The Checks and Balances Project

Private landowners in Missouri will make an estimated $16 million in annual lease payments from solar projects, money that helps families hang on to their land when farm revenues fall short.

Frank Marshall is one of them. He told Advanced Power Alliance that income from leasing part of his property to the Kelso solar project in Scott County has helped him keep his property intact.

“It keeps the land in use,” Marshall said. “That was important to us.”

The Kelso project, whose two stages opened in 2025 and last March, will also provide $2 million in annual tax revenue for the county during its 35-year lifespan.

County officials estimate the project will generate $27 million for local schools. That may help build or renovate facilities in a county district where 75 percent of the buildings were constructed at least 25 years ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Marshall’s farm has been in the family’s hands since 1898, when his great-great-great grandfather moved to Southeastern Missouri from Kentucky. Now, the farm is owned by four branches of the family in a structure created by Marshall’s father.

Farming poses many challenges, Marshall said. “We’ve seen corn prices lately that are about where they were in the 1970s. There aren’t many things you can buy today for what they cost fifty years ago. When prices stay low but everything else goes up, it makes it hard to make a profit. And then you’ve got weather, markets, and things happening around the world that you can’t control.”

Selling the land was never an option, he said, and thanks to payments from the Kelso project and Arevon, the developer, the family was able to lease the land and preserve the property.

“When Missouri farmers and landowners have the freedom to use their land to provide for their families and their communities, the entire state benefits,” wrote Jeff Clark, president and CEO of the Advanced Power Alliance, in a March column in The Missouri Times.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

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Solar project boosts Scott County’s fortunes

The post Solar generates at least $16 million annually for Missouri landowners appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Scott County in southeastern Missouri faces the same challenges of many of the state’s rural areas — declining populations and labor forces, higher premature death rates, challenges for EMS services and closed hospitals.

But county commissioners made a major shift when they approved the Kelso Solar project, a 430MW farm that will generate $62 million in taxes over 30-year life of the project. The project increased Missouri’s solar generating capacity by 50 percent.

The first phase of the Kelso solar farm opened at the end of the 2025, and the second phase opened last March. While it will take a few months for the new taxes to appear in the county’s books, it is already reaping the benefits.

County officials estimate the project will generate $27 million for local schools. That may help build or renovate facilities in a county district where 75 percent of the buildings were constructed at least 25 years ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Arevon, the company developing the solar project, has also donated a vehicle to the Scott County Rural Fire Protection District, supported safety upgrades and agricultural education programs for county schools, partnered with a local food bank to help area families, provided equipment for the Kenny Rogers Children’s Center and paid for a water well in Blodgett.

The county has opened a new courthouse, which will enable judges to come and go from their chambers without having to mix with criminal defendants.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Missouri near the top in the number of lost farms

Declining populations and labor forces put rural Missouri counties under pressure

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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The post Solar project boosts Scott County’s fortunes appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Scott County in southeastern Missouri faces the same challenges of many of the state’s rural areas — declining populations and labor forces, higher premature death rates, challenges for EMS services and closed hospitals.

But county commissioners made a major shift when they approved the Kelso Solar project, a 430MW farm that will generate $62 million in taxes over 30-year life of the project. The project increased Missouri’s solar generating capacity by 50 percent.

The first phase of the Kelso solar farm opened at the end of the 2025, and the second phase opened last March. While it will take a few months for the new taxes to appear in the county’s books, it is already reaping the benefits.

County officials estimate the project will generate $27 million for local schools. That may help build or renovate facilities in a county district where 75 percent of the buildings were constructed at least 25 years ago, according to the National Center for Education Statistics.

Arevon, the company developing the solar project, has also donated a vehicle to the Scott County Rural Fire Protection District, supported safety upgrades and agricultural education programs for county schools, partnered with a local food bank to help area families, provided equipment for the Kenny Rogers Children’s Center and paid for a water well in Blodgett.

The county has opened a new courthouse, which will enable judges to come and go from their chambers without having to mix with criminal defendants.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Missouri near the top in the number of lost farms

Declining populations and labor forces put rural Missouri counties under pressure

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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The post Solar project helps revive Scott County appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Between 2017 and 2022, only Texas and Oklahoma lost more farms than Missouri, which saw 8 percent of its farms disappear during the period of the last national agricultural census.

That continued a 30-year trend of lost farms in the Show Me State, as older farmers retired or died and had few heirs to carry on the family work. During that period, most of Missouri’s rural counties lost population.

Almost all the lost farms were family-run operations, according to the American Farm Bureau. The average age of Missouri farmers in 2022 was 57.9 years, an increase from 57.4 in 2017.

Farm loss and consolidation may reduce the number of farm families and agricultural jobs, which can worsen existing population loss and weaken sales-tax receipts, school enrollment and demand for local businesses, a University of Missouri Extension study showed.

New Madrid, Maries, Howard, Cooper, Scott and Boone suffered the highest percentages of lost farms between 2017 and 2022, according to the U.S. Department of Agriculture. Maries County in Central Missouri lost 16.2 percent of its farms in that period, while New Madrid County in Southeastern Missouri lost 16 percent of its farms.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Declining populations and labor forces put rural Missouri counties under pressure

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

Rural Missouri counties have higher-than-average premature death rates

The post Missouri near the top in the number of lost farms appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Shrinking labor forces and population loss are pressuring rural Missouri to find new revenue sources to balance budgets and avoid tax increases for residents who can’t afford them.

Local officials are finding that protecting a county’s future takes more than saying no to change.

Federal labor and population statistics place several rural Missouri counties in the difficult position of providing valuable services, such as emergency response services, education and roads, for shrinking populations.

