Talk:Macks Creek Law

Did you know nomination

The following is an archived discussion of the DYK nomination of the article below. Please do not modify this page. Subsequent comments should be made on the appropriate discussion page (such as this nomination's talk page, the article's talk page or Wikipedia talk:Did you know), unless there is consensus to re-open the discussion at this page. No further edits should be made to this page.

The result was: promoted by Bruxton (talk) 23:18, 26 December 2022 (UTC)

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• Comment or view
• Article history

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• ... that the Macks Creek Law originated in response to a state legislator getting a traffic ticket? Source: I accessed the hook source through WP:TWL, can provide the quote if needed
  • ALT1: ... that a portion of legislation amending the Macks Creek Law applying a stricter standard to only one county was rejected by the Missouri Supreme Court? Source: Another source I accessed through WP:TWL, can provide quote if needed
  • Reviewed: Template:Did you know nominations/Joan Fubbs
  • Comment: My knowledge of legal procedure is pretty shaky, so I'll be trying to get someone familiar with legal processes to look over this outside of the DYK process.

Created by Hog Farm (talk). Self-nominated at 04:04, 23 December 2022 (UTC).

General: Article is new enough and long enough
New enough: Long enough:

Policy: Article is sourced, neutral, and free of copyright problems
Adequate sourcing: Neutral: Free of copyright violations, plagiarism, and close paraphrasing:

Hook: Hook has been verified by provided inline citation
Cited: Interesting:

QPQ: Done.

Overall: @Hog Farm: Good article. Onegreatjoke (talk) 20:57, 23 December 2022 (UTC)

Some thoughts

After giving the article a read through, no major problems jump out to me (albeit without knowing anything about the law). Some relatively minor things: No strong opinions on any of them. No need to respond here or elsewhere, just food for thought.

• I would maybe put the sentence in the lede about "An audit of Macks Creek in 1997 uncovered significant financial problems, and the city declared bankruptcy the next year. The voters of the city approved disincorporation in 2012." in a different spot than the last sentence.
  • Moved
• Tenses in the sentence beginning "Revenues that count" seem to be somewhat in disagreement (i.e. "included" versus "is required")
  • Should be cleared up
• is the second paragraph in 'background' really background at all?
  • Moved to after the paragraph about the failure of the city
• "An amendment to the law in 2013 resolved those two issues" it's not really clear to me how they were resolved, to me, might be worth adding.
  • Clarified a bit. Using a non-ideal source (the Missouri Municipal League's appellate brief) to describe the changes in the law
• Do we have a date for when the city disbanded their police force?
  • "more than a year" before 1998 is the best I've found so far
• The sentence beginning "Voters of the city eventually" feels a bit like a run-on to me
  • Split
• "The Missouri Municipal League sued the state over the new provision in September 2013, but appealed to the Missouri Supreme Court in 2014 after losing at the circuit court level." would drop "but" here, maybe to replace with and
  • Done
• "led to additional attention" Might be worth specifying where the attention came from
  • Clarified that this is media attention
• "arguing that portions of the Missouri law could have mitigated some of the Ferguson unrest" I'm unclear how the first part of this sentence (establishing a similar law in Illinois) connects to the second part (mitigating unrest in Ferguson, Missouri)
  • I've added "proactive" in here to indicate that the author's thought is that Illinois would be wise to do something that would potentially nip Ferguson-style stuff in the bud. Hopefully this clarifies a bit. Hog Farm _Talk 01:53, 10 January 2023 (UTC)

Eddie891 ^Talk _Work 16:19, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

@Eddie891: - Thanks for looking at this! I'll try to work through these over the next few days. Hog Farm _Talk 23:00, 1 January 2023 (UTC)

And a few thoughts from me. The article looks to be in good shape (as usual); as with Eddie's comments, these are just minor suggestions that you're free to do with as you like.

• The passage of the law devastated Macks Creek's municipal budget – the cited source does say that, but the Frankel source says "the law had little to do with the town's failure" and blames the irregularities uncovered by the audit. Not sure what the right answer is here.
  • I've reworded this to try to indicate that it had both the budget pressure from the law, and the pre-existing financial problems uncovered by the audit. Hog Farm _Talk 16:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
• ruling that it impermissibly applied special treatment – this is a pretty arcane concept, so perhaps there's a way to explain it better. The basic idea is that Missouri's Constitution generally prohibits "any local or special law", meaning a law that applies to a particular locality or localities rather than the state at large. What about "ruling that it was unlawful because it applied only to the county rather than to the state as a whole" or something like that?
  • Done, with the note that my searching around in this supports my gut feeling that City of Aurora v. Spectra is probably notable. Hog Farm _Talk 16:43, 14 January 2023 (UTC)
• was overruled by another decision – maybe use "abrogated" (the word used by the source) instead of "overruled": there can be lot of quibbling over these distinctions (see [1]), so probably best to just follow the source.
  • Done, and linked to abrogation doctrine.
• which established a rational basis test for impermissible special treatment laws – perhaps "which held that special treatment laws were lawful if there was a rational basis for them"
  • Done
• who was now – "who was by then"
  • Done
• began a petition – maybe "petitioned the circuit court in Cole County": otherwise it sounds like he was circulating a petition.
  • @Extraordinary Writ: - Unfortunately, that phrasing would be too close of paraphrasing to the original source (which is probably why I went with the weird phrasing). Would "began a petition to the circuit court in Cole County" be better? Hog Farm _Talk 03:58, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
    • What about "filed a petition with the circuit court in Cole County"? Extraordinary Writ (talk) 04:06, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
      • Yes, that would work. Hog Farm _Talk 04:43, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
• which again ruled that it was an impermissible special treatment – I think the main idea here is that it was too late to disturb the earlier decision, not that the law was still impermissible. Maybe try "which ruled that the doctrine of finality prevented it from undoing its earlier decision".
  • Looks like you're right (per the source "its current test didn’t mean it would reverse a decision it had issued under prior criteria."). Changed. Hog Farm _Talk 03:58, 12 January 2023 (UTC)
• I'm not sure if the sources allow for this, but it'd be nice to say explicitly that the City of Aurora decision didn't directly involve the Macks Creek Law.
  • Noted something here
• There's not much information about how the law has played out post-2015 (with the exception of the St. Louis kerfuffle). Have localities been complying? Did the AG ever sue the 13 municipalities? (I understand if the sources just don't say, of course.)
  • I've been able to flesh out what happened with these lawsuits, but I'm not finding much post-2015 except a handful of local news reports when a city gets in trouble for breaking it (Linn Creek, etc.) Hog Farm _Talk 04:25, 11 January 2023 (UTC)

Hopefully at least some of this is helpful. Let me know if there's anything else that's unclear. Extraordinary Writ (talk) 09:19, 5 January 2023 (UTC)