By Rachel Lippmann, St. Louis Public Radio
St. Louis – Voters in Kansas City and St. Louis will decide next year whether to keep the earnings taxes that make up a large percent of the budgets in both cities.
Missourians last night approved Proposition A, which also blocks other cities from enacting earnings taxes.
Voters rejected the scare tactics used by Propostion A opponents, said Marc Ellinger, a spokesman for the group "Let Voters Decide."
"I think it's a pretty clear and resounding message that voters all across the state of Missouri, from metropolitan areas to rural areas, do not want to have a third income tax and that folks in St. Louis and Kansas City will get an opportunity this spring to vote whether they want to keep the tax or not," he said. "We're very excited about that."
The measure won handily - eventually capturing 68 percent of the vote. But, said "No on A" campaign coordinator Mark Jones, it's important that voters in Kansas City and St. Louis rejected Prop A.
"What Rex Sinquefield and his supporters have to be wondering is what did they spend $11.2 million to do?" Jones said. "The two major cities in the state have rejected their economic theory, have told them to butt out of their local business."
Sinquefield, a St. Louis businessman and philanthropist, provided the overwhelming majority of the funding to the campaign to put the measure on the ballot, and for the advertising supporting the measure.
Proposition A supporters will not take an active role in the local earnings tax elections in the spring, Ellinger said.
Missourians last night also narrowly approved Proposition B, which sets new requirements and limits on dog breeding operations. Opponents claimed the measure was an effort to eventually regulate the treatment of all animals in business or agriculture - a point strongly denied by Courtney Thomas with the Missourians for the Protection of Dogs.
"If we can get such an initiative passed here, it gives up hope for other states coming on board and doing the same thing," she said.
Amendments to require the election of county assessors, give property tax breaks to some former prisoners of war, and block real estate transfer taxes got wide support.
--Bill Raack in St. Louis and Alex Smith in Kansas City contributed to this report