kehoe shared was promoting Missouri agriculture.

“It’s our number one industry,” he said. “It’s a $93 billion a year industry to Missouri.”

Kehoe is a first-generation cattle producer operating in Phelps and Pulaski counties. He said if the global population continues its growth trend, it will double over the next several decades, and more food will be necessary to sustain the worldwide population.

“We’re really pushing hard to invest in agriculture to get more out of the ground that we have,” he said.

When Kehoe opened the discussion for questions, the first was about whether the state was offering assistance programs for new farmers.

Kehoe said the state government had been working with universities on programs for young people getting into farming. The biggest challenge is the intense capital required to get started. Farm credit agencies offer low-interest loan programs, and the United States Small Business Administration also helps.

Another person asked what Missouri is doing about foreign investment in farmland.

Kehoe said it was not an issue that worried the agriculture industry, but it did become an issue during last year’s gubernatorial campaign. During the Republican primary, Kehoe’s opponents criticized him for renting a campaign bus from a lobbyist whose clients include Chinese-owned Smithfield Foods. In response to the question, he acknowledged that the state has some foreign ownership, but state law limits it to 1 percent of land. It is currently around one-half percent.

“The reality is, China does not own all of our land, and it was more of a political statement than it was reality,” he said.

Another question was about if foreign ownership of land would ever be completely prohibited.

“We have to be careful because there’s a big difference between our allies and our enemies,” Kehoe said. “I welcome, as long as it stays under 1 percent, foreign ownership from allies. Israel, Japan, various parts of Europe, Germany, they all have significant footprints. But the enemies, definitely, we should be getting the land back from them.”

Fitzpatrick spoke to the group next. He is in his third year as state auditor after spending six years in the House. While serving as a representative, he was the chairman of the House Budget Committee.

When voters elected then-Attorney General Josh Hawley to the U.S. Senate in 2018, Parson appointed then-Treasurer Eric Schmitt to fill the vacancy. That left the treasurer’s office unoccupied, and Parson appointed Fitzpatrick to be the state treasurer. He decided to run for auditor in 2022.

Fitzpatrick said he began his career in government because of his frustration as a business owner dealing with government “red tape.”

“I wanted to run for office so I could try to get on the other side of the bureaucrats and kind of shake things up from that side and try to help taxpayers when they’re having problems with their government,” he said. “I ran for auditor because I really felt like it was going to give me the opportunity to do what I really wanted to do, which is hold government accountable with the taxpayers for how they’re spending their money and how they’re operating and running the hundreds of programs that the legislature has passed.”

Fitzpatrick said that when he took over the auditor’s office, it had about 60 percent of the staff it has now. One of his goals in his first couple of years as auditor was to add the personnel necessary to investigate fraud allegations and other requests.

Another focus Fitzpatrick has had during his time as auditor is spending more time monitoring public schools because they are the state’s biggest expense after Medicaid.

“I think it’s good that we spend a lot of our money on public education because I think it’s incredibly important as a state that we prepare the young people here to be the next generation of leaders,” he said. “But what really raised my eyebrows and made me concerned is that when you look at the results of our school systems, we have some great schools, but we also have some that are not getting the job done.”

Fitzpatrick said one of his missions for the auditor’s office is to support the legislature in its goals of giving Missouri children opportunities for a good education to prepare them for the future.

Someone asked Fitzpatrick how his office initiates audits.

Fitzpatrick said there are a couple of ways citizens can prompt audits. One way is through regularly scheduled audits. Another way is the whistleblower hotline available online at auditor.mo.gov. Members of the public can also collect signatures for a petition audit.

More coverage of District 143 Day at the Capitol will appear in next week’s edition.