The budget proposed this week by the Missouri House attempts to strengthen an attempt started last year to defund abortion providers.
Representative Robert Ross (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The current fiscal year’s budget includes language that intended to keep all money appropriated by it from going to hospitals or clinics that perform abortions. Yukon Republican Robert Ross proposed that prohibition, and said it needed to be strengthened.
The House voted to adopt language offered by Ross for this year’s budget to use the definition of “abortion services” found elsewhere in state law. Republicans including Sonya Anderson of Springfield said they hope this will clarify to the Department the legislature’s intent.
The statutory definition of “abortion services” includes not only performing abortions, but encouraging or referring a patient to have one. Raytown Representative Jerome Barnes (D) said that means facilities besides Planned Parenthood could lose money.
Representative Deb Lavender (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Democrats also argue that tax dollars are already prohibited from being used to pay for abortions, but Republicans including Anderson say that isn’t enough.
Ross’ amendment was adopted 115-35. It is now part of the proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1 that the House has sent to the Senate for its consideration. The Senate will begin its work on that proposal next week.
The single biggest change the House made during floor debate of its budget proposal this week would continue a program that aims to help low-income youth enter into the workforce.
Representative Bruce Franks (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
St. Louis City Democrat Bruce Franks, Junior, saw that Governor Eric Greitens (R) had proposed cutting all funding to the Summer Jobs League within the Department of Economic Development. Franks proposed taking $6-million from unused funds in two programs within Temporary Assistance for Needy Families to restore it, and the House voted to accept Franks’ proposal.
The Summer Jobs League gives 16- to 24-year-olds from low-income homes in the St. Louis or Kansas City areas the chance to work in a business in a field they’re interested in.
The largest portion of the state’s appropriation to the Summer Jobs League will pay the salaries of the youth participants – up to $8.50 an hour for up to 240 hours. Franks said that is part of the incentive for businesses to participate.
Participating businesses often hire the Summer Jobs League youths after their League term has expired.
Franks said Summer Jobs works in conjunction with other programs such as Prison to Prosperity, which helps youth in the St. Louis region transition out of prison.
Many of Franks’ fellow lawmakers commended him on being a freshman member of a superminority who secured a large change in the state’s budget, but Franks said that’s not what he felt good about.
The House’s budget proposal has been sent to the State Senate, which will propose its own changes. Once the two chambers agree on a spending plan, it will be sent to Governor Greitens.
If the House’s budget proposal stands, Missourians might see fewer DUI checkpoints on state roads over the next fiscal year.
Representative Galen Higdon opposed language in the House’s FY ’18 budget proposal that would keep state and federal funds allocated by that budget from going to DUI Checkpoints. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
The House proposed language that would prevent money controlled by that budget from going to such checkpoints. House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) said this is largely because of data indicating checkpoints aren’t effective enough compared to other enforcement methods.
Lake St. Louis Republican Representative Justin Hill, who formerly worked for the O’Fallon Police Department, also said saturation efforts are more effective. He encouraged fellow lawmakers to give those a try for the twelve months of Fiscal Year ’18.
Representative Galen Higdon (R-St. Joseph) is a former Buchanan County Sheriff’s Deputy. He coordinated checkpoints for the last four years before his retirement. He believes checkpoints have reduced crashes in his district, so he opposed the new language.
Representative Justin Hill supports language in the House’s FY ’18 budget proposal that would discourage DUI checkpoints for what he believes are more effective efforts. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Representative Kathie Conway (R-St. Charles) chairs the budget subcommittee on Public Safety. She said when the idea to bar state funds from going to checkpoints came up she heard from numerous law enforcement agencies, victims groups, anti-drunk driving groups, and others who opposed the change and were “upset” about it.
She said checkpoints and saturation efforts can work in conjunction, and said the latter actually work better when the two are used together.
Proponents of the change also said there are questions of whether checkpoints violate Missourians’ rights, and said saturation efforts are also more effective at dealing with other violations of the law besides impaired driving.
If the language becomes law, nothing in Missouri law would prevent law enforcement agencies from conducting checkpoints. They simply would not be able to use money allocated by the state budget to do so.
The House’s proposed budget plan next goes to the state Senate for its consideration.
One of the things House Democrats wanted in the chamber’s proposed spending plan for the next fiscal year, they got.
