By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Two northwest Missouri Republican freshmen representatives are back in Jefferson City for the annual veto session at the state Capitol, a bit wiser than when they began their first legislative session in January.
Rep. Jeff Farnan of Stanberry says lawmakers did some good work this year, passing a few good bills.
“One of them was for getting young farmers back into farming by having older generational farmers sell their land to a younger farmer,” Farnan tells KFEQ/St. Joseph Post. “So, I thought that was great bill. I was really glad that passed.”
Farnan represents Nodaway, Atchison, Holt, and Gentry Counties in the Missouri House.
Gov. Mike Parson used his line-item veto power to eliminate more than $555 million in spending from the $53 billion state budget.
Farnan doesn’t see lawmakers overriding any of those line-item vetoes to restore the spending.
“I think that the House was very generous with the budget. The Senate added more money to the budget,” Farnan says. “I don’t think that anything will probably happen. I think that we have a very good budget for the year.”
Fellow freshmen legislator, Rep. Mazzie Boyd of Hamilton, is blunt when asked if she expects anything from this veto session.
“Absolutely not,” was her succinct answer to a question posed by KFEQ/St. Joseph Post in a phone interview.
In fact, Boyd sees little reason to return to the Capitol.
“I wish we could be talking about initiative petition reform, because I think that’s one of the biggest things that we have here in the state of Missouri that we need to fix and make better. We’re not only a democracy. We’re a republic,” Boyd says. “But I haven’t heard that. So, I think it’s just going to be a waste of time.”
Boyd believes raising the voting threshold to amend the state constitution is a big enough issue to warrant a special session on it.
“We have, you know, five or six months out of the year to actually do things and everybody always waits until the last week of session in May to actually get things started,” Boyd says. “The fact that the governor hasn’t called for a special session to really work on this issue has just been extremely disappointing to me.”
Boyd represents Grundy, Harrison, Caldwell, Daviess, and Worth Counties.
Aside from the spending cuts, the only veto issued by Gov. Parson was on SB 189, a wide-ranging anti-crime bill. A section of that bill was called Max’s Law, named after St. Joseph’s K-9 Max, the police dog shot and killed chasing a suspect in 2021. It would have increased the penalty for harming a law enforcement animal.
Also attached to that bill was a section making it a crime to discharge a firearm within the city limits. That section was named Blair’s Law after 11-year-old Blair Lane of Kansas City who died from celebratory gunfire during Independence Day celebrations in 2011.
Parson objected to separate sections of the bill, including one that would allow certain criminals convicted of sex crimes to expunge their records and remove their names from the sex offender registry. Another section would have required the state to pay restitution to felons exonerated through DNA testing.
SB 189 was sponsored by state Sen. Tony Luetkemeyer of Parkville.