By BRENT MARTIN
St. Joseph Post
Local legislators give the recently concluded session in Jefferson City high marks, though tempering that assessment by noting a few hiccups.
The 2021 session stood in contrast to the coronavirus pandemic-disrupted 2020 session.
State Sen. Dan Hegeman of Cosby counts as success passage of the Internet sales tax collection bill, the gas tax increase, and a prescription drug monitoring program to combat opioid abuse.
“Having a more full session, having greater debate on the floor and hearing the discussions fully and completely I think helped moved some pieces of legislation along and others, we still struggled to get some things passed,” Hegeman tells St. Joseph Post.
Disappointments, according to Hegeman, include failure to extend the Federal Reimbursement Allowance and passing on a bill to act on unregulated lottery terminals.
The allowance, known as FRA, is a tax on hospitals critical to funding the state Medicaid program. Failure to extend the FRA could leave a $3 billion hole in the state budget.
“It got tangled up into some right-to-life issues which then a certain portion of the Senate had concerns about that,” Hegeman, the Senate Appropriations Committee chair, says. “These were amendments that were added to the bill that, like I say, some of the senators had difficulties with.”
As for the unofficial lottery terminals, which Hegeman calls “gray market machines,” they continue to pop up at convenience stores throughout the state.
“And so, I certainly think that that’s taking money away from the lottery system and therefore taking money away from our education system and our kids and certainly supportive of trying to rein those machines in and regulate them,” Hegeman says.
As for State Rep. Bill Falkner of St. Joseph, he characterizes the past session as a “different session,” primarily due to the shortened session last year.
“We were trying to actually get a year and a half in into one year, I believe,” Falkner tells St. Joseph Post. “I think there were 1,300 – 1,400 bills filed, but a lot of them were from the carryover.”
That gave the session a different feel than normal.
“There were some strange twists and turns, some things that we thought were going to go through, without much of a problem became problems,” Falkner says. “At the end, a couple of major ones went through.”
Falkner was especially pleased the legislature acted to require Internet retailers to collect the state sales tax, the so-called Wayfair decision, named after the U.S. Supreme Court ruling which allowed states to force online retailers to collect the state sales tax. He says that puts online retailers on a level playing field with traditional, local retailers.
An aspect of the legislative session lawmakers feared when first traveling to Jefferson City in January never materialized. The state budget didn’t take the hit anticipated from the coronavirus pandemic. Restrictions imposed on businesses dampened the state economy, but didn’t send it into a freefall.
State Rep. Brenda Shields of St. Joseph, a member of the House Budget Committee, says the budget turned out much better than initially anticipated.
“When we ended last year, we budgeted for doom and gloom,” Shields tells St. Joseph Post. “And the governor then withheld a lot of funds, because we had no idea what was really going to happen when we started the pandemic. But Missouri stayed steady and strong.”
Shields says Missouri Western State University benefitted, not only with an increase to its core budget, but also through allocations to fund capital projects on the St. Joseph campus.