By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Another Missouri legislative session has wrapped up in Jefferson City with mostly positive reviews from local lawmakers.
State Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville, who represents Platte and Buchanan Counties, is pleased his anti-crime bill contained a provision of special local interest.
“Obviously, Max’s Law is something that’s very important and near and dear to the hearts of the St. Joseph community, named after K-9 Officer Max, who was shot and killed in the line of duty a couple of years ago,” Luetkemeyer tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “What that legislation does, it increases the penalty for killing a law enforcement canine in the line of duty.”
Current law treats the killing of a police dog as a property crime, according to Luetkemeyer.
Other provisions of the anti-crime measure increase the penalty for those using firearms to commit acts of violence against the public as well as makes firing a celebratory round that accidently kills a person a felony. That portion is called Blair’s Law, named for 11-year-old Blair Shanahan Lane, killed in a 2011 Independence Day celebration that got out of hand. Michele Shanahan DeMoss, Blair’s mother, has been driving back and forth to Jefferson City from Kansas City, pleading with lawmakers to change state law.
“We actually had Blair’s mom who’s been down at the Capitol the last 12 years trying to pass that bill and she came into my office right before we went to the floor and said that with Mother’s Day coming up this weekend, the only thing that she wanted to see is to see Blair’s Law finally pass out of the Missouri General Assembly and so I was really happy we were able to get that done on my bill,” Luetkemeyer tells us.
A budget kind to St. Joseph also contains a $2.8 billion financing package to expand Interstate 70.
“Just from an ease of travel, from an economic development perspective, I think that the expansion of I-70 to three lanes between Kansas City and St. Louis is going to be one of the historic things that this General Assembly is remembered for, something that’s going to outlive us for generations to come,” Luetkemeyer says.
More could have been done, though, according to freshman state Sen. Rusty Black, a Republican from Chillicothe, who says filibusters mounted in the Senate last week killed some good legislation.
“The last, I don’t know, about two weeks, we got into what I felt like (was) a lot of antics about trying to get individuals’ priorities done and we didn’t get everything finished that I would have enjoyed to,” according to Black.
Black is disappointed the legislature did not pass a ban on foreign governments owning Missouri agricultural land.
The legislature also failed to approve a higher voter threshold to amend the state constitution, though that was a priority of majority Republicans.
Work at the Capitol, which had been clipping along, ground to a halt the last week of the legislative session when the Missouri Senate once again stalled due to filibusters mounted by two members.
Sen. Mike Moon, a Republican from Ash Grove, kicked off the talk session at the beginning of the week by blocking all action in the Senate, angered that the legislature approved a postpartum Medicaid bill during his absence dealing with a family illness.
That set the tone, carried through by Sen. Bill Eigel, a Republican from Weldon Spring, who blocked debate on all legislation in the Senate, attempting to force a vote on his proposed personal property tax cut. His filibuster brought a rebuke from Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin of Shelbina, who accused Eigel of grandstanding as part of his campaign for governor.