JEFFERSON CITY, MO. – Missouri’s governor is in his final legislative session and is starting out the year disappointed with the infighting among Senate Republicans.
In his State of the State speech, Gov. Mike Parson said what he’s done while in office hasn’t been all talk and hot air. His annual and final address happened during the same week that Senate Leadership stripped other GOP members of their committee assignments. Parson said Thursday, in a sit-down interview with our Missouri Capitol Bureau Chief Emily Manley, that it’s time for lawmakers to figure out a solution.
“Right now, we’re looking like Washington, D.C. and I don’t think anybody in Missouri wants to see that,” Parson said. “I don’t care whether you support these people on one side of this issue or another, but people don’t like chaos. We’ve done been through that and I think people want you to come up here and do your job. I’ve had the privilege of sitting in those chairs; needless to say, you’re disappointed with what you’re seeing.”
After another week of infighting among Republicans, the Senate’s top leader announced Tuesday that he was stripping several state senators of committee assignments, calling the small group “swamp creatures.” Besides losing their chairmanships, senators also had their parking removed from the Capitol’s basement garage.
“I don’t like the us versus them; I don’t like the labels, but I got a lot more people standing behind me than they do,” Senate President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, said.
Some members of the new Freedom Caucus, including Sen. Bill Eigel, R-Weldon Spring, were disappointed the governor didn’t mention anything about initiative petition legislation in his priorities Wednesday, at a time when a petition is circulating to ask voters if abortion should once again be legal.
“At this point, when there is so much at stake, gloves are off and we’re to do whatever it takes to protect life and ensure that our constitution is protected,” member of the Freedom Caucus Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, said.
Years ago, Parson said he carried initiative petition legislation himself into the Senate. Although it didn’t pass then, he would like to see it get done this session.
“We tried to leverage it for other things and then all of a sudden you get nothing done and now here we are in panic mode, almost trying to figure out how to get something done,” Parson said. “The bottom line is those are the kind of things you need to get done prior to it becoming a problem.”
When asked what he thinks about voters possibly getting to decide if abortion should be legal again in Missouri, Parson said it shouldn’t happen.
“Anything we can do to prevent that from happening, we’re going to do everything I can from the governor’s office, but I want to do it the right way,” Parson said. “I want to do it the legal way but again, that’s why the initiative petition reform was so important. Now, you’re trying to do it at the last second when it should have been done years ago.”
Democrats, frustrated with the fighting among their colleagues, are against the idea of making it harder for voters to amend the state’s constitution.
“It’s extremely telling with all the issues that are out there, the number one priority for the Republican Party is to take people’s voices away at the ballot box,” Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, said.
Rizzo went on to tell reporters that this session is unlike any other he has been through before during his political career, calling it the beginning of the end of the Republican Super Majority.
“It’s hard to watch,” Rizzo said. “I know we’re all supposed to be jubilant that Republicans are fighting with each other, but it’s sad to watch the Senate die. We can’t even begin to have policies at this point because they are unable to get to the orders of business.”
Despite tensions running high in the upper chamber, there was some unity among lawmakers this week as the governor unveiled his $52 billion proposal on Wednesday. Members on both sides of the aisle stood for things like raising teacher pay to $40,000, making childcare more affordable and improving Interstate 44.
“I think anytime you’re doing things that are good for everybody, throw politics out the window every once in a while,” Parson said. “Just do the right thing.”
The gridlock in the Senate is holding up the approval of dozens of the governor’s appointments to various boards and commissions, including the director of the Department of Health and Senior Services and the Department of Social Services. Parson said Thursday that it’s unfair to the appointees to be stuck in the middle of the crossfire.
