Missouri lawmakers and statewide elected officials won't be getting pay raises, after all.
It took more than an hour Thursday morning, but senators negotiated a deal allowing Rep. Jay Barnes' no-pay-raise resolution to come to a vote - then passed the resolution by a 31-3 margin.
Since 1996, Missouri's Constitution has required a 21-member commission to meet, take public comment and then recommend a pay scale for the elected officials and judges for the next two years.
The plan goes into effect unless at least two-thirds of the members of each chamber in the Legislature reject the plan by Sunday.
The House voted 133-15 last week to block the commission's November 2014 proposal for 11 percent lawmaker raises in each of the next two years, from their current, $35,915 a year salaries, and 8- to 10-percent increases for the six statewide elected officials.
For instance, the governor would have gotten a more than $22,000 increase, to $156,088 a year.
Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, had sought a vote on Barnes' resolution Wednesday, but withdrew his motion after a couple of Democrats - Maria Chappelle-Nadal, University City, and Jason Holsman, Kansas City - spent about an hour Wednesday morning talking in favor of raises and how they might help improve future legislatures.
At that point, it appeared the pay raises would go into effect because Schaaf had said he wouldn't try for another vote.
"This pay raise issue is a unique issue," Schaaf told his colleagues Thursday morning. "It has nothing to do with any other substantial policy that affects the state."
Schaaf acknowledged Chappelle-Nadal promised to keep talking until it was too late to vote.
But, Schaaf said, although he has been opposed to using the "previous question" - a generally rarely used parliamentary move that stops debate and forces a vote - he was prepared to make the motion in order to get everybody in the Senate to vote one way or the other on the raises issue.
The "PQ" motion is used regularly in the House but, in the Senate, it generally is seen as a violation of the chamber's "free-and-open-debate" policy and can lead more efforts to slow things down and fewer efforts to compromise.
Schaaf announced he had drafted a PQ letter as the rules require, and asked colleagues to sign the letter if they desired to.
Five signatures are required on that letter. It had six signatures within a few minutes, he said.
"It's important to me that we not take a pay raise," Schaaf said, adding he would prefer to "drive toward a compromise" rather than use the PQ motion.
But Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, told Schaaf he would sponsor the debate-ending motion if Schaaf didn't.
Schaaf later told the News Tribune Kehoe's comments during the discussion, and in private meetings, were "instrumental" in getting a vote on the no-pay-raise resolution.
Kehoe has said numerous times a pay raise for elected officials is "ridiculous" when state employees have had few raises, or none at all, and rank last in the nation for the average state employees' pay.
Twice during the morning, the Senate stopped debate and stood "at-ease" as lawmakers from both parties met in a closed gallery closed, and apparently reached a compromise allowing the final vote.
"We got a commitment to try to increase state workers' pay" during this year's budget-writing, Holsman said after the vote.
Still, Holsman told the News Tribune Thursday, he's concerned a freeze on lawmakers' pay will prevent interested, qualified people from running for the Legislature in the future.
Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, said senators again had found a way to work through important issues.
"The overriding sentiment was, we need to work very hard to raise wages for those people who work for the state of Missouri every day, on the front lines - and who have suffered when the budget has suffered," He explained.
"We want to see our state employees taken care of, before we ever give consideration to the challenges we see as state legislators."
Earlier coverage:
The Missouri Senate voted 31-3 this morning to reject pay raises proposed last November by the Missouri Citizens Compensation Committee.
The vote came after senators twice stood "at-ease" to discuss possible compromises, after two Democrats led a mini-filibuster Wednesday against the resolution.
The Constitution requires at least two-thirds of the members in each chambers to chamber to vote against the pay raise, but both House and Senate votes were well above that margin.
With today's vote, pay levels for lawmakers and statewide elected officials will remain at their current levels.