Photo courtesy of kharied.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — It looks like the Missouri House of Representatives’ top education priorities will come out in one large package in which it appears there’s plenty to like, and dislike.

And that could spell its doom.

The House Committee on Elementary and Secondary Education on Wednesday approved by a narrow 13 to 9 margin legislation that includes proposals to help prop up the education foundation formula, make it easier for charter schools to locate in the state, establish school vouchers and repeal teacher tenure, among other issues.

In short, the bill combines every piece of school reform legislation before the General Assembly this session. In legislative parlance, these are called “omnibus bills,” as in all encompassing. But lawmakers with education backgrounds think the bus is about to careen off the road because it’s overloaded.

“We’ve seen this before, when it gets too big, it will die of its own weight,” said Rep. Sara Lampe, D-Springfield, a former public school teacher and administrator. “We’re not talking about one or two controversial things in this bill, we’re talking about a lot of controversial things in this.”

Some provisions, like the foundation formula fix already faced an uphill road with some saying the fix sponsored by Rep. Mike Thomson, R-Maryville, favors rural schools over urban ones. Public school proponents generally do not like bills having to do with charter schools and private school tuition subsidies. The teacher tenure issue is a touchy subject around most teachers’ organizations.

Already, the bill is drawing fire from legislators and special interest groups.

“There are some pieces in that bill I just couldn’t vote for,” said Rep. Tishaura Jones, D-St. Louis who sponsors charter school legislation that was folded into the bill. “Especially with the tuition tax credits, my constituents do not support that. If that’s allowed to go through, then the St. Louis and Kansas City school districts do not exist.”

Thomson also voted against the package telling reporters that the bill is “overreaching”.

A couple of weeks ago, House Majority Floor Leader Tim Jones, R-Eureka, told reporters that substantive education legislation might be too tough to accomplish in one legislative session, which makes the timing of the legislative package curious to some, including House Minority Leader Mike Talboy, D-Kansas CIty.

“Toying around with the education of our children is despicable,” Talboy said. “If you’re going to throw it in an omnibus bill and load it up with a bunch of stuff that people don’t want to vote for, it’s disingenuous.”

Sen. Claire McCaskill. Photo courtesy of Studio08Denver.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – When it comes to her voting record, Sen. Claire McCaskill is squarely in the middle of the road.

That’s according to a recent review by the National Journal, which every year studies the voting records of Congress and ranks them along the ideological spectrum. McCaskill, a Democrat, ranked as the 50th most liberal and 51st most conservative Senator in the review.

“I haven’t made folks on either extreme of the political spectrum happy, but I think that means I’m probably doing something right,” McCaskill said in a written statement.

Although more to the right, Missouri’s other Senator, Republican Roy Blunt, was also near the middle as the nation’s 40th most conservative senator.

When it comes to extremes, Oklahoma Republican Sen. Tom Coburn earned the distinction of being the most conservative senator, while Oregon Democrat Jeff Merkley was named the most liberal member of the upper chamber.

On Friday, the office of Treasurer Clint Zweifel received the highest possible performance rating for a state agency: excellent.

A report from State Auditor Tom Schweich found that the assets of the Treasurer’s Office exceed its liabilities by more than $1 million. That same review found total net assets increased by $363,788 last year.

The state auditor is required to review the financial management practices of all state agencies and municipal bodies.

It marks the second year in a row the Republican dominated House of Representatives has moved the bill forward. A similar measure died in the state Senate last year.

Supporters of the legislation say the bill is common sense legislation.

“This bill says we want you to come to our state and understand our laws and understand our signs,” said Rep. Dave Schatz, R-Sullivan. “There are many, many signs out there that have specific instructions, and if you can not read the language, you can not claim to be safe.”

But to those who oppose the legislation, the bill is an attack on immigrants that sends a bad message about the state to outsiders.

