By Paul Thompson

Northeast News

June 24, 2016

KANSAS CITY, Missouri – The Northeast News and its readers learned a lot about District 19 State Representative and District 11 State Senate candidates through its Candidate Voter Guide, but the legislative contenders revealed a bit more about themselves on Thursday, June 23 at Scuola Vita Nuova, where the League of Women Voters and the Northeast Chamber of Commerce held the campaign season’s first candidate forum. District 19 candidates Manny Abarca and Ingrid Burnett were on hand, along with District 11 candidates Anthony Banks, Jessica Podhola, and John Rizzo. District 11 candidates Brent Thurston Lasater and Mary Catherine DiCarlo did not participate.

Below are some of the candidate’s thoughts on issues that weren’t covered in the voter guide. Thanks goes out to attendees for submitting the questions.

Payday Loans:

Rizzo: “I think they just need to be eliminated, period. It’s not something the Republican majority really wants to talk about.”

Abarca: “Clearly, payday loans are bad, right? There’s two banks to six payday loan organizations along Independence Avenue.”

Banks: “They do hold a place in our society. If they didn’t, they wouldn’t exist. The banks aren’t going to give them short-term loans.”

Medical Marijuana:

Abarca: “The revenue of that taxation can go towards a lot of needs in our community.”

Burnett: “Legislators are assuring that it would be legislated, it would be regulated, there would be oversight…I’m in favor.”

Podhola: “Medical marijuana, I think it should be legalized in the state. What I don’t want to see is Missouri becoming like California. I have yet to meet a politician that doesn’t like the idea of that tax revenue coming into the state.”

Banks: “I am 100% in favor of legalizing it across the board.”

Toll Roads from Blue Springs to Lake St. Louis:

Burnett: “For now it seems like a toll road is the best option.”

Podhola: “I’m in favor of an all of the above approach. We’ve let this go for so long that we are going to have to bite the bullet.”

Rizzo: “If in fact there was some appetite out there, which I don’t think there is, to raise it in the general assembly, it could only go so far. Clearly we have to do something about it. It’s gotten so ridiculous.”

Gay Rights/Religious Freedom Act:

Banks: “I think it should be called the bigot freedom act. I think its ridiculous. If you’re an open business to the public, then you serve the public. If you don’t want to do that, close your business.”

Rizzo: “This was nothing more than to drive voter turnout in rural Missouri, and to get republicans to the voting booth.”

Abarca: “It appalls me that someone can be fired for the way they live their life. We need to stop this level of hate, because its not doing anything but tearing us apart.”

Abortion:

Podhola: “I have two daughters, and I want them to make a determination for themselves about their own body.”

Abarca: “I’m Catholic. Born Catholic, raised Catholic. Those are decisions that need to be made between the doctor, women, and that’s it.

Burnett: “I think it goes beyond that into a right to privacy without government interference.”

Three Most Important Priorities:

Podhola: Medicaid expansion, right of unions to collectively bargain, and the wage gap.

Rizzo: Economic development, education, protecting worker’s rights

Abarca: Public safety, equitable education, jobs

Burnett: Education, health care, economic development/protecting workers rights

Banks: Raise minimum wage, expand Medicaid, real campaign finance reform and end of lobbying influence