Governor Jay Nixon (D) vetoed a record number of bills from the 2014 legislative session, but the Republican-led legislature will attempt to overturn many of those vetoes according, to the House Speaker.
House Speaker Tim Jones (left) says House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (right) is working with Democrats to determine what budget line item vetoes might be targets for veto override attempts. (Photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)
House Republicans have held their August caucus and discussed what vetoes they will and won’t attempt to override. Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) says he believes many of the 95 line-item vetoes Nixon made in the budget will be targets.
“Budget Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) is currently in negotiations with the minority caucus to find out if we can perhaps even just reach a general consensus on whether we should override all 95 of those vetoes,” says Jones.
Nixon says the legislature sent him a budget in May that was out of balance and didn’t account for some of the legislation it had passed, so he vetoed more than $144-million from it. Jones says his caucus disagrees, and that will fuel the veto override attempts.
“We believe that the budget that we passed was fully balanced,” says Jones, “and that the governor, through his constant playing of shell games with the budget, his constant attempts to make education the lowest priority of his administration by always attacking the education budgets, we just feel that all that was extremely unfair to Missourians, to our school children, to the senior programs that he has vetoed.”
Jones says his caucus also disagrees with the governor’s assessment of ten bills he vetoed, that he says contained more than a dozen tax breaks for special interests and would reduce state and local revenue by more than $776-million annually.
“The governor has really put out some horrible misinformation bordering on complete fabrication as to the fiscal impact of this legislation,” says Jones. He says each of those bills will be examined in the veto session.
“Many of them will likely be ripe for an override,” says Jones.
Jones this month learned that his caucus would have two more members, giving it the 110 Republicans necessary to be able to overturn vetoes without the help of any Democrats, if all House Republicans show up and vote together.
Jones discusses whether he expects that to happen in our story with him for Monday.
The legislature’s veto session begins September 10.