“We want to talk about foreign trade with the Chinese, but we don’t want to have our state welcoming to foreigners,” said Rep. Karla May, D-St. Louis. “This country was founded by people from different nationalities coming to America to set up house. Everybody that came here were immigrants.”

Others who opposed the bill said the it would drive insurance rates up, because those immigrants who can not read English would still try to drive without a license.

“This bill has no purpose, except jingoism,” said Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia. “I hope the body will rise above its lowest common denominator and defeat this ill-advised piece of legislation.”

The legislation passed the House by a 93-63 margin. Eleven Republican House members crossed over to vote against the legislation, including Branson Republican Rep. Don Phillips, a retired Missouri Highway Patrolman. He said during debate that the roads would not be safer simply because the state required driver’s license examinations to be given in English.

“I think (the issue) paints this body as being exclusionary and possibly even discriminatory,” said Phillips.

Five House Democrats, from mostly rural areas of the state, voted for the legislation.

On Thursday, the state Senate passed a bill that would allow mobile phone numbers to be added to the state no-call registry. Currently, Missouri only allows landline’s to be placed on the registry, which is a list of numbers that telemarketers are not allowed to phone.

The same bill would also place no-call restrictions on automated “robo-calls,” such as political candidates employ during their campaigns.

The bill now heads to the state House of Representatives, which has already approved its own version of the legislation.

Missouri State Capitol Building. Photo by Tim Sampson (Missouri News Horizon)

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – Progress was made early Thursday morning in the ongoing fight to redefine Missouri’s Senate district map.

By a vote of 8-2, a reapportionment panel appointed by the governor gave preliminary approval to revised boundaries for the state’s 34 Senate districts. The vote came in the early morning hours Thursday after a marathon meeting on Wednesday.

The committee’s proposal will now be submitted to the Secretary of State’s office for a 15-day public comment period before the committee casts a final vote. At least seven committee members have to support the map in order for it to pass.

This is the first time that a citizen apportionment panel has approved a redistricting map for one of the state legislative chambers in several decades. In recent decades, committees for both the House and Senate have deadlocked along party lines and the courts have decided the issue.

This is the second citizen panel to take up Senate redistricting. The original apportionment commission deadlocked in August and a provisional Senate map drawn by a judicial panel was tossed out by the state Supreme Court.

The map approved on Thursday is largely similar throughout the state, except in suburban St. Louis where a number of Republican Senators may be forced to run against each other after one of the districts was moved over to Kansas City.

During a debate on the Senate floor Thursday afternoon, several of the impacted lawmakers railed against the committee’s decision. Sen. Jim Lembke, R-St. Louis, called the plan “unacceptable,” while Chesterfield Republican Sen. Jane Cunningham said the new map “stabbed the heart” of Missouri’s economy.

Frustrations over redistricting are currently magnified by the rapidly approaching start of candidate filing for the August primary. Under current law, filing is set to begin on Tuesday and last a month.

On Thursday, Cunningham and Lembke were successful in blocking a bill that would have delayed the start of candidate filing until March 19 and shortened the overall filing period to 12 days. The Senate will have one more chance to adopt the bill, with changes from the House, on Monday afternoon when they come back into session.

“It can still be passed on Monday,” said Sen. Mike Parson, R-Bolivar, who is sponsoring the legislation to delay the filing period. “The governor can still sign it on Monday. It’ll be confusing, but that’s the only choice we’ve got.”

The shutdown in Cape Girardeau would affect 65 people, and 71 people in Springfield would lose their jobs. The centers’ duties would be consolidated with other larger facilities. Mail that now flows through the Cape Girardeau facility would go through a facility in downtown St. Louis, and Springfield mail would be routed through the Kansas City regional distribution facility.

No date has been set for the closings. Some workers at the centers will be offered transfer opportunities.

The regional distribution center closures are part of a nationwide effort by the postal service to eliminate about 252 of its 461 distribution centers. The move will eliminate about 28,000 jobs. USPS is looking to reverse a trend of losing money that reached a level of $3 billion a quarter in 2011.

