The official regular session of the Missouri legislature ended Friday May 17, 2024

First, a couple of good bills that passed.

HB 1495, sponsored by Rep Dave Griffith in support of veteran’s mental health creates a more rigorous support system for veterans who need help. The goal is to help them deal with mental health crisis such as PTSD and to reduce veteran’s suicide. The house and senate both passed the bill unanimously.

SB 895 safeguards property rights while clarifying landlord tenant proceedings. Enhances trespassing laws to protect property owners and expedite removal of unauthorized occupants from vacant properties. Opposes federal lock-down policies and reaffirms Missouri’s commitment to protecting individual liberties and state sovereignty.

This session there were less of the unconstitutional Omnibus bills passed. Each bill is to pertain only to one subject and that must match the bills title. Some of the legislators reminded their colleagues of this law on a regular basis and for that we should be thankful.

Overall there were a low number of bills that passed this year. That would typically be praiseworthy. But, most of what passed expanded the size and cost of state government. We now have new regulations, new licensing requirements for doctors, new bureaucracies and no efforts to reform the most inefficient state government organizations.

In the Missouri legislature, true liberty minded conservatives are a small minority.

The budget passed earlier this month is slightly smaller than last year. It is still 90% larger than 2019. The excuse is that some of this is leftover one time COVID money from the federal government. If you look at both the federal and state withholding on your pay stub, you are paying for all of the 51 billion dollar budget. The ethical thing to do, would have been to return the unspent COVID money to Washington D.C.

The budget included more money for highway construction. This includes $100 million for rural and low volume roads, 53 million for I-29 & I-35, plus 727 million to rebuild I-44. That would seem to be worthy of praise. Our roads do need to be repaired. What is missing is accountability. We just had a gas tax increase forced on us 2 years ago and now MoDOT gets more money. Yet MoDOT is one of the least efficient organizations in the state and the legislature failed to hold them accountable.

The budget includes more money for DESE, public schools and universities. Every measurable metric for performance of public schools and public universities has gone down since 1993 and yet the legislature increases funding and fails to hold them accountable for poor performance.

IP reform, the number one issue of the session did not pass.

Senator Mike Moon explains IP reform. “The number one priority for Senate Republicans this session was to reform the initiative petition process. Currently, the MO Constitution requires a simple majority vote to amend the state constitution (50% + one vote). Several ideas were presented during the session. The one that won over all the others was, in addition to the current simple majority votes, a concurrent majority of congressional districts voting to ratify the amendment must occur. So, five of the eight congressional districts would be required, plus the simple majority, in order to ratify an amendment to the state constitution.”

The House and Senate both have Republican super-majorities, yet they failed to get the top issue passed. The bill handler, Mary Elizabeth Coleman along with the Missouri Senate Republican leadership are responsible for this failure. Please remember this when it comes time to vote in the primary elections in August.

If you tend to vote Republican, you should be outraged and angry. If you tend to vote Democrat, you had a very good year in the Missouri legislature.