The House voted to move $1.5-million from an election administration improvements fund in the Secretary of State’s office to go to the implementation of the voter photo ID law approved by voters in November. Specifically that money is for educating voters about the new law so that they can comply with it when they go to the polls.
St. Louis City Democrat Peter Merideth wants that education process to include direct mail; something the Secretary of State told the House Budget Committee he wasn’t planning to use.
The change would bump the funding available for voter photo ID education to nearly $3-million. The House’s earlier proposal for funding it with about $1.4-million was based on what the Secretary of State had asked for.
The measure initially failed but after a motion to reconsider the vote, many Republicans sided with Merideth and Fitzpatrick and approved it.
It becomes part of House Bill 12. The House is expected to vote Thursday on whether to send that and the rest of the budget bills to the Senate for its consideration.
The state House is poised to propose a Fiscal Year 2018 budget that includes money based on the repeal of a tax break for low-income seniors and the disabled. Budget planners used the money that would be saved by that repeal to support in-home care for the elderly and disabled.
The repeal was first proposed a few years ago by former Governor Jay Nixon (D), based on the recommendations of a bipartisan commission that recommended changes to Missouri’s tax structure. The legislature passed a bill based on language Nixon had prepared, but Nixon later vetoed the bill after groups spoke out against the proposal.
The plan was brought up again this year as part of Republican budget makers’ response to diminished revenue and the need to reduce spending.
Kirkwood Democrat Deb Lavender proposed pulling money from three locations in the state budget to restore money for that tax break. Lavender said Missouri is in a budget crisis because the legislature has granted tax cuts to corporations.
Lavender said her proposals would buy time for the seniors benefitting from that tax break, so the state could spend the next year developing a more comprehensive tax credit reform plan.
The House is expected to vote Thursday to send that budget proposal to the Senate for its consideration.
The House Bill that would repeal that portion of the renters tax credit is still in the Senate. If it does not become law, the money that supports that credit would not be available for the in-home care program.
The state House is poised to send to the Senate a budget that would cut $500,000 from the Department of Conservation.
Representative Craig Redmon (R-Canton), who chairs the budget subcommittee that oversees Conservation, proposed the cut. He said it is in response to the Department having paid $127,000 plus benefits to former director Robert Ziehmer since he left the Department in July.
The state House’s proposed budget for Fiscal Year 2018 would bar the use of General Revenue dollars for anything associated with collecting tolls on interstates running through Missouri.
MODOT had asked budget makers for money to conduct a third study of tolling in Missouri. Republicans including Representative Bart Korman (High Hill) said no more state money should be spent on yet another study.
Some, including Hermann Representative Justin Alferman, said MODOT has only shown interest in tolling I-70 and none of the other interstates in Missouri.
Corlew also argued that Congress and the administration of President Donald Trump (R) are preparing an infrastructure package, and Missouri should keep all options open to be able to take advantage of it when it is released.
The transportation budget is laid out in House Bill 4. The House is expected to vote Thursday on whether to send that and the rest of its proposed state budget to the Senate.
The state House has finalized its proposed budget for state aid to colleges and universities for the fiscal year that begins July 1. Another favorable vote will send that plan to the Senate for its consideration.
House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
That plan would reduce funding to the University of Missouri by 9-percent, or $50-million, compared to the current fiscal year. This was part of a reduction across all higher education due to the need to reduce spending. Lawmakers blocked on Tuesday attempts to take additional money from MU. House Budget Committee Chairman Scott Fitzpatrick (R-Shell Knob) urged legislators to not seek to penalize MU over its handling of racial tensions, as many sought to do during last year’s budget debates.
The House also rejected attempts to redirect money that goes toward Lincoln University’s land grant status and the federal dollars that come with it. This was of particular importance to Democrats, including the top Democrat on the Budget Committee, Michael Butler (D-St. Louis).
Democrats attempted to remove language in the higher education budget that blocks state money from going to higher education institutions that offer less than the international tuition rate, or scholarships, to students lacking lawful immigration status.
Kansas City Democrat Lauren Arthur called that language punitive, and said it often hurts students who entered the country not by choice but with their parents.
The higher education budget is laid out in House Bill 3. The House is expected to vote Thursday on whether to send that and the rest of its proposed state budget to the Senate.
A state House member wants to expand on a Missouri law passed in 2014 that allows the use of hemp oil to treat intractable epilepsy to allow the use of that substance in treating other conditions.
