Wednesday, Oct. 16, is National Disability Mentoring Day, a national effort to promote the employment of students and job seekers with disabilities. The goal is to increase job opportunities for adults and youth with disabilities while working to eliminate barriers to employment.
And this year Dunklin County is participating in the program, according to Debbie Patterson, assistant program director for Bootheel Area Independent Living Services (BAILS).

There are two main types of activities, said Patterson.

The first is one-on-one job shadowing with students and job seekers with disabilities are matched with workplaces, according to career interests. This allows students-job seekers to learn more about what a job is like day-to-day and how to prepare for such a career.

The second is group visits to worksites where people with disabilities can tour a company or agency and learn about a variety of jobs and opportunities.

?A group of students from Campbell High School is going to participate with job-shadowing at multiple sites in Kennett to help the connect school and work,? said Patterson, who is the local coordinator.

?This is our first year of active participation,? she added.

National Disability Mentoring Day is a partnership between the American Association of People with disabilities and a new agency within the U.S. Department of Labor, the Office of Disability Employment Policy.

THE NDMD has grown substantially since it began in 1999 with three dozen youngsters in Washington D.C. as part of the White House celebration of National Disability Employment Awareness Month. It is patterned after other school-to-work activities, such as the National Groundhog Job Shadow Day. Last year more than 1,600 students in 32 states and Washington D.C. participated, and this year is expected to grow to include all 50 states.

Students, job seekers, employers, educators or vocational counselors who are interested in getting involved may contact Patterson at the BAILS office, 1111 Rear Independence Ave., Suite B, in Kennett or by calling (573) 888-0949, extension 24.

Missourians historically show little interst in constitutional convention

Marc Powers

2002-10-15

DDD

100

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. ? Missouri is one of only 14 states that periodically give voters the chance to call a convention to rewrite or amend their state?s constitution.

In Missouri, the constitutional convention question automatically goes on the ballot every 20 years, including this Nov. 5.

Among Missouri?s neighbors, Illinois, Iowa and Oklahoma also routinely vote on whether to hold a convention. Tim Storey, an elections analyst with the nonpartisan National Conference of State Legislatures, said no state has held a constitutional convention in recent years.

Of the handful of states that have convention provisions, only Missouri and New Hampshire voters will decide such questions this year.

As has been the case in Missouri, New Hampshire Assistant Secretary of State Karen Ladd said the ballot measure has generated little debate in her state.

?There really hasn?t been a whole lot of information put out about it,? Ladd said.

New Hampshire voters consider the convention question every 10 years. The proposal was narrowly defeated its last time out, in 1992, with 50.8 percent opposition. Voters approved the measure in 1982, and a convention was held two years later. However, the delegates simply submitted some proposed amendments for voter ratification rather than doing a complete constitutional rewrite.

In Missouri, the convention question failed by wide margins the previous two times on the ballot, in 1962 and 1982. The few long-time political observers who remember those votes say the issue garnered scant attention each time.

Dr. Tom Simpson, a political science professor at Missouri Southern State College in Joplin, is one of the only Missourians to stump for authorization of a convention this year. Simpson has spoken to various community groups about the need for a new state constitution and wrote a four-part series of newspaper columns on the issue for the Joplin Globe.

Simpson said the current charter, ratified by voters in 1945, has served the state well but also has a number of major flaws resulting from changing times and scores of piecemeal amendments added over the years.

?This constitution has been in place for almost 60 years,? Simpson said. ?It is time to jazz it up and review it.?

Among the changes Simpson advocates are the elimination of term limits for elected officials and abolishment of voter initiative.

Term limits, he said, prevent citizens from electing representatives of their choosing after they have served an arbitrary period of time and will result in a dearth of experience in the General Assembly.

The initiative process, whereby voters can bypass the legislature to put measures on the ballot, has been co-opted by special interest groups and too often results in bad laws and constitutional provisions, Simpson said. Perhaps his most interesting suggestion is to call for replacing Missouri?s two-chamber General Assembly with a unicameral legislature.

Whereas in the United States Congress, each state enjoys equal representation in the Senate while seats in the House of Representatives are distributed based on population, federal court rulings in the 1960s said that all state legislative seats must be apportioned based on population. Simpson said such rulings negated the need for bicameral statehouses. At present, Nebraska has the only unicameral legislature.

If voters authorize a convention, an election to select delegates would be held within three to six months. Any proposed amendments or new constitution produced at a convention would be subject to voter ratification.