PHOTO GALLERY: House fresh off renovation for ’23 session

      When the Missouri House convened in January for this, the 102nd General Assembly, it did so in a freshly renovated House Chamber featuring new voting and message boards; refinished woodwork; updated wiring; and most importantly, badly needed new carpeting.

      You can see photos from before, after, and throughout that project in the gallery below (and linked here), and scroll down to read more about it.

2022 Chamber carpet replacement and renovations

      The work done during the summer and fall of 2022 was overseen by the Chief Clerk and Administrator of the House, Dana Rademan Miller.  Among other things, Miller has a deep appreciation for the history and cultural significance of the Capitol, and she brought that to this project. 

House Chief Clerk Dana Rademan Miller explains the design that was selected for new carpeting in the House Chamber. (Photo: Mike Lear, Missouri House Communications)

      “This Capitol is an art gallery … we have the beautiful quality works of art throughout the building … it is unlike any other state capitol that I’ve been in, in my time, anyway.  It’s the quality of the art that surrounds us.”

      She tells us that when the Capitol was being built more than 100 years ago the carpeting in the House was originally wool.  It has been replaced several times since then, the last time having been in 2008. 

In what was intended to be a cost saving decision the carpet installed at that time was synthetic.  Instead of saving money, this proved to be a costly choice that hampered business in the Chamber because the synthetic carpet built up static electricity more quickly than had the wool.

“Pretty quickly after we had that installed we were noticing that members were, as they were populating the chamber and walking about, they were building up a static charge and then they were shocking each other, but they were also shocking their voting boxes when they would go to vote,” Miller explained.  “A member would go to vote and they would shock their box, which then would create a chain reaction and it would shut their box down and … it would shut all of the voting stations behind it all the way to the back of the room.”

This problem developed at the beginning of a session, and obviously the voting system was of primary importance, so staff at the time had to quickly come up with a short-term fix.

“Our operations department had to fill tank sprayers with Downy and go through the aisles and spray the old carpeting with Downy to eliminate or reduce the static electricity.”

The wiring in the chamber was replaced that next summer to alleviate the static issues.  Now the Chamber is back to having wool carpeting not just for the sake of historical significance and functionality, but also because wool holds up better than did the synthetic. 

A lot of thought was put into the visual design elements of this new carpeting by Miller and others with a mind for history.  It leans heavily on symbology already found elsewhere in the Chamber. 

This image illustrates how features already in the House’s artwork (left) were recreated in the new carpet pattern (right). Here, the egg and dart border around a hawthorn blossom as seen in the ceiling of the House is recreated in the new carpet. (Photos: Tim Bommel and Mike Lear, Missouri House Communications)

“Specifically, we incorporated in the egg and dart, which symbolizes life and death; the oak leaf which symbolizes longevity, strength, endurance, and justice; the laurel, which symbolizes victory or honor and peace; the hawthorn blossom symbolizes purity; and then the dogwood is rebirth and hope and resilience.”

Miller said when these symbols were built into the Chamber they were meant to represent qualities that, it was hoped, would be found in the representatives in the House as well as in all people.

In these images can been seen the laurel pattern found on the ceiling (upper right and bottom images) that is recreated in the new carpet in the side galleries of the House Chamber. (Photos: Tim Bommel and Mike Lear, House Communications)

Among other work done during this time, professional woodworkers refinished the fine features of the dais and rostrum.  When carpet was removed from the stairs leading up either side of the dais, a fine cork floor – chosen for that structure in part to control sound – was uncovered, and it was able to be saved. 

      The members’ desks from the House floor were sent to a St. Louis company to be refinished for the first time in about 35 years, and before-and-after photos show that now they look virtually new.  Most of these desks are original to the building, their number having increased as the size of the House has increased since 1917. 

The removal of the carpeting and those desks also presented an opportunity to update the wiring beneath the Chamber floor.  This work will better serve the modern laptops and new voting boards.  It also added a system that will help the hearing impaired.

“We were able to install a loop system in the Chamber for those who need assistance with hearing.  They can tap in via Bluetooth to the loop system now and it will help them clarify and be able to hear the debate better,” said Miller.

The replacement of the voting boards had been a priority for Miller for years.  The old ones dated back to 1997 and were still running on a program that relied on Windows ’97. 

      Finally, the sound desk – which had not been original to a Chamber that originally had no sound system – was updated to a smaller, more efficient design.

      For Miller, as someone who admittedly loves the Capitol and its history, it has felt good to get to leave her stamp on the Chamber by having a project like this take place during her time as Clerk.

      “Our goal was to get the room ready for the next 30 years of use … I feel a sense of accomplishment because the desks are again beautiful and they are uniquely designed.  They were designed for that room, for those members.  We now have a floor covering that I feel reflects the quality of that room in general.  When you walk in we get so many complements about how majestic and beautiful and how fresh everything looks and that’s a very satisfying feeling,” said Miller. 