Representative Donna Baringer testified in favor of a 2014 bill that made CBD use by those with intractable epilepsy legal in Missouri. Now she is sponsoring a bill that seeks to expand on that law. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Representative Donna Baringer (D-St. Louis) sponsors House Bill 937, which would allow the use of cannabidiol (CBD) oil to treat several “serious conditions” as specified in the bill. That list includes cancer, HIV, AIDS, Parkinson’s disease, Multiple sclerosis, spinal cord damage, inflammatory bowel disease, as well as other diseases or their symptoms.
The bill would also drop the requirement that a patient’s epilepsy be intractable – defined by the 2014 law as epilepsy that has not responded to three or more treatment options – before he or she may use CBD oil as a treatment.
Baringer testified for the 2014 legislation, House Bill 2238. She told the House Committee on General Laws she wants to expand on that bill after learning that only 64 of about 11,000 eligible Missouri patients are using CBD oil to treat their epilepsy.
The committee heard from John Curtis, the production director for BeLeaf, one of the cultivators of CBD oil licensed by Missouri. He said HB 937 would ease what he called a “bottleneck,” that has resulted in so few patients in Missouri using CBD oil.
He said that bottleneck begins with the 2014 law’s requirement that a neurologist recommend CBD oil for a patient, and only for patients with intractable epilepsy.
HB 937 would change Missouri law to allow a physician to recommend CBD oil for a patient rather than specify that a neurologist must make the recommendation.
The bill would also allow a greater level of Tetrahydrocannabinol (THC) allowed by law in hemp oil – .9% by weight. The current limit is .3% by weight.
Baringer said increasing the limit on the amount of THC would also allow the treatment of more conditions with CBD oil, and it will still not give a patient a “high.”
HB 937 would also allow the state to issue 10 licenses for the cultivation of cannabis. Currently only two may be issued. Baringer said with only two cultivators in the state, many Missouri users of CBD oil are getting it from out-of-state suppliers.
The committee also heard from Sandra Davis of Imperial who had been using opioid pain relievers after surgery for oral cancer, and then began using CBD oil. She said before using CBD oil she was in so much pain she could not eat or talk, and her doctor was about to put her on a feeding tube.
Legislators often say it is the one thing the General Assembly must do even if it does nothing else: pass a balanced state budget. This week the state House will take the latest step toward that end, when its members debate a budget proposal to be sent to the Senate for its consideration.
The Missouri House Budget Committee worked Tuesday to finalize the proposal it would send to the full chamber for debate that will happen this week. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Representative Scott Fitzpatrick’s (R-Shell Knob) top priority when he was named House Budget Committee Chairman was to fully fund the formula for K-12 school funding. This budget plan would do that.
The bills would also not appropriate all of the money projected to be available, so that some will be left for expenses that are unforeseen or are greater than projected. In recent years, the legislature and governor had to take care of such expenses in a mid-fiscal year, or supplemental, budget.
The budget proposal would also maintain at their current level in-home Medicaid services to seniors and people with disabilities, assuming that a House bill to end a tax break for low-income seniors and disabled becomes law. The money that bill would make available would go to the in-home care program.
House Democrats don’t like basing the support of the in-home care program on eliminating that tax break. The lead Democrat on the House Budget Committee, Michael Butler, said his party came up with other options, and one of those would be to dip into that money set in reserve.
Representative Deb Lavender (right) proposed taking $6.85-million from a fund in the Attorney General’s office and giving it to the state’s public defenders. (photo; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
Democrats also want to preserve a change made to the budget proposal last week, when one of its members proposed shifting $6.85-million from the Attorney General’s Office to the state’s Public Defender System. The Attorney General’s Office didn’t have representative in the hearing, and the budget committee approved the change.
Butler said another priority for his party is to make sure Lincoln University gets enough money to maintain its land grant status. He said the federal government has said Lincoln must have more matching funds in order to keep that status.
Butler said there is support from both parties for making sure Lincoln University keeps its land grant status.
The budget proposal would also fund a Medicaid asset limit increase, add money to the state’s senior centers, and restore some – but not all – cuts to higher education.
House passage would be just the latest stop for a Fiscal Year 2018 state budget. From the House it would go to the Senate, which will likely propose changes to the House’s plan. Once the two chambers agree on a budget, their proposal will go to Governor Greitens for his action.