On Monday night, Cole County Judge Dan Green overturned the Missouri Science and Innovation Reinvestment ACT, MOSIRA, due to constitutional issues concerning the way it was passed in September.

Green’s ruling is based on the bill’s contingency clause, which stated that MOSIRA would only be allowed to take effect if lawmakers also passed a larger, more comprehensive piece of economic development legislation. That second bill died in a legislative stalemate.

Green’s ruling prevents the state government from taking any steps to institute any part of MOSIRA – a fund intended to help generate more high-tech and research-based jobs in Missouri.

The decision is likely to be appealed to the state Supreme Court.

The legislation, Senate Bill 749, was rushed through a Senate hearing last week and comes in response to the recent outcry over a mandate from the Obama administration that requires employers or insurance companies to provide contraception coverage for employees under the provisions of the federal Affordable Care Act. The state bill is a rebuke of the White House’s position, and would prevent Missouri employers from having to provide any contraceptive, abortion or sterilization services if they deem the practices morally objectionable.

Event though the Obama Administration has since compromised on this issue, offering religious employers the opportunity to pass the cost of birth control onto insurance companies, the Missouri version of the bill was taken up on the Senate floor Tuesday.

“This bill is about religious liberty and protecting the freedom of religion,” said Sen. John Lamping, R-Ladue, who sponsors the legislation.

But many who spoke out against the bill don’t see it that way. Many raised concerns about the kind of havoc such a bill could wreak on insurance plans in Missouri if all employees and employers are giving the ability to opt out of paying for certain cervices.

Sen. Tim Green, D-St. Louis, also took issue with the lack of a definition for “sterilization,” and question whether or not this legislation could be used to deny medically necessary procedures like hysterectomies, which cause sterility as a byproduct.

“I think you’re looking at a lot of unintended consequences from this bill,” Green said.

One of the most vocal critics of the legislation though questioned the very religious underpinnings that supporters have used to buoy their arguments. Sen. Jolie Justus, D-Kansas City, said if the bill really is about religious liberty, then there would be exceptions for more than just reproductive rights issues. She noted that a number of religions have objections to medical procedures such as blood transfusions or organ transplants.

“This isn’t about religious freedom, it’s about the national political debate heading into the next presidential election,” Justus said.

After more than 90 minutes of debate, the bill failed to come to a vote on Tuesday. But Senate Republicans can bring the issue back up at any time.

Sen. Roy Blunt

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Missouri Senator Roy Blunt is defending himself amid the controversy over an amendment he sponsors that would allow for people or institutions to opt out of provisions of the new national health care act due to religious or morale objections.

“People would have the same right going forward that they have had for 220 years, including up until last week,” said Blunt during a conference call with statewide reporters this week.

Blunt helped stoke the flames of a recent controversy arising from a provision in the federal Affordable Care Act that would require employers or insurance companies to provide free contraceptives.

Opponents of the measure say Blunt’s amendment is an effort to restrict women’s access to contraceptives and other health services. They say employers without a religious affiliation could withhold insurance coverage for certain procedures and drugs citing “moral convictions” which are not specified in Blunt’s amendment.

Among those critical of the amendment is Blunt’s Democratic counterpart from Missouri.

“I am very concerned about the war on contraception,” said Sen. Claire McCaskill during a weekly conference with reporters. “I’m concerned that a woman who’s a cook in one hospital couldn’t get birth control, while a woman who’s a cook in a hospital in another location could get birth control, based on who their employer is.”

Blunt counters that anyone seeking a waiver from providing services or participating in procedures would have to prove their case.

“You would have to be able to defend that decision,” said Blunt. “You couldn’t just decide that you want an insurance company to write a policy that doesn’t exist, or, two, you’ve just suddenly had a religious epiphany. You’d have to defend this in court if necessary.”

