JEFFERSON CITY — A House committee rejected an effort Tuesday to let a private firm take over a software program used by lawmakers to track contacts with their constituents.
On a voice vote, the House Administration and Accounts Committee said the current in-house system should stay in place for at least the next two years because of data privacy concerns and the program’s nearly $800,000 cost.
“I think what they have is a very useful system,” said Rep. Willard Haley, R-Eldon, who spoke in favor of the in-house version. “If it’s not broke, don’t change it.”
The decision came after House Speaker Dean Plocher, R-Des Peres, and other lawmakers had voiced support for a constituent management program offered by Fireside, a subsidiary of FiscalNote.
People are also reading…
The California-based company is represented in the Missouri Capitol by lobbyists Chris Roepe and John Bardgett, who have contracts with a number of high-profile businesses and governments, including the City of Ƶ, Anheuser-Busch, the Ƶ Cardinals and Toyota.
The proposed change received pushback from House Clerk Dana Rademan Miller, who argued in a series of emails to lawmakers that the web-based product is an unneeded and expensive redundancy.
In testimony taken during the hearing, Jason Moore, an information technology worker from Ƶ County, said the Legislature should be wary of switching state data to a private company.
“Something doesn’t feel right about this. We should table this. Now is not the time,” Moore said.
Rep. Scott Cupps, R-Shell Knob, who is a member of the committee, said he is not opposed to changing the vendor in the future, but prospective companies should come before the House Budget Committee to outline their plans rather than trying to use political connections to win a state contract.
“It was not vetted through the budget process,” Cupps said.
In her analysis, Miller also expressed concern that a feature on the Fireside program would allow lawmakers to export data obtained within their official capacity as a state representative to the campaign side of their jobs.
She also said under the current system data is stored on an internal database with its own unique internal security credentials and which is not connected to the web server to avoid this data being vulnerable to hacking.
Plocher will begin the final year of serving as speaker in January before he is term limited. He is running for lieutenant governor in the 2024 election.