Davis: Progress In First Session

At left: Receiving the Freshman Legislator of the Year award for protecting Missouri Citizens Personal Freedoms from our Speaker, Steve Tilley

“I like nonsense, it wakes up the brain cells. Fantasy is a necessary ingredient in living, it's a way of looking at life through the wrong end of a telescope. Which is what I do, and that enables you to laugh at life's realities.” –Dr. Seuss

As this session wound down to and end, I found myself reflecting on my first legislative session in the Missouri House. There have been some absolutely wonderful days and some tough strenuous ones. I have met some great people and make some lifelong friends. But when we came down to the last second, I realize how good of a year we had. We protected babies from partial birth abortions. We allowed our law abiding citizens to expand their 2nd amendment rights. We balanced the budget without raising taxes (something the federal government hasn’t been able to say, in years.) We provided funding for our seniors who need help purchasing the medication the truly need. And the list goes on for some of the good things we have done.

Unfortunately we were not able to get some other good things done. With the energy situation we are currently in, we were unable to start the permit process for the nuclear facility at the Calloway plant in Fulton, Mo. We worked really hard at getting the “Early Site Permit” through but the Senate messed this up really bad. The House passed the legislation 3 months ago but the Senate, in their typical slow fashion, was debating it up until the last 15 minutes of session. With our coal plants reaching “Old Age”, we need to do something quick. It will take from 6 to 10 years to build a new nuclear plant and if we don’t start soon, it may be too late for our energy needs will surpass our energy supply. We will then have to purchase energy from other states and that will be much more expensive. We will definitely work on this issue from day 1 next year. The Senate also failed to pass our “Economic Development” legislation the House passed earlier. Because of this, we will most assuredly have a special session this year. One good thing that the Senate delayed was the vote on the statewide pseudoephedrine ban. I originally co-sponsored the bill but as time went on and I got feedback from the citizens in my district and became more educated, I started working against this bill. We do have a problem with the meth labs in our state, let us shut them down and punish the criminals without punishing law abiding citizens who simply want to get the medication they need without drastically increasing the cost to do so. When I give the Senate a hard time, I want everyone to know that OUR Senator did an absolute wonderful job at representing our senatorial district. Senator Ron Richard has done a great job for Southwest Missouri.

The House Pledge

No tax increases, lived within our means, balanced our budget.

Show Me Solutions

We had an aggressive agenda to implement and initiate positive changes for Missouri.

• We cut down on unnecessary regulations on small business and family farms (HB45&SB187)
• We increased oversight and transparency of the budgeting process
• We toughened penalties for ruthless human traffickers (HB214)
• Increased transparency in our healthcare costs to consumers (SB62)
• AND finally increased accountability through drug testing welfare recipients (HB73&47)

Fix the 6

We did all these things, but kept job creation our top priority by working through the proposals put forward by Missouri business advocacy groups.

• The house passed a total of 5 of the 6 of their proposals (HB163,HB162,HB205,HB61,SB8)
• 1/3 of those proposals have already been signed into law by the Governor (HB163 & SB19)

Common Sense Reforms

Amazingly, we didn’t stop there and continued our work to find responsible, common sense solutions to key issues facing Missourians.

• We took an important step in trying to clean up election fraud by passing a measure to let Missourians require a photo ID (SJR2)
• We also removed the potential for impropriety through gubernatorial appointments by requiring statewide elections to fill vacancies instead of repeating a Blagojevich situation. (SB282)
• We passed a reasonable fix to Prop B that will improve the safety and enforceability of animals and bad actors, but also protect our agriculture industry. (SB113)
• We also added protections to students in the classroom by passing SB54
• We extended right to carry laws to 21 year olds and made it consistent with other states (HB294)
• Extended the MO Rx program for nearly 200,000 Missouri seniors (HB412)
• AND passed a fair redistricting map for our state for the next 10 years (HB193)

Changing the Culture of Jefferson City

We started session with a commitment to changing the culture of Jefferson City.

• Chairman and committees were named sooner than ever.
• A number of Democrats were named chairman of substantive committees
• We increased the power of the minority caucus.
• The tone was improved between the majority and minority
• AND the number of lobbyist expenses on our members has reduced significantly.

As we get the final results of the truly agreed and finally passed bills, I will post them in my next Capitol Report. I want to say thank you for all of you who have helped me and prayed for me over the past 5 months. As we enter the interim, I will be asking for all of your input on what we need to plan for next year. It has been a great year and I look forward to a much better year in 2012.