Month: July 2025

Marie Moyer

CAMDENTON, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Mid-County Fire Protection District is urging boaters get their boats serviced and to follow proper safety protocols after multiple boat fires have occurred since the end of June.

Boating incidents this summer included two boat explosions on June 27 and July 8, and a boat fire on July 13.

“We probably don’t have a lot, but over the past few weeks we’ve had several which have become very newsworthy,” Mid-County Fire Protection District Chief Scott Frandsen said.

Frandsen adds MCFPD typically responds to eight-to-10 boat fires per year.

Between the several fire departments and the Missouri State Highway Patrol, around 12 boats patrol the Lake of the Ozarks. According to the U.S. Coast Guard, there were more than 200 boat fires and explosions last year that resulted in two deaths and 100 people injured.

Fransen said the majority of boat fires are caused by issues during refueling. This includes drivers forgetting to shut their engines off or run their engine blowers when pumping gas leaving boats one spark away from an explosion. He has also seen inexperienced drivers sometimes mistaking a boat’s freshwater or waste tank as the gas tank.

“The boat’s basically a sealed environment. It’s not like our cars where they’re out in the open air,” Fransen said. “The gasoline is a liquid and it also controlled vapor, while you’re fueling the 5 minutes while the blowers are running, open those windows and doors back up to allow it to ventilate and get all those gas fumes out.”

Both Fransen and Mark Chaney — who is a boat mechanic and owner of Veterans Marine and Powersports — also highlight the importance of boat owners getting annual boat servicing before hitting the water. Chaney added that many fires are preventable with many repairs fixing faulty wiring and ignition issues.

“I will work on 400-to-500 boats a year and usually about 40 or 50 of those actually do regular maintenance,” Chaney said. “Most of the time people with aged boats don’t even know if they work and most time they don’t, the hoses that direct the air out of the boat aren’t even hooked up anymore.”

Fransen reminds lake-goers that everyone should be off the boat before refueling and life jackets as well as a fire extinguisher are a must.

“We can’t stress lifejackets enough, we know that there are sometimes cumbersome and maybe a little bit uncomfortable, but things can happen so fast out here on the water,” Fransen said.

During a boat fire, Fransen recommends evacuating and abandoning shit, a fire extinguisher should only be used if the person is confident they can safely put out the flames.

“Boats are made from completely a highly flammable material,” Fransen said. “Most of them, they’re either made from wood or fiberglass, both of which fiberglass is usually highly varnished or painted, which makes them highly flammable, it’s basically solidified gasoline.”

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Matthew Sanders

Opinion in marijuana sales tax caseDownload

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Missouri Supreme Court has ruled local governments cannot stack their marijuana sales taxes on top of each other.

The ruling, issued Tuesday, prohibits local governments from imposing taxes in incorporated areas where a local sales tax already exists. For example, a county can’t charge marijuana sales tax at a shop inside a city where the city already charges such taxes.

The case stemmed from a lawsuit brought in St. Louis County, where the City of Florissant and the county had each imposed 3% sales taxes.

The owners of Robust Missouri Dispensary 3 LLC sued the county, alleging the tax stacking was unconstitutional. Missouri voters authorized sales taxes for recreational marijuana in November 2022 when they voted to legalize non-medical pot.

Boone County has been charging stacked sales taxes, with both the City of Columbia and Boone County charging 3%, the maximum allowed under law. The state also charges a 6% tax.

The court ruled Tuesday that the county can’t charge the tax in a city where it’s already collected. It overruled a lower court ruling in doing so.

Boone County Presiding Commissioner Kip Kendrick said the county had been anticipating the change.

“What the Boone County Commission did in coordination with our audit treasurer, we segregated those funds,” Kendrick said. “And so as tax revenue came in for department of revenue, we were able to separate out what was collected within the City of Columbia and what was collected at an unincorporated dispensary in the county. Boone County citizens won’t notice anything from our end.”

Kendrick said the county has separated roughly $1 million between Nov. 2023-June 2025. He said the county is waiting on guidance from the Department of Revenue on how to return the money to the state.

The county will continue to appropriate the sales tax collected on the dispensary in unincorporated Boone County, Kendrick said.

More than 150,000 marijuana cases expunged in the state, but work still remains

Courts in Missouri still have work to do wiping away marijuana convictions in the state.

According to Columbia attorney Dan Viets, more than 150,000 marijuana cases have already been expunged in Missouri, but courts still have roughly that many remaining to be expunged. Viets said the courts are late in doing so and much of that work consists of older cases.

“They cannot simply pretend that the older cases aren’t there. They need to be expunged under the law just as much as the recent cases do,” Viets said. “I don’t understand why they’re not using the money that we provided from the sales tax on marijuana for expungement that’s the very highest priority.”

Boone County Circuit Clerk Sherry Terrell said Boone County has expunged roughly 11,000 cases.

The county still has to get through about 350 more, which Terrell said they’re hoping to have completed within the next six months. Terrell said Tuesday’s decision by the Missouri Supreme Court should not impact their ability to expunge cases.

Terrell said like other courts in the state, Boone County has seen delays in old cases.

“We have to go pull all that information off of microfilm because there’s no documents scanned in,” Terrell said. “So, we have to pull charging documents, syncing documents off of microfilm so that we can forward that to the judge to make that final order.

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Erika McGuire

COLUMBIA, Mo. (KMIZ)

Unpaid motor vehicle sales tax costs Missouri millions of dollars a year, according to the Missouri Department of Revenue.

Between January 1, 2021, and July 23, 2024, the Department of Revenue reported more than 113,000 delinquent accounts tied to temporary permits, adding up to nearly $145 million in unpaid fees.

Each year, the department estimates its losses at between $20 and $30 million in motor vehicle sales tax alone. When the state loses that money, it directly affects funding for road improvements across Missouri and reduces the money that goes to counties.

In 2024, the DOR said it collected $635,776,054.78 in motor vehicle sales tax.

Last year, the Missouri State Highway Patrol issued more than 15,000 citations for expired temporary tags and license plates across the state. While citations are issued for drivers with expired temporary tags, MSHP says it cannot force drivers to pay their sales tax because it is a non-moving violation.

With a fine of just $50.50 for an expired temporary tag plus county court costs, many drivers choose to take the risk of a ticket rather than paying the full vehicle sales tax because the fine tends to be cheaper.

If a temporary tag is more than 60 days expired, the fine could jump to $250.

A new state law is about to take effect that proponents hope will help fix the problem. Hear more about it Wednesday on ABC 17 News at 10.

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