Photo Credit: K. Trimble on Wikimedia Commons
KC Star:
JEFFERSON CITY — A bill that would have allowed the state to immediately take over the failing Kansas City Public Schools died in the Missouri House on Friday without coming up for a vote.
House Education Committee Chairman Scott Dieckhaus would not allow the legislation to proceed unless the Senate passed a controversial bill barring seniority from playing a role in teacher layoffs.
The Senate couldn’t do so, and both bills died when the Missouri General Assembly was constitutionally mandated to adjourn at 6 p.m.
“You just saw 17,000 kids used as pawns for legislation that has nothing to do with moving our district forward,” said a visibly distraught Sen. Kiki Curls, a Kansas City Democrat.
“This bill died because of the selfishness of a few people, and it’s just disgusting to me.”
Dieckhaus, a Republican from the eastern Missouri town of Washington, said he fully supported the…
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Is this another excuse for a special session? Are these legislators so inept they can’t pass legislation in a regular session? Are they that inept or is this all calculated? If a special session is called (like last year), anyone want to take bets how much this one will cost? StudentsFirst must have given a lot of money to school “choice” legislators to hold up legislation because the tenure issue wasn’t resolved to its satisfaction. And just to let you know, this is not solely a Republican driven agenda. Money talks to Democrat legislators as well.
http://jonathanpelto.com/2012/05/13/malloy-not-alone-last-minute-corporate-contributions-from-studentsfirst-to-missouri-democratic-legislators-pays-off/
Posted by stlgretchen | May 19, 2012, 3:49 pmHere’s how an Associated Press reporter described some of the activities in the final moments of this session of the Missouri General Assembly: “By Friday, several major bills either already had passed or been effectively declared dead. That led to any easygoing mood underscored by a series of legislative pranks. In the Senate, food mysteriously appeared on the desk of an unsuspecting senator, a flagrant violation of chamber rules. In the House, one lawmaker arrived to discover his desk wrapped in tin foil, while another lawmaker attempted to dangle objects from an upper gallery over the head of the person presiding over the chamber. Some House members threw paper wads at each other before reveling in an end-of-session tradition of tossing suddenly useless bills and amendments into the air when the final gavel fell.”
And a link to the AP article: http://www.foxreno.com/news/ap/education/mo-lawmakers-face-contraception-issue-on-last-day/nN8fC/
Posted by jwmartinez | May 19, 2012, 11:46 pm