A standoff between the House and the Senate over a pair of higher education funding bills leads to the demise of the legislative effort to approve the sale of assets of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority – MOHELA. House leadership followed through on a vow to refuse to give final approval to the MOHELA bill until the Senate completed work on the Access Missouri bill. The 6pm Friday deadline for appropriations bills arrived with no Senate agreement on Access Missouri, so the MOHELA bill died. Rob Monsees, with Governor Matt Blunt’s office, says the idea is far from dead. In fact, he says the effort now will be to have the MOHELA Board to sell the assets on its own. Mnsees says the effort will move forward over the coming weeks and months because there is widespread support for the idea. He adds that while the idea was launched as a legislative effort, there was never any requirement that the Legislature be involved.
Related web sites:
Missouri HB 1022
Missouri HB 1865