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Missouri Senate grinds to a halt on final day of 2023 session • Missouri Independent [1]
['Jason Hancock', 'More From Author', '- May']
Date: 2023-05-12
The Missouri Senate held itself together longer than most had expected.
But on Friday morning, hours before the constitutionally mandated adjournment, it went off the rails.
Sen. Bill Eigel, a Weldon Spring Republican running for governor next year, attempted a procedural move to force a vote on personal property tax cut legislation. Instead, the chamber voted to go to a bill that would legalize sports wagering.
Losing in his bid to force the chamber to take up his bill, Eigel restarted a filibuster he kicked off Thursday night.
“Here on the final day,” he said, “members of this chamber are refusing to make good on the promises that we were going to put Missourians first.”
Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, was having none of it.
She said Eigel’s “political theater” has nothing to do with tax policy, but rather his hopes to be governor.
“What happens is, people bring legislation to the floor that they cannot get passed, and then in retaliation for that, they hang up the business of the Senate for hour after hour after hour after hour,” she said, adding: “We’re not all running for governor. So we are trying to do things in an orderly fashion and we cannot continue to have this chaos.”
It was a moment most had been expecting to happen all session.
The Senate had largely avoided the intraparty warfare that locked it in gridlock the last two years, forcing it to adjourn a day early last year for the first time since a fixed calendar date for adjournment was set.
Despite a handful of flare ups through the session, the chamber seemed to chug along.
That changed Monday, when Sen. Mike Moon, R-Ash Grove, blocked all action in the Senate in retribution for the chamber approving a postpartum Medicaid bill days earlier while he was absent dealing with a family illness.
Moon returned Tuesday and once again slowed down proceedings. He was assisted on Wednesday by other senators who made up the now-defunct conservative caucus, each of whom had a list of bills they wanted approved in order to allow the chamber to function normally.
After passing a few bills on Thursday, Eigel began a filibuster in protest of his personal property tax bill being held up until the Senate approved a different bill containing provisions legalizing sports wagering.
Friday morning, a procedural fight broke out as Eigel tried to force a vote on his bill. Failing that, he railed against his colleagues, then picked up a biography of former President Ronald Reagan and threatened to read aloud from it until 6 p.m. adjournment.
“In spite of our efforts to use the tools of diplomacy for the vast majority of this session, we have been denied that,” he said. “That we will choose a different route.”
O’Laughlin jumped to her feet to push back.
“We’re all senators and we’re all trying to represent the people from our neighborhoods,” she said. “And we need cooperation from everyone to get that done. And we’ve had a very difficult time because of a very small group of people led by the senator from (St. Charles County).”
She then moved that the Senate adjourn until 3 p.m.
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