Nixon vows to spend more time with legislature in State of the State

Facing a Legislature firmly in Republican hands, Missouri Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, used his seventh State of the State address Wednesday night to strike a conciliatory chord.

“Rumor has it I don’t spend enough time on the third floor” of the Capitol, where the General Assembly meets. “I hear you. I’m going to come around a little more often. Just be careful what you wish for,” Nixon said.

According to the St. Louis Post-Dispatch, Nixon used his address, in part, to lay out his $26.1 billion operating budget proposal, which he said would invest "record funding" in education while downsizing the state bureaucracy by 217 jobs. But there was a catch.

More than half of Nixon’s proposed $129 million increase in basic aid to elementary and secondary schools hinges on legislators expanding Medicaid to cover the working poor, a move GOP legislative leaders have called a nonstarter.

Read more from the St. Louis Post-Dispatch.