Volume 1, Issue 15 – The Week of May 6, 2019
Coming Down to the Wire
The Missouri General Assembly faces two major deadlines during the legislative session. One of these deadlines is for passing a balanced state operating budget for the next fiscal year. This session, that deadline was May 10. The budget process can often be a long and contentious process, as members try to make the budget reflect the priorities of the state. One of the major controversies this year involved House Bill 3. This appropriations bill deals with funding for higher education, including our state’s public colleges and universities. Education spending bills like this often become hot button issues, but the debate on HB 3 centered less on education funding and rather focused on education policy.
To begin, when HB 3 was approved by the Missouri House of Representatives, it included language that required students with an unlawful immigration status to be charged international tuition rates, as well as be prohibited from receiving scholarships through the state. This language affects Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals, or DACA, recipients who were brought to the U.S. unlawfully as children and who were granted certain protections under President Obama’s administration. Later, the Senate removed those requirements from its version of the bill. HB 3 was then sent to a conference committee to allow lawmakers to work out their differences in the House and Senate versions. In a compromise, the conference committee put back in the scholarship prohibitions, but remained silent on the international tuition rate requirement, effectively leaving that decision up to the individual colleges and universities on whether to charge these students in-state or international tuition rates. Once the agreed to conference committee report was referred back to the House, HB 3 was unfortunately voted down, due in large part to the absence of the international tuition requirement. Coming one day before the constitutional deadline of May 10, this created some uncertainty about whether the General Assembly could in fact pass a budget before the deadline. Ultimately, another conference committee was called and the tuition requirement was put back in place, along with the scholarship ban. The budget was then allowed to move forward, and in the early morning of May 10, the budget was truly agreed to and finally passed.
Now with work on the budget completed, the other important deadline facing lawmakers is the end of session. The 2019 legislative session ends at 6 p.m. on Friday, May 17. In the final week, there is sure to be a lot of legislation moving through the process, trying to get to the governor’s desk. My Senate Bill 210, naming the pawpaw tree as the state fruit tree and the hellbender salamander as the state official endangered species, is close to being approved by the General Assembly. Additionally, language from Senate Bill 8 & 74, undoing some mandatory minimums, continues to move through the process on both House Bill 192 and House Bill 113. I remain hopeful that we can continue to move forward with important legislative reforms during the final days of session.
Outside of all the happenings of the state Legislature, I would like to update you on an important issue impacting our community. This week, it was announced that the Better Together proposal has been pulled from the initiative petition process. Better Together was a proposed state constitutional amendment that would have consolidated St. Louis City and St. Louis County through a statewide vote. There were numerous concerns about this proposal, including how it came to be, specifics on how that new city/county government would function and ultimately, who would decide the fate of the merger. With Better Together being a constitutional amendment, the entire state of Missouri would have been voting on a policy that I believe is a decision best left to those affected by the proposed consolidation. While this Better Together proposal has gone away, several of the legislative proposals to ensure the people of St. Louis City and St. Louis County are the deciding factor of any future consolidation proposals remain on the table during the final week of session.
Thank you for your interest in the legislative process. I look forward to hearing from you on the issues that are important to you this legislative session. If there is anything my office can do for you, please do not hesitate to contact my office at (573) 751-3599.