Governor Nixon brushes off criticism from some legislative leaders that he’s using Highway Patrol airplanes too much.
House and Senate budget chairmen say the Highway Patrol should stop flying Governor Nixon hither and yon. Nixon is in the air and on the road a lot, defending his vetoes of what he considers special interest tax cuts and other special interest bills that he says will cripple state services. He’s trying to generate local pressure on legislators to keep them from overriding his vetoes in September.
Nixon has been telling local governments and other groups that the sales tax cut bills passed this year will devastate local and state programs. He says he’s not going to be cloistered in his office at times like this. “The Stoddard County Soil and Water (District) would not have known about the fact that they were going to get cut almost five million dollars a year…if I had not gone there,” he says.
He says he’ll continue to communicate to Missourians, which will mean long days covering a lot of territory. “I will not be cloistered in my office as Governor of the state,” he says.
Nixon says he has to govern all of Missouri, not just his Capitol office, and flying is the most efficient way to do that. He says he’s not going to stop.
