BY: JASON HANCOCK
Missouri Independent
Republicans in the Missouri Senate are finally getting along. But disagreements with Democrats over abortion and paid sick leave — along with the House GOP over last week’s budget moves — could upend the legislative session
Will the Missouri Senate actually make it to 6 p.m. Friday?
That’s the constitutional deadline for the legislative session to adjourn for the year. And the Senate — thanks to Republican infighting — has failed to reach the finish line three years in a row.
But this year the GOP supermajority is finally getting along. And as lawmakers enter the final week of the 2025 legislative session, Senate Republicans hope that unity will allow them to roll back abortion rights and a new paid sick leave law over the vehement resistance of Democrats.
Whether or not the session goes off the rails again this year — and kills a litany of largely bipartisan bills in the process — will largely be determined by whether Republicans and Democrats can strike a deal on two issues that touch on key ideological differences. .
“My philosophy has always been, if you just sit down together, you can figure it out,” said Senate President Pro Tem Cindy O’Laughlin, a Shelbina Republican. “So that’s what I’m doing. I have a really good relationship with the Democrats, and everyone is negotiating in good faith.”
If those negotiations fall apart, the GOP could turn to the nuclear option.
Republicans hold 24 seats in the 34-member Senate. It takes only a simple majority of 18 votes to end a filibuster using a procedural maneuver known as “calling the previous question,” or PQ.
But Senate leaders have historically been hesitant to utilize the PQ because it generates lasting bitterness — and sparks retaliation. If past is prologue, Democrats would respond by turning to procedural maneuvers of their own to grind the chamber to a halt and make any progress all but impossible.
That scenario would also kill any bills still pending in the Senate with the bad blood and gridlock generated possibly spilling into the next legislative session.
That’s why since 1970, the Senate has only used PQ 18 times. The last time was in 2020.
“The last thing either side wants is a PQ,” said Senate Minority Leader Doug Beck, an Affton Democrat.
In November, both issues at the heart of the Senate’s final week won approval on the statewide ballot.
Proposition A, which won 58% of the vote, mandated employers with business receipts greater than $500,000 a year to provide at least one hour of paid leave for every 30 hours worked. Employers with fewer than 15 workers must allow workers to earn at least 40 hours per year, with larger employers mandated to allow at least 56 hours.
That law went into effect May 1.
Amendment 3, which won with 52% of the vote, legalized abortion up until the point of fetal viability — generally seen as the point at which a fetus can survive outside the womb on its own, or around 24 weeks. It also protects access to other reproductive health care, like birth control.
Since it passed, a judge blocked a litany of Missouri abortion regulations, opening the door for access to the procedure for the first time in years.
Senate negotiations on both issues have persisted for weeks. And despite some public discord, both sides enter the waning days before adjournment confident a deal can be reached.
“I know that there’s a lot of ideology going around and lots of things being thrown at each other, but actually the vast majority of people are somewhere in the middle,” O’Laughlin said. “And if you listen to everyone in their perspective, you can figure it out.”
While the possibility of a PQ is the biggest minefield lawmakers are trying to navigate in the final week, disharmony between the House and Senate could also prove explosive.
On Friday, lawmakers completed work on the state’s $53 billion budget. But in a stunning move, the House refused to allow a vote on a $530 million construction package approved by the Senate earlier in the day.
Senate leaders were not told of the House’s decision in advance, and the move sparked outrage and accusations of betrayal.
“The phone calls I’ve been receiving from my Senate counterparts do not lead me to believe that next week is going to be productive if you have a House bill in the Senate,” Senate Appropriations Chairman Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican, told the Kansas City Star soon after the House vote on Friday.
House Speaker Jon Patterson, a Lee’s Summit Republican, downplayed the possibility of the move causing friction between the two chambers in the final week, telling reporters that he doesn’t expect the Senate to upend a session that has been marked by GOP unity.
“I have nothing but great things to say about how the Senate has been working this year,” he said. “I think they’ll continue to work like that.”
His Democratic colleagues aren’t convinced Patterson’s prediction will prove accurate.
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat, said she would not be surprised to see “an even greater battle emerge between the chambers in the last few days of session over this particular situation.”
Another possible stumbling block: with only five days left before adjournment, the governor’s office and House leaders are pondering a push to provide $300 million in state funding to help build a new baseball stadium in Clay County.
The aim is to keep the Kansas City Royals from moving across the state line, where Kansas lawmakers created an incentive packaging to convince the team to leave Missouri when the lease on its current stadium expires in 2030.
But the plan has never been presented as a formal bill and never had a public hearing or debate — a reality that could cause real problems in the Senate, where any resistance could prove fatal.
State Sen. Joe Nicola, an Independence Republican whose district includes the Royal’s current stadium in Jackson County, said he would have serious concerns about any plan that would move the team to another county.
But Nicola hasn’t been consulted on the stadium funding plan percolating in the House, so he didn’t want to comment until he had a chance to study it closely.