by Sarah Thomack
St. Joseph Post
The group that traveled to Jefferson City as part of Great Northwest Day at the Capitol got to witness legislators on the job for a day.
Great Northwest Day Nodaway County Coordinator Lily White says their group got to go to the House floor and Senate floor to be introduced and watch bills being argued.
"We personally got to watch Senator Hegeman's bill, regarding some changes to the Clean Missouri vote possibly being put in front of citizens again and that was later that day perfected so that was a very interesting argument to see."
White says one of the highlights was hearing from Governor Mike Parson during a Tuesday luncheon.
"He spoke heavily on workforce development and some of the economic things that have been changing in the state," White says. "A couple questions were asked on things like prescription drug tracking and also transportation, so there was really good discussion with Governor Parson."
The group also heard from the Commissioner of Higher Education Zora Mulligan.
"She spoke fabulously about both universities and some of the community colleges in our northwest region and how we're actually averaging better than most of the state in high school and college graduation, so that was great to hear."
White says at one of the events during the day, all 19 counties set up booth displays.
"Some of our counties took a more serious tone this year discussing some of the flooding that happened in their personal counties with their booth displays and that was a really interesting change in pace for us, normally we're talking about a lot of the positive things," White says. "It was interesting to see them go that direction and I think it was really impactful on some of our legislators."
There were about 250 people from the northwest Missouri area attending Great Northwest Day at the Capitol this year.