EDITOR'S NOTE: One paragraph in this story was changed at 9:25 a.m. Sunday, to correct a reporter's misunderstanding that, although the legislative and administration fiscal notes were based on analyses of the impact of each bill individually, the OA Budget and Planning Office's calculation of a $776 million impact is an unduplicated total.
Ten bills.
In the almost two months since Missouri lawmakers cast their last votes of the 2014 General Assembly, Gov. Jay Nixon has continued meeting with local officials, business leaders and media to explain why he vetoed them.
"By the time the budget was presented to me," Nixon told the News Tribune's Editorial Board two weeks ago, "the budget was about $800 million out-of-balance."
Nixon calls those 10 bills "the Friday Favors" and says that, "year over year, it's about $776 million worth of special interest tax breaks that were passed, literally, in the last eight to 10 hours of the session and were not accounted for in the budget."
Just a half-hour after the legislative session ended May 16, the governor was telling reporters those bills had helped "blow a hole" in the state's budget passed only a week earlier.
Collectively, they created sales tax exemptions for a number of goods and services, including graphing calculators, food processing, some older used cars and manufactured homes, data storage centers, marine fuel, dry cleaners, wine production, farmers markets, fitness centers and electricity transmission.
When the governor made his vetoes on June 11, most of the lawmakers' objections focused on policy arguments - not the financial numbers.
House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said in a news release: "I am disappointed but not surprised that the governor has once again stood in the way of providing tax relief to Missouri families and businesses.
"By vetoing these bills, he has re-emphasized the fact that the focus of his tax and spend administration is on growing the size of government rather than growing our economy."
And Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, said: "Look at the votes on these bills - most of them passed the Legislature with overwhelming bipartisan support.
"We have done our due diligence as legislators to protect Missouri taxpayers and provide the tools necessary to attract jobs to the state."
But the Legislature's final fiscal notes on the 10 bills generally appear to agree with - or at least lend some credence to - Nixon's financial worries.
Updated fiscal notes issued after the General Assembly had adjourned the regular session show a possible financial hit of nearly $237.1 million to $232.5 million in general revenue income for the state's business year that began July 1.
Nixon said on June 30 that, if lawmakers override his vetoes of the sales tax bills during the Sept. 10 veto session and put the cuts into law anyway, the impact on the state budget for the business year that began July 1 will be only $217 million in general revenue - because the bills' tax cuts wouldn't begin until mid-October instead of the end of August as originally planned.
Otherwise, "year over year, the number's about $440 (million) or $450 million," the governor said.
On top of the estimated $217 million impact, Nixon pointed to the sales tax exemption on the sale of used vehicles more than 10 years old, and noted that keeping that exemption would cost "$53 million in state highway funds" - at the same time lawmakers approved a proposed constitutional amendment, which voters will decide next month, to raise the sales tax by ¾ of a cent to pay for transportation improvements.
Part of the total $776 million impact is an estimated $351 million cut in sales tax revenues every year to local governments.
"When you're growing sales tax exemptions," the governor explained, "then you're getting not only the state sales tax, but you're jumping into (things like) soil and water districts."
He added: "There's 90 separate types of sales-tax-supported things" like hospital districts and county mental health programs throughout the state that would see reduced revenues because of the sales tax changes.
For example, both Cole County and Jefferson City have half-cent sales taxes that raise money for transportation-related issues.
Jefferson City's Parks, Recreation and Forestry department gets its operating budget from a separate half-cent sales tax money.
Statewide, Nixon noted, there's Proposition C, the voter-approved 1-cent sales tax that's distributed to each local public school district, with half of that revenue originally targeted for rolling back local property taxes.
Jefferson City's public school district still reduces its levy through the rollback each year, but many districts around the state have gotten their voters' approval to waive the rollback, letting those districts keep the additional money generated by the tax.
For that sales tax alone, the Legislature's Fiscal Oversight division says the cost to local school districts will be at least $66 million and could go higher, while the administration's Budget and Planning office calculates the cost at being at least $570 million statewide.
Both offices said the effects of some of the 10 bills aren't known yet.
In other cases, the two offices are closer together on their estimates.
On data centers, Nixon said, "Our number on data centers is $108 million. The fiscal note they've done since the end of the legislative session for the largest of the "Friday Favors' from the Legislature is $107 million."
Budget and Planning acknowledges there are differences between the two offices on the effects of each of the 10 bills, and that those differences range from $0 to $135 million - with some of the bills' effects still unknown at this point.
And, while both offices did their analyses on the impact of each bill individually, the Budget and Planning Office's calculation of a $776 million impact is an unduplicated total.
Still, both offices show the bills cutting into state and local revenues, as the governor has said.
"I'm not saying that $1 million isn't a lot of money," the governor said, "but, in the context of a $27 billion budget, it seems to me that the tone of differential seems to be higher than the practicality of that differential."
Nixon also has complained that lawmakers should not have passed the bills without having a better idea of their fiscal impact.
Although the Legislature's Fiscal Oversight division calculates the financial impact on government operations of proposed bills after they're introduced, and re-calculates that impact if the measures are changed during the debate process, the division generally isn't able to keep up with changes made during the final days of a session.
So the division staff calculates a final fiscal note on all of the "truly agreed and finally passed" bills, after the legislative session is over.
Those final calculations on the 10 bills were finished in early June, about the same time as Nixon vetoed the bills after reviewing them.
Nixon also has noted numerous times that the final bills included provisions that "hadn't had a lot of hearings" or, in some cases, never had been discussed by a committee in either the House or Senate.
In a "Capitol Report" to his Northwest Missouri constituents this month, Rep. Casey Guernsey, R-Bethany, wrote: "These bills were deliberately and thoroughly vetted, the Governor's administration having even issued an analysis of their fiscal impacts of which none were surprising or impacted the budget we wrote."
State Rep. Kathryn Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, wrote in a separate report: "The majority of amendments offered on the House floor are provisions of related bills that have been heard in a committee. As a result, most of the amendments adopted by the House have been previously considered in a public hearing."
But Nixon spokesman Scott Holste said last week: "There were 14 amendments for which no public committee hearing was held that were added onto these 10 bills either by a committee or on a chamber floor."
He provided a detailed chart of the 35 changes made to the original 10 bills, and whether the final language had been discussed in a public hearing or not.
And, he said, "These 14 amendments related to six different tax provisions, (which) account for nearly half of the total state revenue reduction projection: $205.6 million of the $425.1 million total reduction to total state revenue."
Republicans hold large majorities in both the House and Senate.
They need 23 votes in the Senate to override a governor's veto, and 23 senators are Republicans.
The House needs 109 votes to override a veto, and 108 representatives are Republicans - so a successful override would require one or more of the 52 House Democrats to vote against the governor's veto.