Missourinet

Your source for Missouri News and Sports

You are here: Home / Archives for Jake Hummel

House leaders discuss concerns ahead of budget conference with Senate

By

Conferees from the House and Senate will get together to hammer out differences in the two chambers’ proposed spending plans this week.

House Speaker Tim Jones (left) and House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

House Speaker Tim Jones (left) and House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

House leaders say the Senate budget proposal passed a week ago spends more than the House’s, and exceeds the consensus revenue estimate that was agreed to by both chambers and the Governor in December.

House Budget Committee Chairman Rick Stream (R-Kirkwood) says that won’t work.

“We have no intention in the House to agree to anything that spends above what the CRE was.”

Stream says revenue is coming in ahead of estimates, but he says it would be wiser to put surplus money in the bank to be used for future emergencies, unintended consequences of legislation or to return to citizens in the form of tax cuts.

The Governor on Friday called for the restoration of $21 million in federal emergency response grants. Stream and House Speaker Tim Jones (R-Eureka) share that concern.

Jones says, “In this day and age of some of the horrible tragedies we’ve had and the terrorism activities in Boston and other places I’d be very concerned about taking away funding to homeland security and to those that are protecting us, our children and our families.”

The Senate also made several cuts in response to the ongoing controversy regarding the handling of Missourians’ personal information by the Revenue Department and the Highway Patrol. It approved cuts of $3.5 million in funding and 37 jobs in the Drivers License Division of the Revenue Department, $680,000 in postage funding for receiving licenses from a third-party printer and $7 million federal funds to the Department. $9 million was also cut from the Office of Administration’s Information Technologies department.

House Minority Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis) called the Senate Budget Proposal “ridiculous” and “stupid.”

“[Senate Budget Committee Chairman Kurt] Schaefer clearly has a vendetta. This is legislating by vendetta.”

Jones says it appears some cuts would also inadvertently stop funding for registration of boats and mobile homes, which he says, “sounds like a pretty serious miscalculation.”

The Senators and Representatives that will be on the conference committee will be announced later this week. The budget is due by the close of business on Friday, May 10.

House advances bill aimed at barring U.N. sustainability agenda

By

The House has given initial approval to a bill meant to keep a United Nations’ policy regarding property use out of the state.

Representative Lyle Rowland (photo courtesy; Missouri House Communications)

Representative Lyle Rowland (photo courtesy; Missouri House Communications)

It’s called Agenda 21, a non-binding 1992 agreement from the United Nations on sustainable development. Conservatives widely oppose it saying it undermines U.S. sovereignty and individual property rights. Representative Lyle Rowland’s (R-Cedarcreek) bill would bar state and local governments from implementing it in Missouri.

“One of their statements is that personal property is not sustainable. They feel like the government can do a better job of controlling property.”

See Representative Rowland’s bill

House Democrats have not spoken in support of Agenda 21, but Minority Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis City) questions the need to act against it.

“We’re wasting time on this, but yet this is something that’s never been voted on by the United States Congress. So, we’re trying to pre-empt laws that aren’t even passed yet?”

Representative Jeff Grisamore (R-Lee’s Summit) argues other policies have been enacted without Congressional action.

“When Congress failed to adopted Cap-and-Trade what did the White House do? They began to do an end-around on Congress and the Constitution and put in place Cap-and-Trade restrictions by rule making, executive order and regulation. They’ve done the same thing through Dodd and Frank and they have done the same thing now through Obamacare with the more than 20,000 regulations that are already on the books.”

The House bill needs another favorable vote to reach the Senate. The Senate has already passed such a bill.

House sends budget proposal to the Senate

By

The state House has sent its $24.8 billion dollar proposed budget to the Senate. House Democrats remain critical of Republican leadership for rejecting the inclusion of Medicaid expansion.

The House Budget Committee (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

The House Budget Committee (photo courtesy; Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

Governor Jay Nixon proposed expanding Medicaid using about $890 million dollars of federal money for that expansion, and projected it would generate about $46 million in savings and revenue.

House Democrat leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis City) says by rejecting expansion, Republicans are failing to serve about 300,000 Missourians it would have extended health coverage to.

“We will sit here and pass this budget and tell them that we don’t care about them because we have an ideological difference of opinion. That they should sit and wait and not have access to healthcare. That they should sit and wait until we come up with a better solution so that we don’t have to go back on what we said over the last couple of elections.”

Representative Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) says his party is doing the responsible thing by not accepting the expansion.

“This side cares about people. We want to have healthcare. We want to deliver it, but a program that is admittedly, by the proponents, 25 to 30 percent waste, fraud and abuse … and we’re supposed to just expand it because it’s free money.”

The Senate will likely propose changes to the House budget plan and the two chambers will then hammer out their differences in a conference committee. The legislature must agree on a plan by May 10.

The final total of the budget could still change. $118 million of it is tied to three piece of legislation that would have to be passed and signed by the Governor: $52 million from passage of an amnesty period for people to pay overdue taxes, more than $10 million from a proposed law encouraging collection of sales taxes on online purchases and more than $56 million from the elimination of a tax break for low-income renters.