Rep. Jay Barnes, R-Jefferson City, has sponsored legislation that prohibits the use of a tanning bed at a commercial establishment by any one younger than 15. Rep. Meanwhile, Gary Cross, R-Lee’s Summit, sponsors a bill that would require a parent or a guardian to appear at a business and sign a waiver drawn up by the state Department of Health and Senior Services on the dangers of tanning.

The legislation is in response to a rapid rise in the instance of skin cancer, especially melanoma among young women. Dr. Brundah Balaraman, a dermatology resident at Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis told a house committee this week that melanoma is the fastest rising cancer among women 20 to 29 years old with 2.2 million new cases nationwide per year.

Balaraman also sited a national study that found that people who tan using an indoor tanning bed at three times more likely to contract cancer than the general population. Balaraman then sited studies done by Washington University that 65 percent of tanning facilities in Missouri allowed children as young as 10 years old to tan, often without parental consent.

“None of these operators were knowledgeable to ask about contraindications to ultra violet radiation such as medications that (clients) may be on, prior histories of skin cancers, or other health problems that could be made worse by light exposure,” said Balaraman.

Balaraman and Dr. Karen Edison, Chair of the Department of Dermatology at the University of Missouri School of Medicine, both said greater regulation of the tanning industry is necessary, but that the legislation was a helpful first step.

“When I first started, if we had a young person with a skin cancer, it was a big deal. We would talk about it,” Edison told the committee. “And now, it’s an every day occurrence.”

“What’s most alarming to me is the young people who are developing melanoma,” she added.

Melanoma is the deadliest form of skin cancer, and Edison said studies show that UVA rays, such as the kind emitted by tanning beds, cause the kinds of abnormalities under the upper layers of the skin that result in melanoma.

“To see young people coming in with melanoma, as they are, it’s just devastating,” said Edison. “We know now, it’s a no-brainer, this is a public health issue from where I sit.”

Under Barnes’ bill, proprietors who allow patrons under 15 to tan would be fined up to $250 for a first offense, up to $500 for a second offense and be subject to a third degree misdemeanor and jail time of up to 15 days for a third offense.

Cross’s bill would fine tanning facilities up to $1,000 for any customer under the age of 18 that tans without the signature of the parent or guardian on the waiver.

Melanoma sufferer Paul Hummel of Lee’s Summit belongs to a group that speaks about the dangers of skin cancer and the behaviors that lead to it. He told the committee that teenagers need to have the permission of a responsible adult at the very least.

“Every hour in this country, somebody dies in this country from melanoma,” said Hummel. “By passing legislation like this, making it obvious that yes, there is risk to this behavior, and that it’s not just like going to Arby’s to get a sandwich.”

In addition to reinstating bans on committee-to-committee fundraising transfers, Nixon, at a press conference, asked lawmakers to once again restore fundraising caps on state political candidates.

“This world in which unlimited checks can be written to candidates, is a world that leads to deepening public cynicism about the necessary and, quite frankly, proud aspects of democracy,” Nixon told reporters in his office on Friday.

Earlier this week the Missouri Supreme Court unanimously decided to overturn Senate Bill 844, passed in 2010, for procedural reasons. The court determined that the political ethics provisions were unconstitutionally rolled into an unrelated piece of legislation to help insure its passage.

SB 844, which passed by near unanimous margins in both the House and Senate, made it illegal to launder political donations by passing them in between political fundraising committees. The same bill also imposed civil criminal penalties on those found in obstruction of the Missouri Ethics Commission. It also forced state lawmakers to report within 48 hours any contribution greater than $500 received during a legislative session.

Attempting to turn the court’s decision into a positive for Missouri voters, Nixon not only called for the provisions of SB 844 to be reinstated, but he asked lawmakers to include even more ethics rules.

Nixon said he wanted the General Assembly to approve fundraising caps for political candidates. Missouri voters enacted campaign contribution limits in 1994, but they were overturned in an earlier court case. The governor also asked that lawmakers bar themselves from acting as “political consultants” to other elected officials in order to gain an additional revenue stream.

