Mid-Missouri lawmakers had mixed reactions to the 2023 legislative session, the last week of which was marked by a dysfunctional Senate halted by “political theater.”
The Republican-led state House and Senate sent a few dozen legislative bills and a nearly $51 billion budget, the largest in state history, to the governor’s desk. Several priorities for area representatives were agreed to by both chambers while others were squashed as the Senate’s flow was disrupted by simmering Republican infighting.
A reinstatement of the state’s presidential preference primary election, legalization of sports betting, a bill to address veteran suicide rates, initiative petition reform and unemployment benefit reform all fell to the wayside during the final weeks of the session, Central Missouri representatives who fought for the bills said. The Republican caucus was more interested in other priorities, several added.
Rep. Dave Griffith, R-Jefferson City, said he has mixed feelings about how the session went. He said the House was “very productive,” but the Senate had a more difficult time.
Griffith had two bills sent to the governor’s desk. Of the 13 bills he filed during the session, seven cleared his chamber and made it to the Senate, where most died. One of his approved bills provides state employees the option of being paid biweekly and the other establishes the “Stars and Stripes Historic Region of Missouri” in southeast Missouri.
He also secured funding in the state budget to help homeless veterans and $1 million for a new fire department apparatus at Jefferson City Memorial Airport.
“Those are things that I’ve been working on for a couple of years so I’m glad they finally made it across the finish line,” he said.
The biweekly pay bill sailed through both chambers and became one of the first bills the Legislature sent to the governor this session. The measure was vetoed by the governor last year because it was tied to some agricultural tax credits he didn’t support. Griffith said he’s not expecting the same fate for the standalone bill this year.
“That’s a plus,” he said, “but I think that a lot of what we can do and could’ve done, it seems like always gets stalled here in the eleventh hour.”
Griffith specifically mentioned how Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, held the Senate floor during the last week of session because the House had not taken up his legislation.
Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican exploring a run for governor, then halted all action in the Senate Thursday night and Friday morning as he tried to pass personal property tax cuts before the chamber considered legalizing sports betting.
“Sometimes, it only takes one person willing to say, ‘No more,’ at the right moment,” Eigel said as he started his filibuster Thursday. “And all day, all day today we’ve taken the time to try to address the smaller issues. That’s what this chamber’s good at, smaller issues. We’ve avoided the big issues, the controversial things, like we have most of the session.”
The Senate resumed session around 3:30 p.m. Friday, and Moon promptly filibustered to decry the Legislature’s lack of action on a bill to restrict foreign ownership of farmland.
Griffith’s bill seeking to address veteran suicide was also among those held up.
Senate Majority Floor Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, on Friday morning described Eigel’s actions and the frequent filibusters as “chaos,” and “political theater” to boost Eigel’s potential run for governor. One of O’Laughlin’s goals early in the session was keeping the caucus together after the past couple years of infighting.
Sen. Travis Fitzwater, R-Holts Summit, took to the floor during the last minutes of the session Friday to decry the lack of cooperation within the Senate. He said Senate rules should change if decorum isn’t restored.
“This work is hard,” he said, noting it took nearly his entire first year to get a MS awareness day bill passed during his first term in the House. “… Four of the last seven working days have been squandered for filibusters. You have to convince 100 people to vote for your stuff here — you have to get 18 senators, you have to get 82 House members, you have to leave your office in the Senate and respect the other half of this building. You have to leave your office and build relationships, this is a relationship business.”
“Relationships matter. Working hard matters in this chamber. It matters in that chamber, and we don’t just get to dictate what happens in this building,” he told his colleagues assembled on the Senate floor.
Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City, said there was “somewhat less infighting between the Republicans than last year but still way too much.”
He said most of his priorities, such as ensuring juveniles who commit second-degree murder cannot be eligible for early parole, were approved by both chambers Thursday.
“Unfortunately, the infighting kept us from some of our caucus priorities, like reforming the initiative petition process.”
Rep. Rudy Veit, R-Wardsville, said the session didn’t turn out as he expected. He said certain senators abused the upper chamber’s filibuster power to “nauseating” ends. Legislation shouldn’t have been held up over a single senator’s personal priorities, he added.
“We are here representing our constituents and the state as a whole,” he said. “We’re not here to have our own personal agendas as the sole driving force.”
Veit had at least eight bills he supported approved by conference committees awaiting Senate action by Thursday afternoon and six, all dealing with judicial proceedings, died by the end of session — as did a measure he supported to restore Missouri’s presidential preference primary.
The primary was dashed Thursday after running into Senate opposition, which those opposed said likely could have been resolved with more floor time had senators not been filibustering earlier in the week.
Veit said half the bills he carried this year were bills that cleared the House and were awaiting Senate action.
“We haven’t accomplished 90 percent of what individual legislators wanted accomplished,” he said.
Veit proposed measures related to nursing homes, animal chiropractic care and Casenet that were approved and said he supported legislation limiting transgender youth’s access to gender-affirming care and school sports, tax cuts and physical therapy bills that made it to the governor’s desk. The bills were also supported by Griffith, Fitzwater, Bernskoetter and Rep. Jim Schulte, a first-term Republican from New Bloomfield.
Schulte said he had “mixed reviews” on the productivity of the session, but he was happy to see the two chambers agree on the transgender bills, tax cuts and a sweeping crime bill.
“The process of weeding things down is pretty tedious,” he said, “but the ones that went forward are good bills.”
Veit said many bills that sought to address issues within individual districts fell by the wayside as the Legislature pursued caucus priorities. He would have liked to see the House and Senate work more closely on “bills that are good for the whole state.”
Bernskoetter said tension between the two chambers exists by design and House rules slowed down the process this session.
“The House moved slowly at the beginning of the year, with only two bills being allowed out of each House committee before spring break,” he wrote in an email to the News Tribune. “That slowed everything down. I can understand House members being frustrated with certain members of the Senate, however. I’m frustrated with certain members of the Senate, too.”
Bernskoetter said his bill to tie the duration of unemployment benefits to the state’s unemployment rate will be among his top priorities next year because it didn’t pass this year. He said he will also be focused on “ensuring farmers are protected from having their farmland taken unfairly.”
Griffith said he plans to re-file his veteran suicide bill, as well as a bill to honor veterans of the Global War of Terrorism with military metals, which was stripped of its title and language by House leadership and transformed into a tax cut bill.
Schulte said he was disappointed initiative petition reform and school open enrollment bills weren’t passed. He said he also wanted to see the state restrict foreign ownership of farmland.
“It’s frustrating when it’s your stuff that’s over there sitting around waiting,” he said, “but at the same time, I don’t think our founding fathers wanted it to be too easy, so they decided to be complicated and tedious for a reason. We’ve managed to survive it for 200 and something years now, so hopefully we’ll continue.”
“I’m looking forward to coming back,” Schulte added. “It hasn’t scared me off.”
Josh Cobb/News Tribune photo: State Sen. Mike Bernskoetter, R-Jefferson City, Mo., said there was “somewhat less infighting between the Republicans than last year but still way too much.”