The Missouri Senate has told the House that it’s not going to sit still for the “nonsense,” as Minority Leader Victor Callahan calls it, that the House added to the ethics bill last Thursday. Senators want a negotiating committee…and Senate Minority Leader Victor Callahan hopes most of the stuff the House added last week is stripped away.Callahan was speaking to Senate leaderCharlie Shields, the sponsor of the Senate ethics bill.
Senate leader Charlie Shields has told House leaders he wants negotiating committees to get together and get back to basic ethics issues in the Senate’s original proposal—including giving the state ethics commission the power to do its own investigations of suspicious campaign giving–and a couple of other issues, bans on committee to committee transfers of funds (which he says helps hide the origin of donations), and a requirement that any campaign donations made while the legislature is in session be reported within 48 hours. He says that last point will help stop “pay to play” efforts.
The session has three days left for lawmakers to straighten out the ethics bill.