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Lawmakers scrambled to save session: Common agenda missing as leaders went separate ways.
(Columbia Daily Tribune (Columbia, MO) (KRT) Via Acquire Media NewsEdge) May 21--JEFFERSON CITY -- When Gov. Matt Blunt announced Jan. 22 that he was not seeking re-election, he changed the dynamics of this year's legislative session and created a leadership vacuum when it came to identifying top priorities.
Blunt is a Republican, and his sudden lame-duck status meant there were fewer clearly defined goals for the General Assembly to pursue. At the same time, term limits were turning out other leading Republicans, House Speaker Rod Jetton of Marble Hill and Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons of Kirkwood.
With the impending departures of Blunt, Jetton and Gibbons, it seemed the GOP at times lacked a common agenda. Frequently it appeared that no one was interested in pushing Blunt's top priorities and no one was powerful enough to keep lawmakers on track.
For much of the 4 1/2 -month-long session, the House and Senate went off in different directions. Sometimes the two chambers seemed to be working at cross purposes. Bills passed in one chamber were not given the time of day in the other.
At the same time, the House culture differed markedly from the Senate's. Acrimony stalked the House, where Republicans debated bills their majority did not support. There was more congeniality in the Senate, where Democrats and Republicans had made peace after a stormy 2007 session.
The session's biggest casualty was Blunt's "Insure Missouri" plan, which would have provided a health insurance system for low-income workers. Lawmakers also turned down Blunt's plan to spend millions of dollars to train more medical professionals at the University of Missouri and elsewhere.
Just before the session ended, lawmakers approved restrictions on immigration and caps on the growth of local property taxes, two bills that Blunt used to salvage the session's work.
"Missourians can be proud of the many accomplishments of this session," Blunt said. "The changes we have made over the last 3 1/2 years are working, and I look forward to enacting these important priorities into law."
Democrats were less enthusiastic.
"With a lame-duck governor who was a non-factor in the legislative process and a lame-duck House speaker who weeks ago publicly declared his apathy about accomplishing anything, it is no surprise that the legislature achieved virtually nothing this year," said House Minority Leader Paul LeVota, D-Independence.
COMING TO BLOWS
A dispute that nearly resulted in fisticuffs seemed to reflect the mood of the House this session. Reps. Brian Nieves, R-Washington, and Trent Skaggs, D-North Kansas City, had to be restrained in an incident over a bill on teachers' pay.
House members removed from the bill a provision that encouraged tuition scholarships for autistic pupils. Democrats and some Republicans said the provision was a way to provide funds to private schools.
The altercation between Skaggs and Nieves came after Skaggs suggested Republicans were trying to push the tuition measure to reap campaign contributions from Rex Sinquefield, a retired businessman who had been advocating the issue.
Jetton sponsored the teachers' pay bill, and the fact that it died was a signal of how far the speaker's stock had fallen. Some of Jetton's loss of status stemmed from a provision that was quietly inserted into the law last year that made it possible for individuals to create a village out of the property they owned, circumventing county regulations. One of Jetton's campaign contributors benefited from the provision.
People complained to Republicans over that provision, but Jetton for a time used his influence to keep it from being repealed. The Senate easily passed the repeal, but it was gummed up with untenable amendments in a House committee.
That led to an ultimatum from the bill's Senate sponsor: pass a "clean" version of the village repeal law or risk having priorities dealing with illegal immigration and property taxes die in the Senate.
In the final week of the session, some House Republicans reportedly were prepared to lead a revolt against Jetton. After an all-night filibuster and rounds of negotiations, the village law repeal was approved by the House and sent to the governor.
"We clearly had a speaker who was not in support of the repeal ... many, many legislators spoke with Speaker Jetton to get the village law repealed," said House Speaker Pro Tem Bryan Pratt, R-Blue Springs.
Pratt acknowledged there was tension between the House and Senate in the final days of the session. He said that often happens.