      She says there is still work to be done in the Chamber, including some plaster detailing and decorative paintings that need to be touched up.  She said there has been money set aside by the General Assembly for restoration of the Capitol as a whole, but the legislature will have to give more attention to that issue.

      “We need the full commitment from the General Assembly … we’ll see how that turns out,” said Miller.  “[The Capitol is] 100 years old and it has issues, as any historic home would have.   You have to do the maintenance and the upkeep and you have to do the remediation at times when you have environmental factors that have taken a toll, and we have all of that.”

      “We would need to make sure that we have the leaks and the plumbing and all of those things that are going on behind the walls repaired before we want to tackle some of those pieces of that puzzle that we need to do, but it’s all part of the bigger master plan.  We get the go-ahead to move forward with that, then I think you’d see some of these bigger items addressed.”

House staff efforts to respond to ‘Clean Missouri’ sunshine provisions continue

Sixty-two percent of Missouri voters in November approved Constitutional Amendment 1, better known as “Clean Missouri.”  The Amendment included language that would extend the application of the state’s open records law to the state’s lawmakers.

Chief Clerk of the Missouri House Dana Rademan Miller  (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Since its passage, Missouri House staff has been examining what it will mean for state representatives as well as the citizens they serve.

Otherwise known as the “Sunshine Law,” the open records law dating back to 1973 allows members of the public to request records from any public governmental body.  The House and the Senate had been exempt prior to Clean Missouri taking effect on December 6.

The chief clerk of the House, Dana Rademan Miller, said while the House’s administration has always responded to Sunshine requests, this will be new for some individual members.

“Our members … want to do what’s right and they want to comply with the law, but there’s a learning curve because a long-standing position was held that the members’ records were closed,” said Miller.

Miller said the House began working on updated policies to educate members shortly after Amendment 1 passed, and that work continues.

The House has provided members and their staffs with a memo outlining the provisions of Amendment 1 and materials from the Attorney General’s Office on Sunshine Law compliance, briefed incoming freshman lawmakers, and held additional meetings on managing Sunshine requests.

“We’ll be bringing in the Attorney General’s Office … They’ve got a Sunshine Unit.  They can help provide some training to the members … they’re experts on the Sunshine Law,” said Miller.  “[We’re also] talking to the Secretary of State’s Office and the State Archivist, and the Director of the Records Commission, getting their insight and advice.  They’re very willing to help members as they draft their retention policies.”

One particular area members are being educated on is what should be released in response to a request, and what should not be.

Miller said the Sunshine Law outlines more than 20 exemptions to what information should be released.

“We are making sure that the members are understanding what those exemptions are and that they are redacting information that should be redacted – for instance, personally identifiable information; social security numbers, that sort of information – but also on the other side, not redacting information that’s not protected,” said Miller.

Miller said that there are parts of the Sunshine Law that could benefit from clarification, and that interpretation of some provisions varies.  She said the language regarding exemptions is one such case.

“I think that there’s [an] understanding that we probably need to look at clarifying some of those provisions, not just for our lawmakers but also for all public governmental entities so that we can all be on the same page and everybody understands what should be provided,” said Miller.

Members of the Missouri House were sworn in on January 9, 2019, for the beginning of the 2019 legislative session.  (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The way the new constitutional provision is worded makes clear that each representative will be the custodian of records for his or her office.

“That makes sense to some extent because each member, they maintain their own records and they maintain their own e-mail account … so I understand that, but at the same time it makes it difficult for enforcement of any blanket policy on what a Sunshine policy [must] look like and maybe what a retention policy should look like – we could potentially have 163 policies and they may all be different,” said Miller.

Miller hopes the inclusion of individual lawmakers in the requirements of the Sunshine Law doesn’t discourage constituents from reaching out to those lawmakers to seek help.  She did say that members of the public should consider leaving personally identifiable information out of initial correspondence.

“We don’t want there to be a chilling effect on the ability for constituents to talk to their members,” said Miller.  “We also might want to be mindful that those records are [presumed to be] open and we need to be able to educate the constituents as well that some of the information they provide might be subject to scrutiny by another party if the documents are ‘sunshined.’”

Miller stresses that in her discussions with representatives, they haven’t been looking for ways to skirt open records requirements placed on their offices.

“I really think that in the end the records component of Clean Missouri is not a bad thing.  …  We have a duty to be transparent and responsive and I think that’s what this is going to do,” said Miller.

Of course, other portions of Amendment 1 have been the subject of discussions with lawmakers, including the prohibition against campaigning while in the Capitol and on other state property; and a $5 limit on gifts to legislators.  Miller said the respective caucuses have also been discussing the implementation of the new provisions and that the work to implement the changes will continue.