By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Though local state representatives give generally good marks to the just-concluded Missouri legislative session, they all point to what could have been during their time in Jefferson City.
State Rep. Bill Falkner, a Republican from St. Joseph, says the area got significant funding through the state budget and he’s pleased I-70 will be expanded from Kansas City to St. Louis.
“It was still kind of a disappointing session, because we left a lot of things that could have helped Missouri and personal agendas got in the way,” Falkner tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Falkner is disappointed lawmakers didn’t adopt a higher threshold to amend the state constitution, though that seemed to gain support throughout the session.
“I thought we made great strides in the bill that we put forward back to the Senate and I thought that was a pretty fair bill for initiative petitions,” Falkner says.
Rep. Dean Van Schoiack, a Republican from Savannah, says the failure to increase the voter threshold to amend the Missouri constitution to 57% of the vote might come back to bite lawmakers.
“I’m afraid that this is going to probably allow abortion on the ballot and will probably pass with a slight majority,” Van Schoiack speculates during an interview with KFEQ/St. Joseph Post.
Despite being disappointed in the final week of the session, Van Schoiack views this past session more favorably than the year before.
“This year was much better than the last two years have been in the House,” according to Van Schoiack. “The committees did more work in committee, modifying bills, making them better in committee. We did less of that work on the floor of the House.”
The Missouri General Assembly wrapped up work Friday in Jefferson City. Legislation that looked promising at the beginning of last week died as two state Senators mounted filibusters, blocking any promising legislation from moving forward.
Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph saw her effort to provide tax credits to help the child care shortage not even get to the Senate floor for consideration.
“We didn’t have a lot of buy-in in the beginning and so it didn’t receive top priority at the beginning of session,” Shields explains to KFEQ/St. Joseph Post, adding that kept her measure from surfacing in the Senate earlier in the session, leaving it vulnerable to stalling tactics at the end.
It also caused her trouble as fellow legislators saw her measure as the only vehicle to get their bills across the finish line. Shields says the bill took on too many amendments at the end of the session.
“So I think if we could have gotten it through clean, it think it absolutely would have passed,” according to Shields.
In the end, it likely didn’t matter, because the last-week filibuster in the Senate left no time to move any legislation.
“Well, I think what I’m most disappointed in that is that the Senate just basically shut down for the last week of session so it didn’t even have an opportunity to be discussed on the Senate side.”
Shields’ bill would have provided tax credits to businesses helping employees cover child care costs. The bill also would have allowed child care providers to claim a tax credit of up to 30%. Child care centers would also have been allowed to keep the withholding tax of their employees.
The legislation limited the tax breaks to $20 million annually.
Other legislation that ran out of time at the end of the session included banning the foreign ownership of farmland as well as sports wagering.