JEFFERSON CITY — An overnight filibuster in the Senate ended Tuesday morning as Republican senators reached agreement on advancing initiative petition changes and confirming a slate of Gov. Mike Parson’s appointments.
A hard-line GOP faction had held up Parson’s nominees to force action on changes to the initiative petition process.
After senators approved the appointments, the upper chamber adjourned. A Senate committee then swiftly voted out a measure to change how constitutional amendments are approved, sending it to the Senate floor for further action.
The vote came a day after a public hearing on the initiative petition changes. Senate committees typically hold a hearing on bills and then wait a week or more before taking further action.
Republicans say advancing changes to the initiative petition is urgent because of a pro-abortion rights campaign collecting signatures to place a constitutional amendment on the ballot this year.
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“I know that there’s been a lot of attention on the kind of pressure that we’ve been putting on leadership and the Senate chamber — it’s working fantastically. We’re very pleased with the results,” Sen. Bill Eigel, a leader of the Republican faction, said Tuesday after the Senate committee hearing.
Eigel added, “We’re going to continue to put pressure on there to ensure that this bill and other priorities of the Republican brand continue to move.”
Initiative petitions to amend the constitution currently must pass with a simple majority vote statewide. But the measure approved by the Senate Local Government and Elections Committee on Tuesday would create a “concurrent majority” requirement.
Under that system, campaigns would need to win a simple majority statewide as well as a majority in 82 of the state’s 163 Missouri House districts.
“I think there is an expectation that we’re going to hear IP (initiative petition) reform on the Senate floor next week,” Eigel said Tuesday.
“I expect to see the Democratic Caucus on the floor filibustering next week,” Eigel said.
Any change to the initiative petition process would have to appear as a proposed constitutional amendment on a statewide ballot and be approved by a majority of voters. Supporters of such a change hope to have it on the August ballot ahead of the November general election, when an abortion measure could appear.
Senate President Caleb Rowden, who has been at odds with the Eigel faction, said Tuesday he was “glad we were able to move past Gubernatorial appointments” but that “we are in the exact same place that we would have been had certain members of the Senate not chosen to hijack business for the past two weeks.
“Nothing has changed in any way relative to IP reform, but other top priorities like education reform, tort reform, and Missouri’s crackdown on illegal immigration are now behind schedule,” Rowden said.
He continued, “I am hopeful these Senators will recognize their efforts changed nothing for the positive, and that the will of the Senate can’t be dictated by a select few but by the will of the body.”
Apart from the initiative petition plan, the Senate also approved more than 40 gubernatorial appointments on Tuesday.
On the list was Robert Knodell and Paula Nickelson, who had been leading state departments in acting capacities. With Senate confirmation, Knodell is now the director of the Department of Social Services; Nickelson is the director of the Department of Health and Senior Services.
Senators also approved former Ƶ Mayor Francis G. Slay’s appointment to the State Highways and Transportation Commission.
Sen. Mike Moon, who is not a member of the Freedom Caucus but is allied with them, also ended a blockade that placed in jeopardy former state Sen. Dan Hegeman’s appointment to the Highways and Transportation Commission. Senators confirmed Hegeman to the commission.
Moon, on Monday, mentioned a 2021 incident in which he said Hegeman refused to help Moon override Parson’s veto of $140,000 that legislators allocated to businesses stung when the Department of Revenue reinterpreted state tax laws without notice.
“I saw this as an opportunity to leverage my authority (to) protect an innocent resident of Missouri who was harmed,” Moon said. “We have a decision to make where I either stand, likely alone ... or I sit down and hope that some agreements that were made will actually come through.”