Senators returned to the Capitol Monday afternoon for what would ultimately amount to a busy week. 

That afternoon the Senate brought up Senate Bill 509, the tax cut bill that the body passed earlier in the session and that was vetoed by Governor Nixon last week. The bill phases in a reduction of individual incomes taxes by one half of one percent over a period of five years and phases in an income tax deduction for small businesses that will allow those businesses to deduct 25 percent of business income over a period of five years. Both changes will begin in 2017. The legislation contains a trigger that only allows such reduction to go into effect when the highest net general revenue collected in the previous three fiscal years is exceeded by at least $150 million. Since the bill was a Senate bill, it was first brought up for an override vote in the Senate, where it received the necessary. From there, the bill was sent to the House. After debate Monday evening, the House brought it up for a vote on Tuesday and was ultimately successful in overriding the veto.

Senators spent much of their time on Tuesday discussing the issue commonly referred to as paycheck protection. The bill, House Bill 1617, would require an employee’s authorization for certain labor unions to use dues and fees to make political contributions. The authorization must be written and provided annually. The bill also requires consent for withholding earnings from paychecks. The Senate worked late in the evening to debate the bill before placing it on the informal calendar to be picked up for debate at a later time.

The debate on Wednesday focused on many of the House bills that are in the Senate for a third and final reading, including House Bill 1882 and House Joint Resolution 47. House Bill 1882 provides clean-up language to administrative requirements for public employee retirement plans. Among its provisions, the bill requires that each public employee retirement plan forward an actuarial valuation to the Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement within 60 days after its completion or adoption. The bill also requires all public employee retirement plans, with the exception of the Missouri Local Government Employees’ Retirement System (LAGERS), to provide a cost statement on proposed changes to plan benefits. The bill revises education requirements for board members and requires that plans develop a procurement action plan for attracting minority and women money managers, brokers, and investment counselors. House Bill 1882 was truly agreed and finally passed, thereby sending the bill to the governor.

House Joint Resolution 47 would, upon voter approval, state that a person seeking to vote in a public election may be required to identify himself or herself as a U.S. citizen and a resident of Missouri by producing a valid, government-issued photo identification. After some debate and several offered amendments to the bill, HJR 47 was placed on the informal calendar.

On Thursday, the Senate spent time approving the state’s annual budget bills. Each year, the General Assembly is constitutionally prohibited from considering an appropriations bill after the first Friday after the first Monday in May. Since both the House and Senate made changes to the bills, they were assigned to conference committees, where legislators worked together to agree on final versions of each bill that they must return to each chamber for final votes. Consideration on those bills lasted well into the afternoon.  Upon passage, the Senate adjourned for the week.

Next week the Senate will return for its final week of the 2014 legislative session. Iwill likely send my final update of the session the following Monday given that we will not officially end until late on Friday.  I wish you and your families a relaxing weekend and a very happy Mother's Day celebration.