This year’s session of the legislature adjourned at midnight on May 30.
Granted, the speeches, debates, votes, introduction of guests and affiliated standing and grandstanding concluded weeks earlier – replete with the littering of the House chamber with bills and amendments tossed into the air by departing lawmakers. But the law leaves a couple of weeks afterward for bills to be printed, signed and delivered before the session wraps up, as they say, sine die.
As adjournment ended this year’s legislative ballet, it opened another, shorter period in which the lion’s share of the legislature’s handiwork hangs in the balance of both power and politics between the lawmakers and governor.
This year, lawmakers passed 57 Senate bills and 81 House bills. By June 1, the governor had acted on 23 of these, including 14 bills that make up the state operating budget.
One bill changing the financial level for “fully” funding public education was vetoed by the governor and that veto was overridden. Also overridden was the veto of a resolution repealing a raise for personal care attendants.
Once lawmakers pass a bill, the constitution allows the governor only 15 days to act on a bill if it is sent during the legislative session, but 45 days if it is sent after the session adjourns.
Lawmakers failed to override the veto of a bill requiring workers to approve annually the deduction of union dues from their checks. Parts of two budget bills were vetoed, as was a measure changing laws on workers’ compensation.
The rest of the measures were signed, leaving the governor 44 days to review and decide the fate of the remaining 115 measures – and a great deal of maddeningly obtuse language to parse before the July 14 deadline for executive action.
Mark Hughes is a former journalist and served as a nonpartisan policy analyst for the Missouri government, including the state Senate, treasurer’s office and the utility-regulating Public Service Commission. Hughes, who helps manage Missouri Digital News, can be reached at column@mdn.org.
