Observers: Senate's end both rare and no big deal

Members of the Missouri Senate adjourned nearly three hours early on the final day of its 2015 session Friday.
Members of the Missouri Senate adjourned nearly three hours early on the final day of its 2015 session Friday.

Several times Friday afternoon, the Missouri House floor leader asked if there were "messages from the Senate."

There was general laughter each time new Speaker Todd Richardson, R-Poplar Bluff, replied, "There are no messages from the Senate."

The Missouri Constitution says lawmakers can't debate bills after 6 p.m. "on the first Friday following the second Monday in May," but the Constitution doesn't require the General Assembly to stay in-session until that deadline.

And the Senate, after passing one bill in the final three days of the week, adjourned at about 3:10 p.m. Friday.

"There was no, I don't think, top-priority legislation that died as a result of the Senate's actions," Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, told the News Tribune Friday while the House still was voting on some bills.

But, he added, "there were plenty of just plain, good-government bills that went by the wayside because the Senate took its ball and went home a little early."

Rep. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City, added on Friday, "I think (the Senate slow-down) created problems for us, because it slowed down our process (in the House.)

"But we're finishing strong today."

Long-time Capitol observers kept saying they never had seen the type of filibuster the Senate's Democrats launched during the session's final three days.

And both parties accused the other of stopping action on bills that still needed to be debated.

The trouble began Tuesday, when Sen. Dan Brown, R-Rolla, sought a vote on the "right-to-work" bill that would prohibit employers and unions from agreeing to contracts that require all employees covered by the contract to pay union dues.

But Brown didn't just bring the bill up for debate.

He submitted a floor substitute, an amendment to that substitute and an amendment to the amendment.

Under the Senate's rules, that progression prohibited any other lawmaker from offering an amendment or attempting to rewrite the bill in any way.

Then, after almost eight hours of debate, Brown withdrew the three motions, asked for a vote on the Senate committee substitute for the original House bill, and moved the "previous question," or PQ, a parliamentary maneuver intended to stop debate and reach an immediate vote.

That left the Democrats angry, and Sen. Scott Sifton, D-Affton, told reporters after a series of votes, all forced by a PQ motion, that ended with the passage of the right-to-work measure, the Democrats intended to block all other Senate action for the rest of the session.

"If they (Republicans) are going to disrespect the manner in which this (Senate) is intended to operate, by forcing (votes on) questions and overcoming the privilege of senators debating," Sifton said, "we will use every procedural device at our disposal to restore fairness and equity."

The Senate has prided itself on being a place where, according to a phrase on the walls lawmakers see as they debate: "Free and fair debate shall ever be the firmest friend of the truth."

Sifton said the GOP tactics violated that philosophy, and the slow-down was "the Senate that the Republicans have chosen to give Missouri, which is one that does not function (and) is not capable of passing policy."

Senate Majority Leader Ron Richard, R-Joplin, said he was frustrated during the last three days, when the on-going talk-fest blocked some bills he and other lawmakers wanted to see passed.

But, he told reporters Friday after the Senate session ended, "We've had filibusters this year and last year, regardless of where we were heading on issues.

"That's part of the process.

"We're not going to give up our ability to use the previous question as part of the rules."

And Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat who served in the state Senate in the late-1980s, said at his end-of-the-session news conference, "There have been plenty of slow-downs.

"Of all the things that have happened in this building that are unique, having the Senate slow up for awhile, I don't put that in a historic perspective."

But, before the Democrats agreed to that one final vote Friday - a vote that extended hospitals' and nursing homes' ability to generate more than $3.6 billion in Medicaid funding for the state - Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City, blasted both sides.

"Because of the deadlock that we have come to, the taxpayers in the state of Missouri have been inadequately represented," she argued. "Yeah, there are bills out there that are bad, but there are bills out there that are good - and all of them deserve debate. ...

"It's disappointing that the taxpayers of Missouri are having to suffer because of the games that we are playing in this Senate."

But freshman Sen. Jeanie Riddle, R-Mokane, said Missourians shouldn't focus on the last week's slow-down.

"There were bills that went through, that were bipartisan, and both sides of the aisle worked together to get it accomplished," Riddle said. "There were good things that happened this session - and there were some things that did not go well.

"The good thing is, we'll go back and hit it again."