Stand back! Missouri special session going down in flames
Barb Shelly
The pizza is cold, the special session is old, and Missouri’s capitol is a cheerless place today, as hopes dim for an agreement on the big economic development bill. If that fails, it will probably take local control of the St. Louis Police Department down with it.
At the risk of sounding smug, I never thought a special session was a good idea. Missouri has one of the nation’s longer legislative sessions. What they don’t get done between early January and mid-May can wait until the next session.
But anyway, things are looking bleak enough that it’s not to soon to start assigning blame. Or, to speculate on how the players will deflect the blame.
Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, can say that, hey, this special session was the idea of Republican leaders, and how is it his fault if they then can’t reach an agreement among Republicans? That’s true to a point, but there’s certainly been no knight-on-horseback moment on Nixon’s part.
Democratic lawmakers have the greatest claim to innocence. Having virtually no clout in Jeff City, they can’t be expected to take the blame when something goes wrong.
The buck stops with GOP leaders in the House and Senate. Shouldn’t they have resolved their basic differences on things like sunsets for tax credits before asking the governor to call the special session? A goose egg will look bad, no question about it. But at the end of the day, Republicans still have huge majorities in the legislature. They can do anything they want if they get their act together.
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