A study by Judith Stallman and Austin Sanders of the University of Missouri notes that “jurisdictions losing population must still provide and maintain basic infrastructure and services. That means these costs must be spread across a smaller population, resulting in higher costs per capita.” Some local officials are finding new revenue to keep services running. Others turn it away and leave residents to pay more or get less.

In 2020, Missouri’s growth rate of 0.2 percent was half that of the rest of the country and many of the state’s rural counties lost population. That was particularly true in the Bootheel section of Southeastern Missouri and in counties north of the Missouri River.

“Overall, 62 of Missouri’s 115 counties (including St. Louis City) lost population between 2019 and 2020,” said a report by the Missouri Small Business Development Center. “During that period, 10 of Missouri’s 35 metro counties and 52 of its 80 nonmetro counties lost population.”

The combination of decreasing population and labor forces leads to a vicious cycle as more people leave rural counties to seek opportunities. The remaining populations are older and in poorer health. As Checks & Balances Project reported, many of these counties suffer from premature death rates higher than the Missouri and national averages.

Local officials can’t stop every cause of rural decline. But when they reject new revenue, they owe residents a plan for paying the county’s bills.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

Rural Missouri counties have higher-than-average premature death rates

The post Declining populations and labor forces put rural Missouri counties under pressure appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Premature death rates among residents of rural Missouri counties exceed the national average, records show, a result in large part due to the lack of adequate emergency medical care.

According to data compiled by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, three rural Missouri counties have premature death rates that are more than double the national average of 392 people per 100,000.

Pemiscot County in the Bootheel region of Southeast Missouri bordered by Arkansas and Tennessee, has the highest premature death rate of 951 per 100,000 people, followed by Ripley and Dunklin counties at 879 and 828. Missouri’s overall premature death rate is 462 per 100,000 people.

Premature death rates include all deaths for people under the age of 75.

Reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show higher death rates from accidents for rural residents, because emergency responders are unable to reach the injured and get them to hospitals in time.

“The percentage of potentially excess unintentional injury deaths is higher in rural areas because the ability to transport patients quickly to critical care facilities is better in urban areas than in rural areas,” the CDC report said. “As a result, a substantially higher proportion of trauma patients in rural areas than in urban areas die within 24 hours: 89.6% in rural areas vs 64.0% in urban areas.”

The higher rate of premature deaths is not a new phenomenon in Missouri. Steven Woolf, director of Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, found in 2018 that these counties “have been struggling with economic challenges for generations. High poverty rates, stagnant wages, unemployment, challenges with young people getting an adequate education are known characteristics of these places.”

A  report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services cited by Checks & Balances Project showed that 50 rural Missouri counties lack a hospital. Those counties without hospitals have an average drive of 29.4 miles to a hospital.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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The post Rural Missouri counties have higher-than-average premature death rates appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Premature death rates among residents of rural Missouri counties exceed the national average, records show, a result in large part due to the lack of adequate emergency medical care.

According to data compiled by the National Institute on Minority Health and Health Disparities, three rural Missouri counties have premature death rates that are more than double the national average of 392 people per 100,000.

Pemiscot County in the Bootheel region of Southeast Missouri bordered by Arkansas and Tennessee, has the highest premature death rate of 951 per 100,000 people, followed by Ripley and Dunklin counties at 879 and 828. Missouri’s overall premature death rate is 462 per 100,000 people.

Premature death rates include all deaths for people under the age of 75.

Reports by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention show higher death rates from accidents for rural residents, because emergency responders are unable to reach the injured and get them to hospitals in time.

“The percentage of potentially excess unintentional injury deaths is higher in rural areas because the ability to transport patients quickly to critical care facilities is better in urban areas than in rural areas,” the CDC report said. “As a result, a substantially higher proportion of trauma patients in rural areas than in urban areas die within 24 hours: 89.6% in rural areas vs 64.0% in urban areas.”

The higher rate of premature deaths is not a new phenomenon in Missouri. Steven Woolf, director of Virginia Commonwealth University Center on Society and Health, found in 2018 that these counties “have been struggling with economic challenges for generations. High poverty rates, stagnant wages, unemployment, challenges with young people getting an adequate education are known characteristics of these places.”

A  report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services cited by Checks & Balances Project showed that 50 rural Missouri counties lack a hospital. Those counties without hospitals have an average drive of 29.4 miles to a hospital.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

You may also want to read:

Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis

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The post Rural Missouri counties have higher premature death rates than national average appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.

Rural Missouri counties are part of an emergency medical services (EMS) crisis, as decreasing populations and tax bases, combined with the closing of multiple hospitals, have caused treatment times to rise to almost double those in urban areas.

Slightly more than 24 percent of Missourians live in non-metro areas, according to a report from the state Office of Rural Health. They have only one rural emergency hospital.

Fifty rural Missouri counties lack a hospital, according to a report by the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services. Those counties without hospitals have an average drive of 29.4 miles to a hospital.

“Families are traveling hours for emergency care, children are growing up in counties with some of the nation’s highest poverty rates, and entire communities face the collapse of the very systems meant to sustain them,” said a recent report from the Missouri Rural Health Association.

The 2023 report by the state Department of Health and Senior Services lays out some stark realities about the condition of rural health care in Missouri:

The population in Missouri’s 99 rural counties declined by 1 percent since the last census, while the population of nonrural counties rose by 1.9 percent. Declining populations mean lower tax revenues and people available for EMS training.

Ray Locker is the executive director for Checks & Balances Project, an investigative watchdog blog holding government officials, lobbyists, and corporate management accountable to the public. Funding for C&BP is provided by Renew American Prosperity and individual donors.

The post Rural Missouri counties face EMS crisis appeared first on Checks and Balances Project.