(Missourinet) – Governor Jay Nixon (D) has released some of the money in the current budget that he was restricting in response to a court ruling that allowed tobacco companies to not pay $50-million to the state.

Nixon says positive trends in the state’s economy and in state revenue allowed him to release $2.1-million. Much of what was released today was in health care, education, and infrastructure.
The governor is still withholding more than $44-million in the Fiscal Year 2016 budget.

In a statement Nixon said he was pleased to release the money, and said he would keep monitoring the budget to take additional actions as necessary.

An updated breakdown of what the governor is withholding can be found here.

(Missourinet) – The state Senate has unanimously passed a bill that would require the Missouri Department of Education to create training guidelines and districts to adopt a youth suicide awareness and prevention policy. Senator Jill Schupp (D- Creve Coeur) says the measure could save lives.

“When we can catch a student, young person or anyone contemplating suicide, in that moment and stop them, lend them a hand, we generally almost all of the time prevent them from going to the next step and attempting suicide again,” said Schupp.

She says the second leading cause of death among children ages 10 to 24 is suicide.

Some suicide prevention groups in Missouri have also offered to provide training tools.

Senator Bob Onder (R-Lake St. Louis) says elementary and high school years are critical for children.

“You not only perhaps catch and prevent suicides, but you also catch folks with other more common mental illnesses, depression. The middle school and high school years are the years that psychotic illnesses such as schizophrenia and bi-polar disorder present too. So, that’s another potential positive byproduct of this,” said Onder.

The proposal now moves to the House.

(Missourinet) – Representative Nate Walker (R-Kirksville) says Missouri is going to become a second class state if transportation funding isn’t improved. He says urban state lawmakers are out of touch with the transportation needs in rural Missouri.

“In north Missouri and throughout rural Missouri, we have big issues with transportation. Our bridges are bad and our roads are bad. I think we need to address transportation as a priority,” said Walker.

Walker says fulfilling the state’s infrastructure needs goes hand-in-hand with economic development.

“We won’t have economic development or anything else and everything will suffer,” said Walker.

The Senate has given initial approval to a bill that would ask voters if the state’s fuel tax should be increased from 17 cents to nearly 23 cents per gallon. A final vote is expected Monday.

House Republican leadership opposes a tax hike to pay for roads and bridges.

Missouri’s fuel tax is one of the lowest in the country.

(Missourinet) – Senator Doug Libla (R-Poplar Bluff) says increasing Missouri’s fuel tax nearly 6-cents per gallon would help bridge the transportation funding gap. His original bill called for an increase of 1.5 cents for unleaded and 3.5-cents per gallon for diesel.

“The reason for that is every day we sit here and kick the can down the road, which we are really good at here in this building I’ve noticed,” said Libla. “When I got up here four years ago, we tried some other ways of raising more revenue for our highways and bridges. I’m really concerned that we are getting further and further behind, so I decided to escalate it somewhat.”

The Senate has given initial approval to his new proposal.

Opposition by some lawmakers led Libla to remove the tax differential and include asking voters to weigh in on the issue in November.

“We just have got to get to moving in this state. We have over 600 critical bridges and they are failing real rapidly. We are getting further and further behind,” said Libla. “We have a $50 billion investment in this state on highways and bridges that Missourians have already paid for. I believe everyone in this building as an elected official has a fiduciary duty to take care of the assets of Missourians.”

If the proposal gets to the House, it could face a roadblock. Republican leadership in that chamber opposes raising taxes to pay for roads and bridges. Lawmakers agree that transportation funding must be increased, but they disagree on how to fund it.

Missouri’s fuel tax is 17 cents per gallon – one of the lowest in the country.

(Missourinet) – The state House is considering legislation meant to teach more youth athletes and their parents, coaches, and officials about brain injuries, but some think the bill goes too far.

A 2011 Missouri law requires public school student athletes in grades seven through 12 be given information on brain injuries. Representative Paul Fitzwater’s (R-Potosi) bill would extend that requirement to sports that charge a participation fee and are organized by municipalities, businesses, or nonprofits.

It would also require that coaches, umpires, referees, and other youth sports officials complete brain injury training on-line or in-person and receive updated training at least once every three years thereafter.

Fitzwater says the 2011 law leaves out a lot of children.

“There are thousands and thousands more who participate in organized sports not affiliated with a school, and or younger than grade seven,” said Fitzwater.

Fitzwater referees youth sports and said he wanted to file the bill based on some of what he’s seen.

“I see these little first, second, and third graders in full-contact football and I have my own opinion about that but I guess they are going to play it, and we need to educate our coaches and officials on how to identify maybe a potential concussion with these youths,” said Fitzwater. “I’ve seen hits in football games when an individual goes to the sideline and he’s dazed, he’s rung his bell, and next thing you know he’s right back in there.”

Some lawmakers think the bill overreaches. Representative Kurt Bahr (R-St. Charles) offered an amendment to limit its proposed requirements to sports played on public school facilities.

“I don’t think it is appropriate for us to be regulating municipalities or nonprofits or other organizations in a chapter of law that is focused solely for public education,” said Bahr.

Representative Kevin Engler wondered whether the bill’s requirements could hurt youth sports.

“You’re going to make baseball coaches, when you can’t get coaches to volunteer now, take a 15-minute course on traumatic head injuries in baseball,” said Engler.

