Members of the Missouri Senate will use their legislative spring break to become more familiar with House bills on their way to the upper chamber.
Lawmakers concluded the first half of the 2022 legislative session Thursday and won't be back in session until Monday, March 21.
The General Assembly has passed one bill since convening in January, which was a supplemental appropriations bill with state worker pay raises, federal dollars for schools and funding for Medicaid expansion. It was signed by Gov. Mike Parson on Feb. 24.
The Missouri House has passed 39 pieces of legislation in total. The Senate, which has been embroiled in Republican infighting all session, has passed 13.
Senate Majority Floor Leader Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, said he'll be using the spring break to review legislation passed by the House.
The House has passed several election-related measures that are of interest, Rowden said, including initiative petition reform, and voter ID and paper ballot requirements.
"They have a number of those kind of out there, so we want to take a look at the various iterations of that and make sure we get it right, especially on the IP (initiative petition) front," Rowden said.
Ballot language is particularly important, Rowden said, because he doesn't want to spend Senate time on legislation that voters won't accept.
Rowden said the House has also passed some important education bills that will soon be making their way to the Senate.
A bill to reformulate funding to charter schools based on enrollment is personally important, Rowden said, as are changes to the state virtual school program.
The House narrowly passed the charter school funding bill and another education bill to create an open enrollment system allowing students to attend a school outside their district Wednesday.
Minority Floor Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, said Senate Democrats will also be keeping an eye on those education bills, but he largely doesn't have a preference or problem with other legislation passed by the House so far.
Rizzo said he also hasn't had time to thoroughly review incoming legislation from the House.
"We're far from that," he said. "We spend most days trying to get through the journal."
Republican senators from the conservative caucus have filibustered the procedural reading of the Senate journal on multiple occasions this session, holding up floor debate and progress on at least three key pieces of legislation.
The divide among Senate Republicans was on full display during the congressional redistricting debate last month as the conservative caucus held the floor for several days in the hopes of passing a map that would favor more Republican representation in Congress.
The infighting continued this week as Sen. Holly Thompson Rehder, R-Sikeston, called a news conference to rail against the "obstructionists" for attempting to add a controversial amendment to her bill modifying the sexual assault survivor bill of rights. Rehder was joined by Senate leadership and a large bipartisan group of senators.
Sen. Bill Eigel, a St. Charles County Republican and member of the seven-person conservative caucus, said he tries to look for opportunities to improve discussions and get meaningful legislation passed.
Eigel said the Senate is meant to be slow and deliberate in its consideration of legislation and he is confident many of the Republican party priorities will get done.
"In the Senate, you typically have 34 individuals that have an opportunity to express their wants and desires that may be either contrasting with the other members of the chamber or may be in conflict with the other members of the chamber," he said. "That's okay, that's actually how the chamber is designed."
Another member of the conservative caucus, Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, wasn't as compromising.
"I prefer not to pass bills that are stripping liberties and freedoms, and if that takes reading a book, I'll read a book," Moon said. "Communication is something that's extremely important to all of us and, again, we'll see how that plays out after we come back from spring break."