“People will search for excuses not to reinstate this law,” Nixon said. “Those excuses should be few and far between. This week has caused a lessening of the protection and openness in the political system of the state of Missouri that was agreed to overwhelmingly by the legislature.”

Gov. Jay Nixon giving his 2012 State of the State Address. Photo by Tim Sampson (Missouri News Horizon).

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – A Missouri House of Representatives plan to maintain stable higher education funding by cutting more than $65 million from the state’s Department of Social Services did not go over well with the governor.

The plan, approved by a House appropriations committee on Thursday, would include a $28 million cut from a Medicaid program benefiting the blind and a $12 million funding decrease to child care subsidies for low-income families.

During a press conference in the state capitol on Friday, Nixon said that these programs were too vital to the quality of life for Missourians for them to be placed on the chopping block.

“Cutting healthcare for the blind, prenatal care for women, services for people with developmental disabilities and child care for low-income families is not the way to balance Missouri’s budget,” Nixon said.

But the proposal from House Republicans comes in response to Nixon’s own proposed cuts to higher education. During his State of the State Address last month, Nixon proposed cutting $106 million, roughly 12.5 percent, from Missouri’s two-year and four-year public colleges.

Nixon has since proposed reducing those cuts by $40 million with funds awarded to the state in the recent nationwide mortgage lender settlement. Combined with the House appropriations committee’s proposed social services cuts, this would allow the state to maintain level funding for higher education, which saw its budget already cut last year by 5 percent.

The proposed social services cuts now head to the House budget committee. Missouri is currently grappling with an estimated $500 million shortfall.

Sen. Jim Lembke, R-St. Louis, who has introduced numerous pieces of legislation in the past to eliminate or undermine traffic light cameras, argued that it’s unfair to Missouri motorist to have yellow light signals that vary drastically from intersection to intersection.

“It’s a public safety issue,” Lembke told his Senate colleagues shortly before the voted to send the legislation on to the House of Representatives on Thursday.

The legislation does not stipulate how long yellow light signals are to last, but it does direct the state to come up with a standard length of time in accordance with nationally recognized engineer standards set forth in the Manual on Uniform Traffic Control Devices. No yellow light could be shorter than the standardized length of time.

On Thursday, the Missouri Senate closed out its week by voting unanimously in favor of a bill to delay the candidate filing period for the Aug. 7, primary. Originally scheduled to start at the end of the month, legislation approved by the Senate would delay the start of the filing period until March 27.

The bill heads to the House of Representatives next week and contains an emergency clause to be implemented immediately upon the governor’s signature.

Senators who backed the bill argued it was a necessity, given the unusually contentious nature of this year’s redistricting process. Every 10 years, the state is required to redraw the boundaries of the Congressional and state House and Senate districts to reflect shifts in population as recorded by the U.S. Census.

But legal challenges to the state House and Congressional maps are still working their way through the courts, while the state Senate map is back to square one. A new citizens apportionment panel is set to meet this weekend to begin revising the state’s 34 Senate districts.

Some have voiced concern that delaying the filing dates gives candidates – particularly challengers – less time to campaign for the August primary and November general election, but Senators agreed there was no way to proceed with filing while the districts are still undetermined.

Missouri Supreme Court Building. Photo courtesy of Ensign Beedrill.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Sounding a lot like arguments aired last month, attorneys challenging the state’s congressional district map squared off with attorneys defending the map in front of the State Supreme Court on Thursday.

The high court took testimony on two lawsuits against the General Assembly’s proposal for redrawing the state’s congressional district boundaries. Challengers contend the maps did not meet statutory guidelines that mandate districts be “composed of contiguous territory as compact and as nearly equal in population as may be.”

This is the second time the cases have been appealed to the state Supreme Court. Last month, the high court initially returned the cases to Cole County Circuit Court to rule on the issue of geographical compactness. Circuit Court Judge Dan Green ruled that perfect compactness is never achievable and that the map was constitutional.