Others including Representative Genise Montecillo (D-St. Louis) agreed with Fitzwater, that Bahr’s amendment would water the bill down.

“This is an amendment that just undermines the intent of the bill,” said Montecillo. “We should be protecting all students’ brains.”

The House on Wednesday halted debate of the bill and the amendment without a vote.

(Missourinet) – Representative Mike Moon (R-Ash Grove) wants to ask Missouri voters to change the state Constitution to say that life begins at conception. A House committee is considering his proposed amendment.

Representative Rick Brattin (R-Harrisonville) backs the measure.

“If you’re going to determine death by heartbeat, no brain activity and all these parameters, the things that determine life are way into the early stages of a pregnancy,” said Brattin.

St. Louis physician Ed Weisbart opposes the proposal and recalls one of his patients choosing to abort her baby in order to save her own life.

“She had a decision to make and she didn’t make it casually. It wasn’t the decision that she was at all comfortable with, but she decided after careful consideration with her husband that this was the right decision for their family,” said Weisbart. “I’m here to say that they should be the ones to get to make that decision.”

Ike Skelton with pro-life group Missourians for the Unborn supports the measure and calls allowing abortion in the U.S. a culture of death.

Sarah Rossi with ACLU Missouri says the proposal won’t hold up in court.

“The U.S. Supreme Court has ruled on personhood multiple times in the form of allowing abortion in the country,” said Rossi. “State Supreme Courts have ruled on multiple resolutions like this and they’ve been struck down.”

No vote has been taken on the measure. Moon filed a similar proposal for the 2015 legislative session.

(Missourinet) – The Senate Budget Committee began this morning making changes to the proposed 27.1-billion dollar state spending plan for the year that begins July 1.

The committee will continue this week going through the thirteen bills that make up the budget and propose changes to the plan passed by the House. Once the Senate votes on a plan of its own, the House and Senate will have to agree on a final version to send to Governor Jay Nixon.

Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kurt Schaefer (R-Columbia) maintains it would take more general revenue growth than the state is projected to bring in to fund Medicaid and other health programs.

The legislature and governor agreed on a projection of 4.1-percent growth for Fiscal Year 2017, or about $366-million. He said for fund Medicaid and other programs in the budget for the state Department of Social Services would take $395-million in new General Revenue.

Schaefer told the committee members, “I want everyone to keep in their mind as we go through this budget and they want certain things added, which I’m fine with – it’s your job to do things for your district – but everyone needs to keep in mind that if we go along with House Bill 11 as-is, there is no money for anything else.”

Schaefer said in particular, Medicaid pharmacy spending has doubled from about $980-million five years ago to $1.8-billion. He and other Republicans say if Medicaid continues to grow as it has in recent years, the state won’t be able to afford it.

“I know that everyone on this committee can look at those trends, and pharmacy is just one of them in House Bill 11, and realize that is completely unsustainable,” said Schaefer. “Everything every year has been going to nothing but growing Medicaid, and it has to stop.”

The committee has delayed a decision on whether it will agree with the House and eliminate most of a proposed increase in performance-based aid to state colleges and universities, and cut $8.6-million dollars from the University of Missouri.

(Missourinet) – The state legislature is being asked to create a new state government position and new requirements aimed at helping families cope when loved ones go missing. The idea is backed by a lobbyist who says he knows firsthand what those families face.

Kerry Messer is a lobbyist for Missouri Family Network. On July 8, 2014, he reported his wife Lynn missing. There was no sign of a struggle, she took nothing with her, and no trace of her has ever been found.

Messer told Missourinet he has learned what families of missing persons go through.

“Particularly on the front end of a tragedy there are no social service agencies, there’s nowhere for them to turn. They’re at their wit’s end and they don’t know nothing. They just try to muddle through,” said Messer.

The legislation, Senate Bill 1078 sponsored by Senator Gary Romine (R-Farmington), would create the “Office of Missing Persons Advocate,” within the Missouri Office of Adminstration. The Advocate and a deputy would be appointed by the governor and face confirmation by the state Senate.

Part of that office’s responsibility, said Messer, would be to help families deal with the disappearance of a loved one.

“Someone that can help them understand the potential resources that are available to them and also to help them just to understand why they’re not hearing anything after a season of time from their local law enforcement,” said Messer.

The bill also aims to increase communication among agencies investigating missing person cases.

“Half of the missing people in this country – between 40,000 and 60,000 – are in government agency control. They are unidentified bodies that have been buried in paupers’ graves, laying in morgues, medical examiner offices. DNA has been collected, not necessarily run in a lab to have a report, but the case files on these missing persons are scattered throughout the country, county by county, with no funding source to have all these people all across the country entering this information into a searchable database, nor is this information available to the general public,” said Messer.

Messer said the bill would attempt to create a system for entering into a system and comparing data on unidentified persons with that on missing persons.

“No other state has done this,” said Messer. “There is a federal law proposed called ‘Billy’s Law’ that would create a federal system, create funding for a federal system, and if we created a missing persons advocate we would be the first state to get plugged into that but otherwise we could operate on our own.”

There is no fiscal note on the bill but Messer said the goal is for it not to cost local governments or law enforcement agencies anything, meaning it would have to be paid for by the state.

He said the Advocate should also not interfere with investigations.

“The local law enforcement agency of an unresolved missing person case is in total control of that case and we do not want to try to upset that balance,” said Messer.

The bill will be heard by a Senate Committee next week.