JEFFERSON CITY • Gov. Jay Nixon’s rocky relationship with the Republican-led Missouri General Assembly got rockier this legislative session.
Legislators enacted an income tax cut over the Democratic governor’s veto, ditched his proposed Medicaid expansion and insisted that students in unaccredited districts have an option to go to private schools, despite his protests.
They also ignored his call for campaign contribution limits and, for the fifth year, brushed aside his call for tax credit reform. On top of that, they held hearings to impeach him.
Thirty minutes after they adjourned on Friday, Nixon shot back. Eight bills that passed in the final eight hours of the legislative session would hand out special tax breaks that could cost the state treasury between $263 million and $483 million and bust the budget, he told reporters.
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The tax breaks would go to groups such as “fast-food restaurants, power companies, personal seat licenses at stadiums and dry cleaners,†he said. The largest one — sales tax breaks for data storage centers — could cost as much as $220 million, according to Nixon’s budget office.
“Literally in one week they pass a budget and then come back and blow it up by having a cavalcade of special interest tax breaks fly through the legislative session in under eight hours,†he said.
He said he would use his veto pen and budget withholdings to “correct†the overspending and tax break problems.
With two and a half years left in his term, Nixon is clearly becoming more combative even as Republicans are becoming more united in pursuing their conservative, pro-business agenda. By providing an instant, detailed critique of the Legislature’s work Friday, the governor signaled that, despite his recent defeats, he will keep training his sights on what he considers the GOP’s dangerous tax policies.
One floor up in the Capitol, legislators were citing some of the same bills as Nixon — only they listed them as successes. House Speaker Tim Jones, R-Eureka, said he was excited that a sales tax break for data centers passed and that it meant “so many good-paying jobs … because Missouri has finally put the sign on our doorstep that we are wide open for business.â€
POLARIZED POLITICS
Missouri is not unique in having a deepening political divide.
“The whole trend in the United States is exemplified here — the move toward more polarization, more conflict,†said David Robertson, a political science professor at the University of Missouri-ºüÀêÊÓƵ.
“It’s difficult to find that common ground that we used to be able to find in Missouri to pass bipartisan legislation that was often moderately conservative but was able to move things forward,†Robertson said.
One reason: Statistics show that 85 percent of legislative districts are safe for one party or the other. Thus, most legislators don’t need to have broad appeal to win elections.
“If you only worry about primary voters, it pushes Republicans to the right and Democrats to the left,†said Rep. John Wright, D-Rocheport, one of the few who has a competitive district.
Illustrating the divide was the $620 million income tax cut, which will gradually reduce the personal tax rate to 5.5 percent from 6 percent and provide a 25 percent deduction for business income reported on individual returns. The tax cuts will begin in 2017 if state revenue targets are met.
Republicans contend the tax cuts will boost the economy. Nixon says they will hurt education funding and jeopardize the state’s AAA bond rating. “Sloppy drafting†could balloon the cost to more than $4 billion, he contends.
Republicans, who control 108 of the 163 House seats and 23 of the 34 Senate seats, outmaneuvered Nixon by passing the tax cut early enough in the session that they could overrule a veto before Friday’s adjournment. All they needed was one Democratic vote in the House, which they got from Rep. Keith English, D-Florissant.
As a result, Nixon didn’t have all summer to campaign against the tax cut, a strategy that helped him sustain last year’s veto.
While conservatives celebrated the tax cut’s passage, some were unhappy that the Legislature also voted to place on the Nov. 4 ballot a three-quarters of 1 percent sales tax increase for transportation projects. If it passes, the revenue, $534 million a year, will nearly offset the income tax cut.
“In the end, it is just stupid,†said Sen. John Lamping, R-Ladue. “It’s not conservative. What we agreed to do was raise taxes immediately and then lower them gradually beginning in 2017.â€
Some conservatives also were upset that the Legislature didn’t pass tax credit reform. The state gives out more than $500 million in tax credits, with the biggest programs benefiting low-income housing developers and historic property rehabbers.
Sen. Brad Lager, R-Savannah, said that when he first came to the Legislature in 2003, GOP members worked toward shared goals of smaller government and less business regulation.