The day following Green’s decision, attorneys for the plaintiffs in the case appealed the decision back to the Supreme Court.

In court Thursday, attorney Jamie Barker Landes rebuffed the circuit court’s decision, arguing that an objective definition of compactness is possible to achieve. Landes, who represents plaintiffs from the Kansas City area, argues that the 5th district on the congressional map that stretches from the central portion of Kansas City eastward out to Saline County is not compact.

“The definition of compact is ‘closely united territory’”, said Landis. “And as you can see (the state legislature) chose far away territory rather than closely united territory and that was an unconstitutional choice.”

Landes’ clients maintain that the fifth congressional district should remain as much as possible inside Jackson County. The attorney told the court that configuring a district in that manner would not throw off the entire map.

“Certainly, each district affects every other district, and it’s possible to create a district that does not change every other district all that much,” said Landes.

But Edward Greim, the attorney for legislators who drew the map, says the fifth district resembles districts that date back as far as 1982, a map that was drawn by a federal court panel.

“The question is, what do our eyes tell us, and the real question there is whose eyes are looking at these (maps)?” said Greim. “What’s going through your head when you look at these maps and everybody has a little bit different way of answering that question.”

Landes in her rebuttal said she knew what her eyes told her about the design of the fifth district.

“You look at it, and it just looks strange,” she said. “In no way does the fifth district look as compact as may be.”

Both sides said they agree that the legislature should draw the congressional map, as is the direction of the state constitution. Greim said if the legislature cannot come up with a map, then the question would revert to the federal court system.

The court took the case under advisement and will render a decision in the next week or two. The opening of filing for public office is set for February 28, but the state Senate passed a bill this week that would move the opening of filing to March 27 to accommodate the possible changing of district maps.

If the high court rules against the congressional map, the burden would fall back to the House of Representatives to start the process of drawing a new congressional map. A map would have to be agreed upon by both houses of the legislature and signed by the governor, or the legislature could overcome a gubernatorial veto as it did last April.

The legislation, filed by Rep. Rodney Schad, R-Versailles, comes after hearings during the fall in several locations around Missouri, during which the House’s Crime Prevention and Public Safety Committee heard hours of testimony from registered sex offenders and their families about the undue burden faced by those on the registry.

Schad told members of the committee Wednesday that inclusion on the sex offender registry does little to rehabilitate those who need the help the most.

“In short, there’s no evidence that the public is being protected by the public registry in its current configuration,” said Schad. “With our public registry, the public is not able to sort out who the true threats to society are.”

The legislation would create a graduated scale of sexual offenses for inclusion on the registry. There would be four levels of offenders and it would exempt some from public display on the sex offender website, although information on all persons convicted of sex crimes will be maintained in a database available to law enforcement.

Those convicted of more serious crimes will still be listed with their picture on the public site. But the offenders’ work and or school addresses, and a physical description of the offender’s car will no longer be included in the information available for public viewing.

“Unfettered online access to registry information facilitates, if not encourages, neighbors, employers, colleagues and others to shun and ostracize former offenders, diminishing the likelihood of their successful reintegration into the community,” said Schad.

The legislation establishes a board to oversee the operation of the registry and the movement of offenders into the proper categories. While no one in the audience at the hearing spoke against the bill and its premise, a spokesperson for the Department of Public Safety did have reservations about the broad option.

“Changes should be done through the court room,” said James Klahr, legislative liaison for DPS. “The courts are best equipped to deal with these cases, as opposed to an independent board.”

But Rep. Mike Colona, D-St. Louis, a criminal defense attorney argued that judges in different locations are prone to making very different decisions based on the same evidence depending on the areas of the state they serve and whether or not they are elected or appointed.