If any of those don’t become law, money could have to be cut from programs and services in the budget.

House gives initial approval to $25 billion budget, Medicaid expansion rejected

By

The House is poised to send the Senate a $25 billion budget that does not include Medicaid expansion. House Democrats offered several amendments that would have plugged the Governor’s proposal to expand Medicaid in Missouri back into the new state spending plan but they were all defeated along party lines.

House Minority Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis City) offered several amendments Tuesday attempting to plug Medicaid expansion back into the House's FY 2014 budget proposal.

House Minority Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis City) offered several amendments Tuesday attempting to plug Medicaid expansion back into the House’s FY 2014 budget proposal.

Minority Floor Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis City) sponsored several of those amendments.

“We’re talking about the creation of 24,000 jobs, $8.2 billion of federal investment to this state, 300,000 Missourians with access to healthcare.”

Representative Jill Schupp (D-Creve Coeur) says Medicaid expansion is widely supported.

“The hospitals, the (state) Chamber, insurance groups, advocates for the poor and the working poor, mental health groups, the Catholic Conference, Metropolitan Congregations United … non-partisan, disparate groups who have come together and said, ‘This is the time, this is the opportunity, this is the moment to do what is right for the people of the State of Missouri.'”

Republicans say accepting expansion rather than pursuing reform would hurt the state in the long run. Representative Caleb Rowden (R-Columbia) says that could see the state in the future having to choose between the two greatest parts of its budget: education and healthcare.

“Which schools are we going to shut down because we’re giving $100 million or $200 million dollars out of the schools’ budget to expand a blatantly flawed system?”

Democrats say if the federal government does not keep its promise to pay for expansion for the first three years, and most of the cost after that, the expansion can be scrapped. Representative Kevin Engler (R-Farmington) says the last time a vote was taken to remove people from the Medicaid rolls he was there voting for it, but Democrats did not.

“I want to know which ones of you are going to be willing in three years to vote to take 300 and something people off of Medicaid. I want to be here waiting for that. It is not going to happen. You won’t do it. You didn’t do it in the past. You won’t do it in the future.”

The House is expected to vote on Thursday whether to send the budget to the Senate.

House Democrats to file ethics, campaign finance reform legislation (VIDEO)

By

House Democrats have announced they will file ethics and campaign finance reform legislation based on a bill that was unanimously approved by a bipartisan House committee in 2010.

Representative Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City, left) will sponsor ethics reform legislation he and Minority Leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis, behind podium) hope Republicans will sign on to.  (Photo credit:  Tim Bommel, Missouri House Communications)

That bill, HB 2300, did not pass. It was replaced by what Democrats say was a weaker bill that was attached to another bill and passed. The latter language was thrown out earlier this year by the state Supreme Court because it was attached to an unrelated piece of legislation, which violates state law.

Some key provisions of HB 2300 include: granting the Missouri Ethics Commission greater authority, including the power to initiate investigations, capping campaign contributions for candidates for statewide office or the General Assembly at $5,000 per donor per election, restricting committee-to-committee transfers of campaign funds, prohibiting the solicitation of campaign contributions on public property, barring lawmakers, their spouses or dependent children from accepting more than $1,000 in lobbyist expenditures per calendar year, prohibiting lawmakers from working as paid political consultants while in office and imposing a waiting period on former lawmakers lobbying the General Assembly after leaving office. Representative Kevin McManus (D-Kansas City) will file a bill that would lengthen than waiting period from one calendar year after leaving office to two years from the end of the last General Assembly in which the legislator served.

His bill will also include some new provisions related to issues that have arisen in the last two years: requiring not-for-profit organizations that contribute money for political purposes to disclose their donors, clarifying existing state law to make the intentional obscuring of the source of a campaign contribution a crime and prohibiting campaign contributions from being invested in anything other than interest-bearing checking or savings accounts.

McManus says ethics and campaign finance reform has gotten little traction in recent legislative sessions. “We’ve had a lot of talk, we’ve had a lot of excuses and we’ve had some serious obstructionism from our majority party, but in terms of results we’ve had little to none to speak of. We urge the Republican House leadership to get this bipartisan proposal heard, considered early and get campaign ethics reform done this year so we can restore some transparency and accountability to our process.”

House minority leader Jake Hummel (D-St. Louis) says he thinks the issue is bipartisan. “We are hopeful that the majority party will recognize this. I think the perception out there among the voters and among the populus is that politicians are beholden to big, corporate financial donations. I think this is a way to address it. I think that’s what (members of the public) demand.”

Hummel and McManus say if the issue isn’t addressed in the legislative session, the democrats will look to the initiative petition process to take it to a vote of the people.

Hummel says, “We will begin to partner with different groups, I think, that if this does not get done (in the legislature), to work to take it to the people because I can almost guarantee that if you put this on the ballot I’m betting it’s going to pass overwhelmingly.”

Bills can be filed beginning Monday for the session that begins January 9.

See McManus’ proposal (185 pages) here.

Watch a video of the House Democrats’ media conference below (courtesy, Jonathan Lorenz, Missouri House Communications).