JEFFERSON CITY — Realtors could play a significant role in any campaign that emerges this year asking Missourians to make it more difficult to amend the state constitution.
Republicans want to make enacting constitutional amendments harder as abortion-rights supporters move forward with a measure that would reverse the state’s near-total ban on abortion. It currently takes a statewide majority vote to change the constitution.
Sam Licklider, lobbyist for the Missouri Association of Realtors, told members of the Senate Local Government and Elections Committee on Monday that the organization opposes efforts to alter the process.
“We are opposed to any change in the initiative process — period,” he said.
Republicans are weighing numerous measures that would tack on a “concurrent majority” requirement to constitutional changes, requiring campaigns to also win a majority in most legislative districts in addition to a simple statewide majority.
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But involvement by the deep-pocketed Realtors could complicate any eventual campaign seeking to make constitutional amendments more difficult.
Key to the Realtors’ opposition is that the organization has previously used the ballot initiative process to enact changes favorable to its members.
In 2010, the organization spent over $4 million to amend the constitution to prohibit sales taxes on real estate transfers.
In 2016, the group raised $5.6 million to stop the Legislature from extending state sales taxes to services.
In August, the Realtors gave $100,000 to the newly formed Missourians for Fair Governance, which said it would oppose changes proposed by the Legislature to the initiative petition process.
The group, made up of thousands of Missouri real estate agents, gave another $100,000 to Missourians for Fair Governance in November. The Realtors are the only donor so far to Missourians for Fair Governance.
Records show Missourians for Fair Governance spent more than $100,000 between Oct. 1 and New Year’s Eve, including for strategic planning, communications work, website development and more. The campaign finished the quarter with $53,000 on hand.
Licklider registered his opposition Monday during the Senate hearing in which the committee heard testimony on a suite of Republican proposals that would complicate the initiative petition process.
The hearing followed the launch of a campaign for an abortion-rights constitutional amendment earlier this month, and a pressure campaign by hard-line Republicans to fast-track measures aimed at complicating passage of the abortion question.
Senate President Caleb Rowden, R-Columbia, referred initiative petition changes to committee on Thursday.
“You are the most powerful non-chairman I’ve ever seen, because you guys complained for two weeks and now you got a hearing,” Senate Minority Leader John Rizzo, D-Independence, told Sen. Denny Hoskins, R-Warrensburg, who presented his initiative petition plan after losing his committee chairmanship last week.
Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, on Thursday floated expelling one of the hard-line senators, Bill Eigel, from the upper chamber. That angered Eigel, and a conflict appeared unresolved as senators returned home for the weekend.
In a newsletter published over the weekend, O’Laughlin said she floated Eigel’s expulsion in response to his call for her to resign.
“This was a childish reaction on my own part, and as I think over the last few weeks, I realize the only thing I can control is myself,” O’Laughlin said. “So I am going to resolve to do better. There is no effort to remove anyone from the Senate and to suggest it even in a joking manner was stupid.”
At the same time as the Senate conflict, a survey of 719 likely Missouri general election voters conducted Wednesday and Thursday, with a margin of error of 3.9%, showed more initial support for the abortion-rights measure than an effort to make such an amendment more difficult to implement.
The Missouri Scout/Remington Research Group poll found 52% support for the abortion-rights measure, compared with 45% for a House proposal changing initiative petitions.
That proposal would require petitions to win a majority in most of Missouri’s eight congressional districts to take effect.
The poll question on possible initiative petition changes also referenced two other provisions Republicans included in the House proposal. The poll question also asked voters if they wanted to “forbid countries from funding initiatives” and “prohibit taxes on property by initiative.”
Twenty-two percent of respondents opposed the initiative petition changes while 33% weren’t sure.
On abortion legalization, the poll asked voters if they wanted to amend the Missouri Constitution to remove the state’s abortion ban, “but allow abortions to be restricted or banned after Fetal Viability except to protect the life or health of the woman.”
In addition to 52% approval, 30% percent of respondents opposed the measure, and 18% said they weren’t sure.