“People who are in the position to remove citizens from the registry shouldn’t have to worry about retaliation in the form of getting elected,” said Colona. “And I don’t know how else to do that other than removing the process from the judiciary.”

There are currently more than 12,000 people on Missouri’s sex offender registry. Their crimes run the gamut from rape and murder to consensual sex involving minors. Schad said previously that the number of people on Missouri’s rolls has increased dramatically in the last four years as the state tries to keep up with increasingly stringent federal guidelines.

“We’ve grown in the last four years, about 4,000 offenders on the registry,” said Schad after a hearing earlier this year. “That’s just unacceptable. We may have ruined another 4,000 lives.”

Missouri Highway Patrol Captain Tim McGrail, the administrator of the state’s sex offender registry, said the legislation makes “dramatic changes” to Missouri statutes on the sex offender registry, saying that the state would be far out of compliance with federal sex offender regulations.

McGrail told the committee that law enforcement worries about offenders from other states coming into Missouri to take advantage of standards that are less than the states where they currently reside.

“They go looking for states that are less strict as far as the sex offender registry,” said McGrail. “By passing this legislation, you’ll open the door for many offenders from other states to move to Missouri.”

The committee didn’t take a vote on the bill, giving members time to contemplate changes to the bill before taking a final vote. A vote on the bill could come as early as next Wednesday, the next scheduled meeting of the committee.

Senate Bill 572, perfected in a split voice vote on Wednesday, would protect coworkers from lawsuits related to on-the-job injuries and firmly place occupational diseases caused by toxic exposure in the realm of workers compensation.

The bill, which now heads to the state House, does not include language related to financially troubled second-injury fund, which doomed a similar workers’ comp overhaul in the legislature last year.

Under this bill, Missouri workers would no longer be liable for injury caused to a coworker on the job unless it can be proven that they acted purposefully to cause harm. Even accidental actions that were found to be the result of negligence would be protected.

“This adds a standard of fairness to the law,” said bill sponsor, Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles. “Most workers are not covered for these types of lawsuits.”

This legislation would also place occupational diseases, including those caused by long-term exposure to toxic substances, into the workers comp system. Those in opposed to the change argue civil court penalties could cost companies more and provide an incentive for employers to change their practices rather than shell out modest workers’ compensation settlements.

But to get the bill through the senate, Dempsey opted to drop controversial language related to the state’s second injury fund, which will likely be brought up in separate legislation later this year.

The second-injury fund is what pays workers’ compensation benefits to employees with pre-existing disabilities that are exacerbated by workplace injuries. The fund was established in Missouri and many other states around the time of World War II to encourage employers to hire injured veterans.

After lawmakers placed caps on second-injury fund contributions seven years ago, the fund has slipped into a financial crisis and faces insolvency. Some propose eliminating the fund all together in lieu of the Americans with Disabilities Act and other laws promoting the hiring of people with disabilities, while others say contributions from business should be increased to help fully fund it.

The bill faces one more full vote in the Senate before heading to the state house.

Photo courtesy Georgie Sharp.

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – The chair of the state Senate transportation committee is taking a new approach to tackling the growing problem of texting while driving.

Rather than introducing a bill that just targets the act of texting, Sen. Bill Stouffer, R-Napton, has introduced a bill that would make it a class C misdemeanor to drive while distracted. His bill would include any act that causes a driver not to pay full attention to the road or maintain a proper lookout while driving.

The transportation committee heard the bill on Wednesday.

The bill also stipulates that if a distracted driver is involved in an accident, the offence is heightened to a class A misdemeanor.

This bill varies from past efforts to expand the state’s texting while driving ban, which currently only applies to drivers under the age of 21. In the past, opponents of expanding the texting ban have argued it’s unfair to single out a particular activity when there are a number of actions that can distract a driver.

In December, the National Transportation Safety Board recommended that all states outlaw texting while driving. The board’s recommendation came as the result of an investigation sparked by a deadly texting-while-driving crash involving a school bus outside St. Louis in 2010.