Cleanliness is a virtue when it comes to legislative inspection.
Just ask members of the Missouri Dairy Association, who contend an amendment sullied - and led to the eventual demise of - legislation that would have aided the dairy industry. They expressed their views in a story in the Sunday News Tribune.
The Missouri Dairy Revitalization Act would have permitted the state to pay a portion of the insurance premiums in the federal farm bill's insurance program. Although passed by lawmakers, the bill was vetoed by Gov. Jay Nixon and his veto was not overridden.
The proverbial "fly in the ointment" was an amendment to classify captive deer as livestock and transfer oversight from the Conservation agency to the Department of Agriculture.
The amendment was sought by the growing captive deer industry, which offers hunting within a fenced perimeter. The fledgling industry balked at Conservation regulations - notably a double-fence requirement - designed to prevent the spread of chronic wasting disease, which is fatal to deer.
The amendment, however, created controversy and attracted opposition, including our aversion.
We contended the amendment would undermine hunting and its economic contribution, as well as threaten the health of Missouri's wild deer population.
Dairy Association members attributed the defeat of their bill to "politics."
"These farm bills had received overwhelming support when they were voted on in the General Assembly," said Dave Drennan, the association's executive director. "But, as usual, politics got in the way of helping farmers who are just trying to maintain their livelihoods."
Those sentiments largely were echoed by state Rep. Bob Burns, D-St. Louis, who supported the bill, but voted to sustain the veto. "Family farmers are so important to Missouri, and I hate seeing politics get in the way of the best interests of farmers." But, Burns added: "This change (the amendment) had the potential to completely wipe out our native deer population."
Burns' proposed solution is a "clean" bill, a concept amplified by Rep. Keith English, D-Florissant, who said: "When you have bills that are this big and cause so much division for issues that are completely unrelated to each other, you have to break them up into smaller bills."
Precisely.
Proponents of controversial measures sometimes seek to improve their odds of passage by tacking them onto more popular bills.
The downside, particularly for the more popular proposals, is the amendment may become the poison pill that kills the entire bill.
Sadly, entire bills sometimes must be sacrificed to discourage the practice of contaminating desirable legislation with tainted amendments.