“Now, it’s more about the ideas of those who walk the halls,†he said. “It’s about donors.â€
Nixon said the unrestricted flow of special-interest money could be partly responsible for the eight bills passed Friday that expanded tax exemptions.
“I think that’s one of the reasons you get policies like this,†he said. “I think that’s one of the reasons you get these tax bills that line up in a line so directly with a lot of folks who are extremely well-represented in this building.â€
WAS NIXON ENGAGED?
Personalities also come into play in the Legislature’s skirmishes with Nixon. Legislators complain that the governor is too distant, rarely meeting with them to try to forge consensus on difficult issues. That criticism comes from both Republicans and Democrats.
The massive rewrite of the state’s criminal code is an oft-cited example. As the Legislature was putting the finishing touches on the bill after three years of study and scores of hearings, Nixon expressed concerns that the bill was too large and might contain serious errors.
“He doesn’t weigh in until too late and then he weighs in clumsily,†said Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia.
Kelly, who is serving in the Legislature after an earlier stint in the 1980s, said that former governors Christopher “Kit†Bond and Mel Carnahan “would get people in a room and get stuff done, and (former Gov. John) Ashcroft was like that as he went along. That doesn’t happen with Nixon. He will not engage with people. You’ve got to give and take and scrap.â€
Ultimately, Nixon decided to let the criminal code bill go into effect without his signature, and legislators promised to correct a few problems that he identified. As they worked on that bill Friday, Rep. Kevin Engler, R-Farmington, cracked: “The governor is now engaged? Why be engaged in the biggest rewrite of the criminal code in history?â€
Even the Senate’s Democratic leader, Sen. Jolie Justus of Kansas City, was unhappy with the Nixon administration’s role on the bill.
“There are a lot of us who would like a little more communication,†she said.
That also goes for the battle over how to fix the problem-plagued student transfer law.
Under the bill passed by the Legislature, children in ºüÀêÊÓƵ, ºüÀêÊÓƵ County and adjoining counties and Jackson County could transfer to a private, nonreligious school if they had attended an unaccredited school in an unaccredited district for a semester and no slots were available in the accredited schools in their district. This option would have to be approved by local voters because local tax revenue would fund it.
If local voters failed to approve the private school option and the district remained unaccredited for three years, students could move to private, nonreligious schools without voter approval.
Shortly after the private option was negotiated, Nixon all but threatened a veto if the bill came to his desk with this option attached. Lawmakers ignored his warning, putting the provision in the bill they passed.
“If this issue is so important to the governor, my question to him is, where was he yesterday?†asked Sen. Maria Chappelle-Nadal, D-University City. “Where was he a year ago? I don’t know where he was a year ago. I know where I was. I was deep in statute, I was deep in looking at the legal aspects of where we are now.â€
Nixon said Friday that he would expedite his review of the transfer bill and decide “relatively quickly†whether to veto it. He was asked about the claim by Chappelle-Nadal and others that the private option is a must-have in the bill.
“When people say the only way they can pass a bill is to violate the Missouri Constitution and do something no one’s ever done before, which is to give public money to private schools, something tells me they’re not trying too hard,†Nixon said. “The Legislature has had three years to deal with this. An experiment with vouchers is the solution to this?â€
Compared to his cautious public demeanor in his first term as governor, Nixon seems to be returning to the freewheeling style he was known for when he was first in politics, as a state senator from Jefferson County and later as attorney general.
For example, he recently criticized a bill legislators passed to triple the waiting period for abortions to 72 hours from 24 hours.
“By failing to include an exception for rape and incest, this extreme proposal would separate Missouri from all but one other state in the nation,†Nixon said in a statement. “I have profound concerns about its impact on women and especially the victims of these heinous crimes.â€
His former top aide, attorney Chuck Hatfield, said: “It’s the old Jay. Part of the old Jay was, ‘I’m gonna speak what I think, without consideration of consequence.’ The old Jay didn’t really care whether he wins. The point is, you’re out there arguing for your position, even though you’re in the minority.â€
Alex Stuckey of the Post-Dispatch contributed to this report.