"But at the end of the day, Republican senators and Republican House members all believe and share the same ideas," Pratt said.
"A KINDER, GENTLER SENATE"
The Senate atmosphere was different this year.
"We love each other," said Sen. Delbert Scott, R-Lowry City, after a reporter told him about the Skaggs-Nieves confrontation.
Last year, Scott and the majority Republicans in the Senate employed a rarely used device to shut off debate and force votes. The tactic pushed through new regulations on abortion clinics and a ballot item to make English the official language of all proceedings.
The procedures left Democrats furious, and they vowed to make trouble this session.
"When I got over here, there was a lot of tension left over from last year," said Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, who won his Senate seat in a special election. Dempsey, a former House majority leader, said senators from both parties met in an attempt to reach an understanding in which Democrats wouldn't filibuster legislation if Republicans would not use their majority to shut off debate and force votes.
"There wasn't a specific agreement," Dempsey said. "There were Democrats that raised concerns about the way the Republicans managed affairs. And then the Republicans had frustrations with Democrats."
In the wake of the understanding, controversial legislation was negotiated through the Senate. For example, a multimillion-dollar tax credit package to lure Canadian firm Bombardier to build an airplane manufacturing plant in Kansas City gained Senate approval in the process.
Consensus also was reached on a property tax law and changes to immigration law enforcement. In the end, 27 of the 34 senators voted to send the immigration bill to the governor.
Even a bill that rescinded campaign finance limits managed to pass the Senate without a filibuster. Attorney General Jay Nixon, a Democrat, opposed removing the existing limits.
Some Democrats handled bills on the Senate floor. Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, a lawmaker who staged several filibusters last year, handled the bill that might allow the student member of the University of Missouri Board of Curators to vote.
Graham said there was a "kinder, gentler Senate."
"I think it's been a good session," Graham said.
One sign of what a difference a year had made in the Senate was the fact that Senate Minority Leader Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis, was allowed to preside over the chamber during her last legislative day. Last year, Coleman had said Republican senators were "punks."
HEALTH-CARE PRIORITIES
Several controversial bills were passed by the House but never got Senate consideration. On that list were constitutional amendments to further restrict government spending and to bar judges from issuing decisions that could lead to higher taxes. A measure to implement a voter ID requirement and criminalizing the act of coercing a woman to have an abortion also did not get Senate floor time.
"Preparing to Care" was one local initiative that failed because of Republican opposition. It would have increased slots at colleges and universities for health-care professionals. Blunt supported the move in his State of the State speech, but budget drafters put the money instead into scholarships for families with higher incomes.
Blunt's "Insure Missouri" plan was rolled out last summer when it appeared he would run for re-election. The plan seemed designed to soften criticism of Blunt's decision to support the 2005 cuts to the state's Medicaid system, which took away health insurance for about 200,000 people. Insure Missouri was to provide health care to uninsured workers who earned too much to qualify for Medicaid.
Although the Senate approved the plan, the House resisted. House Republicans, led by Rep. Rob Schaaf of St. Joseph, wanted to include changes in the way hospitals are approved in the state and expand consumers' ability to know how much their treatment would cost.
"A successful session doesn't mean you pass every bill that you'd like to pass, it doesn't even mean that you pass every important bill that you'd like to pass," Blunt said. "But it does mean you've passed a number of priorities that move Missouri forward and reflect the values of our state."
Democrats found the lack of focus on health care troubling.
"We came into the session knowing we had increased our uninsured by three times the national rate," said Rep. Judy Baker, D-Columbia. "And we have done nothing to address that very big problem. We've done nothing to address our crisis in health professions -- we're not going to have enough nurses, doctors, dentists, pharmacists."
To see more of the Columbia Daily Tribune, or to subscribe to the newspaper, go to http://www.columbiatribune.com/.
Copyright (c) 2008, Columbia Daily Tribune, Mo.
Distributed by McClatchy-Tribune Information Services.
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