Engler: Legislation Moves Forward

The pace is starting to pick up in the Legislature, with several bills already on the governor’s desk. Several of my bills have been heard in House Committees and are moving forward in the legislative process, including:

• Senate Bill 96 and Senate Bill 97, which are both conveyance bills relating to land in St. Francois County.
• Senate Bill 226, which relates to ambulance districts. Specifically, the bill allows members of ambulance districts to be recalled and for an ambulance district to choose whether to go to the voters with a sales tax or property tax to fund a new district.

The governor signed House Bill 163 on Wednesday. A stalemate over whether Missouri should take the federal funds to extend unemployment benefits to those nearing or already past the 79-week cutoff was broken with a compromise last week. The bill was quite simply the right thing to do for the 10,000 families in our state dependent on these extended unemployment benefits. If Missouri had not accepted the benefits, we would have been the only state participating in the extended unemployment program that would have turned down these federal dollars—essentially giving our share to other states.

The compromise to get the bill through included passing an amendment to reduce Missouri’s obligation for future initial unemployment benefits by six weeks. While this amendment doesn’t affect current unemployment recipients, it will reduce businesses’ obligation in the future to pay for state-level unemployment. When the state’s unemployment benefits are reduced, the amount of money that businesses pay into state unemployment insurance trust funds is also reduced.

Another issue that came up this week was congressional redistricting. The House and Senate have different versions of the redistricting plan, and Missouri’s Congressional Delegation has come out in support of the House plan. However, many senators preferred the Senate’s plan and made it clear that the only way they would let it come to a vote was if the Senate’s version was adopted. House Bill 193 was amended to reflect the map created by the Senate Select Committee on Redistricting.

If the House and Senate cannot agree, we will not have a veto-proof plan. If the governor vetoes the plan and the House and Senate do not overturn his veto, the new map will be decided by the courts. In all likelihood, the courts would put Ste. Genevieve, St. Francois, Washington and Crawford counties in the 3rd Congressional District, currently represented by Rep. Russ Carnahan, who lives in the heart of South St. Louis. To me this is unacceptable.

Photos of the Capitol

It truly felt like Spring this week, and Keaton took the opportunity to get outside and get some photos.