Tag: Roger Reedy

House bills would help Missourians with vehicle taxation, stem temp tag ‘abuse’

      The House passed two bills this week that will help Missourians regarding the taxes they pay on vehicles.  One would address a years-old issue regarding temporary license tags.  The other would stem the hiking of property taxes on vehicles that are getting older with increasing mileage. 

Representative Michael O’Donnell (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      House Bill 415 could at last cut off the displaying by drivers of expired temporary tags – something that has been an issue in Missouri for years.   It would require dealerships to collect sales tax at the time of a vehicle purchase, either as a lump sum or by rolling the tax into the financed amount.  House Bill 713 would lay out how vehicles’ assessed valuations would be determined, replacing a system that has allowed property tax increases in the last two years. 

      St. Louis Republican Michael O’Donnell carries HB 415, which he says is the latest step in addressing the temporary tag issue.  Under previous action by the General Assembly a new computer system is coming to the Department of Revenue that will allow the collection of sales tax by dealers.  This bill would allow for its use beginning in January.

      “There is no other thing that you purchase where you have to go someplace else to pay the sales tax.  You buy a pen, you pay the sales tax at that point.  [If this bill becomes law] you’re going to buy your car and you’re going to pay the sales tax when you buy it,” said O’Donnell. 

He said the bill could also make car and truck purchases easier for Missourians by addressing what can now be a significant up-front cost. 

      “[It would] allow for the sales tax, if you’re interested, if you’re financing, to roll the sales tax into the financing if you would like that.  For a lot of folks that becomes a more reasonable proposition because writing a check for $2,000 to pay the sales tax is a lot more difficult than adding $30 to your payments every month.”

      Bipartisan backing gave the bill a 155-1 vote on its way to the Senate.  Democrats including Peter Merideth (St. Louis) said it would be a fix that is “important,” and “overdue.”

      “I actually hear more from constituents about this than many other things, strangely – about the expired tags, and frequently have to have the conversation with them that the main problem in Missouri is that we aren’t requiring dealers to collect the sales tax at the time of sale,” said Merideth.  “So folks, either intentionally or not intentionally find themselves not getting their taxes paid and their licenses ready.”

      O’Donnell said the passage of this legislation could eliminate “90%” of “temp tag abuse” in Missouri, and noted that 47 other states already allow dealers to collect tax at the time of the sale.

Representative Roger Reedy (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      The sponsor of HB 713, Rodger Reedy (R-Windsor) explained that each year Missouri assessors use the October edition of the National Automobile Dealers’ Association (NADA) Used Car Guide to determine the values of the vehicles on which Missourians pay property taxes.  HB 713 would replace that with a system that begins with the original suggested retail price (MSRP) of each vehicle from when it was new, and apply a depreciation schedule for each year of its age up to 15 years.  After that its value would be assessed at one-tenth of one percent.

      Reedy said the old system’s flaws were made obvious in the wake of the COVID pandemic. 

“In 2021 and ’22, due to used care values going up, our constituents and citizens had higher tax assessments and therefore paid higher taxes,” said Reedy.  “When those values went up, there’s no provision for rollbacks on personal property, and when that happened our taxpayers just got a taxing increase and I’ve talked to several members [who have said] that that’s been a really big issue as they’ve talked to their constituents.”

He called the bill a, “taxpayer protection act.  If there’s nothing else we can do, we can protect our taxpayers from unjustly having to pay more taxes on a vehicle that’s a year older that has more mileage.  I just don’t think it’s right to do that to our taxpayers.”

      That measure advanced to the Senate on the strength of a 150-0 vote.

House again endorses Blair’s Law penalizing ‘celebratory gunfire’

      The House has taken a vote members hope will help stop a potentially deadly form of celebration before it claims more lives and damages more property.

Representative Roger Reedy (Photo: Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

      Kansas City Police report that guns were fired into the air more than 1,100 times late on New Year’s Eve and early on New Year’s Day.  This was a decrease of about 500 rounds, according to the Department’s tracking system, but it still left two people wounded and 11 properties with damage; one of those, a police vehicle.

      Kansas City has been the center of attention for “celebratory gunfire” for years, particularly since 2011.  It was on Independence Day of that year that Blair Shanahan Lane was struck in the neck by a bullet fired into the air by a partier more than half a mile away.  She died the next day. 

The man who fired the bullet that killed Blair pleaded guilty to involuntary manslaughter and served 18 months in prison.  House Bill 1696 would have allowed prosecutors to add time to his sentence; up to 7 years in prison if it was a third offense.

      HB 1696 includes a change bearing her name, “Blair’s Law.”  It is sponsored by Representative Roger Reedy (R-Windsor). 

      “This is a very important bill.  The family of [Blair Shanahan Lane] has been here many years trying to get bill passed,” Reedy told his fellow representatives.  

      This was Reedy’s second year carrying the legislation.  Last year it ran out of time in the Senate, in part, after a number of amendments were attached to it.  This year’s version deals with only one other issue, and is therefore expected to have a much better chance at reaching the governor. 

      Another lawmaker who has worked on Blair’s Law is Kansas City Democrat Mark Sharp, who was glad to see the concerted effort to move it forward after previous attempts have ended in frustration.

      “I just want to commend [Representative Reedy] for helping get this bill through cleanly.  I want to commend the chairman of the committee this bill came through with the real intention of getting this bill through [without a lot of amendments],” said Sharp. 

      He noted that the language of Blair’s Law has been amended to two other bills that have also been sent to the Senate.

      “I sure appreciate everyone’s support in sending another version, a clean version, to the Senate to help get Blair’s Law through and helping [Representative Reedy] to make sure we get this passed this year.”

      Reedy joined Sharp and a handful of other lawmakers who have worked on Blair’s Law since 2011, each time seeing their efforts frustrated.  Another of them is Rory Rowland (D-Kansas City), who worked for several years on the issue.  He told Reedy, “You have done nothing but an absolutely stellar job and I cannot say enough good things on the floor today and I just want to wish you Godspeed with this.”

      Last Thursday Rowland announced he was resigning his House seat, having just been elected mayor of Independence.  He left with optimism that more legislators would continue working to get Blair’s Law passed.  He ended his comments to Reedy with an emotional plea, “Please get it done.”

      Reedy’s proposal specifies that a person is guilty of the unlawful use of a weapon if they fire it, with criminal negligence, within or into the limits of a municipality.  The first offense would be a class-A misdemeanor, with third and subsequent offences being class-D felonies. 

      The bill would also allow a firearm to be discharged from a stationary vehicle as authorized under the Missouri Wildlife Code.  This provision is intended to allow farm and ranch owners to shoot animals that would threaten their livestock without facing a felony charge.

      The House voted 131-0 to send that proposal to the Senate.