By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Area state legislators don’t give the recently concluded Missouri legislative session in Jefferson City very high marks, saying personal agendas and politics got in the way of governance.
State Rep. Bill Falkner, a Republican from St. Joseph, says a lot of legislation failed to pass, because the ultra conservatives who make up the Senate Freedom Caucus blocked a lot of legislation.
“I think we let the citizens of Missouri down,” Falkner tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “I mean, we did pass a lot of good things, don’t get me wrong, and sometimes not passing a bill is good anyway. But there were a lot of good things we left on the table that could’ve gotten done had we just wanted to work together.”
Republicans control the state legislature. They hold big majorities in both chambers. Republican leaders stated a top priority this legislative session was to change the voting threshold needed to change the Missouri constitution. Yet, disagreements between Senate and House Republicans kill chances for changing the initiative petition.
Falkner, who has said changing the initiative petition process is needed, says the issue failed when the Senate refused to accept provisions favored by the House.
“We wanted to add to make the elected officials face the same scrutiny as the public filing an initiative petition,” according to Falkner. “If we were taking something to the ballot, we wanted to pass it by the same margins as well. So, we were holding ourselves to a different standard. And that was one of the things we thought was important and that was left out on the Senate side.”
It's a pattern state Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, a Republican from Savannah, has seen play out at the Capitol before.
“Since I’ve been there, and even before, we’ve been pushing for initiative petition reform,” Van Schoiack tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “And every year it has died on the Senate floor.”
A major bill sponsored by St. Joseph Rep. Brenda Shields, a Republican, would have offered tax breaks to increase child care options in Missouri. Shields says it got to the Senate in early February and it never went anywhere.
“They were ready to roll,” Shields tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “They were out of committee fairly quickly and then they just sat on the (Senate) calendar. It was number one on the calendar and they just never got to them.”
Shields, a member of the House Budget Committee, says St. Joseph did benefit from the state budget, which provided money for upgrades at Rosecrans Memorial Airport as well as $500,000 for the downtown Children’s Discovery Center and $200,000 for the Social Worker program at Missouri Western State University.
The budget has been delivered to Gov. Mike Parson for his consideration.
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