Democratic candidate for Secretary of State Jason Kander is rolling out his plan to make the office more helpful for Missouri entrepreneurs.
Kander is a State Representative from Jackson County. If elected he says he would reform the Business Services Division to connect aspiring business owners with local non-profits and state programs designed to help entrepreneurs.
“The idea is that rather than just file the paperwork and process that paperwork within the office, that we then take the pro-active role of trying to make sure that those businesses have every opportunity to succeed,” says Kander.
Kander says he would also like to decrease the frequency that businesses have to file paperwork.
He supports creating a “fee credit” system allowing businesses who create jobs to receive proportional decrease in annual filing fees.
De-politicizing the Secretary of State
Kander also says he would work to de-politicize the office which has often been the subject of Republican scorn.
Over her eight-year term, Secretary of State Robin Carnahan has been sued time and again by Republicans alleging a liberal bias in ballot language.
Carnahan is stepping down at the end of the year and Shane Schoeller, the Republican candidate for her job says he would create a so-called “Fair Ballot Commission” to oversee ballot summary language.
Kander says would place the ballot process under the hands of political cronies.
“I’m not sure why Shane Schoeller wants to pass the buck on to politicians in Jefferson City,” remarks Kander. “Missourians will be able to count on me to write fair, straight-forward and non-partisan language myself; I don’t need politicians to help me out.”
Schoeller claims that right now, the only recourse for contesting ballot language is to take the issue to court. He says his plan would be much cheaper for taxpayers.
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