Mid-Missouri lawmakers rate legislative session as good

Members of the Missouri House of Representatives throw papers in the air Friday at the conclusion of the legislative session at the Capitol.
Members of the Missouri House of Representatives throw papers in the air Friday at the conclusion of the legislative session at the Capitol.

Mid-Missouri lawmakers generally were pleased.

"I think we had a productive session," Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, said Friday, after the Senate ended its work for the 2015 General Assembly. "When we started the session out, we said we wanted to bring court reform to the state, we wanted to look out for our number one industry - agriculture - and make Missouri a better state for people who practice medicine.

"Obviously our biggest accomplishment - and the only thing we have a constitutional responsibility to do - is bring a balanced budget."

Kehoe is a member of the Senate's Appropriations Committee, and said the only bill the Senate passed Friday - extending the federal reimbursement allowance for another year, bringing more than $3.6 billion in Medicaid payments to the state - helps make the budget work.

Gov. Jay Nixon has already signed the bills creating the more than $26 billion spending plan for the state business year that begins July 1.

Nixon last week signed the law reinstating caps on non-economic damages in medical malpractice suits and aimed at revitalizing the dairy industry.

The governor told reporters Friday he's "eager to review the Legislature's bill to reform municipal courts - a top priority I called for in my State of the State address."

Kehoe said his most important priority for the session was changing the "waters of the U.S." language, to protect Missouri's non-navigable streams from being covered by the federal Environmental Protection Agency - if it passes the new definition it's considering.

His language is in a bill sponsored by Rep. Rocky Miller, R-Lake Ozark, "that has several different Department of Natural Resources pieces in it," Kehoe said.

Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, heads the Appropriations Committee and said its work was a big part of his "good year."

"The nice thing about this being my fifth year as Appropriations chairman - which, in the time of term limits, is a long time - is we really had a chance this year to go back and look at growth trends, long-term, in the budget," Schaefer explained. "We were able (to) cut some (money) out of welfare and put some additional money into K-12 (public school) funding.

"We did get the maintenance and repair bill passed, to do some facilities maintenance to state buildings - which was crucially important. That's been deferred now, for over a decade."

Nixon noted that bill also keeps funding for construction of the new Fulton State Hospital, which will replace the state's main mental health hospital that's been operating since 1851.

"And in a couple weeks we'll be breaking ground on that new state-of-the-art facility," the governor said.

Sen. Jeanie Riddle, R-Mokane, has been working on the hospital issue for several years, beginning while she was a state representative.

She considered her first year in the Senate as a good one.

"Many of the things that we worked on made it through the process, which was great," Riddle explained. "One of the great things for Missouri was our bill that had a lot of the kids' issues on it," including a provision allowing the Children's Division to investigate allegations of child-on-child sexual abuse - an authority state officials say they don't have, now.

Riddle added, "For the beekeepers in the state, the honey bill made it through," which will allow them to be exempt from health standards and regulations for the bottling of honey if they meet certain requirements, including the honey be bottled in the domicile of the person harvesting the honey.

Riddle was disappointed lawmakers didn't pass a bill requiring high school students to pass the same Civics test the U.S. gives to immigrants before they can become citizens.

Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, called it "an incredibly productive session."

He cited the budget as a major success, and said a personal success was passing the "Senior Savings Protection Act," aimed at saving senior citizens and disabled people from being victims of "financial exploitation."

Rep. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City, was disappointed the Legislature didn't pass an ethics bill or a measure requiring voters to have a photo ID when getting a ballot at the polling place

He was pleased the General Assembly passed the bonding bill, including money for repairs at the Capitol, Lincoln University and State Technical College of Missouri, Linn.

Rep. Caleb Jones, R-Columbia, said several of his bills were passed.

However, he said, "I feel like a lot of the important work I did this session was seeing that some bad bills didn't get passed."