Missouri Legislative Roundup

Not much good - and a few quite bad bits of legislation - came out of the right-wing-dominated Missouri legislature working with the state's Governor Matt Blunt. 

A "new" reconfigured state Medicaid system, now called HealthNet, was approved, yet the bill failed to restore health care to most of the 100,000 low-income families kicked out of Medicaid two years ago.   Despite a few reforms and passage of HB818, which included a few health care tax credits and expanded access to high-risk health insurance, Missouri did little to help the state's 700,000 uninsured.

The other signature bill of the session was a financial raid on the state student loan agency, the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority (MOHELA), to sell-off $355 million in loan assets to pay for campus construction funds, yet even there right-wing forces blocked a new health sciences center at the University of Missouri-Columbia in the name of preventing stem cell research.

Right-wing social activists scored additional victories with anti-abortion bills that imposed such punitive and costly new equipment requirements on abortion clinics that two out of the three clinics in the state will probably have to close.  People affiliated with abortion clinics were also banned from teaching sex education classes and communities were encouraged to offer abstinence-only sex education. 

On the tax front, some Missourians over age 62 will now be able to deduct Social Security and other public pension income from state income taxes, a $154 million tax cut benefiting mostly wealthier seniors since most seniors already pay no taxes on such benefits.

The state also allowed telephone companies to bypass state franchising authorities to offer video services in competition with cable companies, but included very weak buildout requirements to ensure universal access.

The best that can be said about the session was that the legislators defeated some other terrible bills, including blocking a school voucher plan, defeating a proposal to gut the state's prevailing wage law, and failing to pass a bill that would have ended cost-of-living inflation adjustments overall and cut wages for tipped workers under the state minimum wage law approved by voters last fall.

Kansas Legislative Roundup

Kansas' legislative session was dominated by cutting taxes on business and a few new investments in education around the state.

For businesses, the session was a profitable one:

• The franchise fee paid by businesses to operate in the state was eliminated, a $135 million loss in revenue for the state over the next five years.
• Unemployment taxes paid by businesses were cut by $176 million over two years.

Low-income workers did benefit from a $46 million expansion of the state Earned Income Tax Credit over the next five years.

Some money was put into increased investments around the state, including $122.7 million for schools as part of a multi-year school finance plan. 

On health care, while the state passed a few small reforms to help small businesses pool employees to get health insurance discounts and a few increased subsidies for poor families, most discussion on health care was punted to 2008, with the Kansas Health Policy Authority directed to develop a plan for providing all Kansans with health insurance.  A more specific proposal to insure every Kansas child up to the age of 5 failed.

Thankfully, the Governor vetoed an invasive law that would have forced abortion providers to report information to the state about any woman having a late-term abortion, a threat to privacy that the governor thought unacceptable.

Oklahoma Legislative Roundup

With new right-wing dominance of the state legislature, the Oklahoma session was dominated by tax giveaways to business, extreme social legislation, threats to consumer rights and one of the most anti-immigrant laws in the country.

• The legislature accelerated the effective dates for implementing a previously passed giant cut in income taxes and eliminated the franchise tax on small businesses.
• New legislation, SB 139, prohibits all abortions in state medical facilities or by state employees, unless the life of the mother is threatened or in the cases of rape or incest. An even worse bill was vetoed by the governor because it hadn't even allowed exceptions for rape and incest.  
• Despite his own fears of its punitive features, Gov. Brad Henry signed a sweeping anti-immigrant law that requires employers to screen job applicants for legal status, denies state services to undocumented immigrants, and makes it a crime to harbor an undocumented immigrant.

The governor did veto a "tort reform" bill that would have undercut consumer rights and gutted corporate accountability for injuries to the public.

On the positive side, the state dedicated permanent funding to a higher education program, Oklahoma's Promise, which provides free tuition to college students with parents making less than $50,000 per year, although the law also toughened the academic standards needed for students to qualify.

And most positively, the state enacted SB 424, the “All Kids Act,”? to expand children's eligibility for Medicaid from 185 percent of the federal poverty line up to 300 percent-- enough to add 42,000 kids to the system-- and expanded subsidies to help small businesses get health insurance for their employees.

Texas Legislative Roundup

With a raucus session that ended with Texas state House legislators trying to depose the autocratic speaker, the legislature passed a range of bills, many reversing extreme laws passed in past sessions:

• Lawmakers reversed the massive 2003 cuts in the Children's Health Insurance Program, restoring 127,000 children to the state insurance program.
• The legislature largely abandoned the privatization of the foster care system they ordered in a previous legislative session.
• Legislators passed a two-year moratorium on privately-owned toll roads.

On the energy front, the session was a mixed bag.  SB12 will expand financial subsidies to low- and moderate-income families to replace older, polluting vehicles and mandate more energy efficient appliances, but the legislature also approved corporate subsidies to nuclear power plant companies as well.

And legislators approved a range of other bills:

• Sent a major $3 billion bond issue to fund cancer research to the voters.
• Sent a constitutional amendment to voters to require recording individual lawmakers' votes on final passage of bills.
• Overturned the Governor's administrative action requiring cervical cancer vaccination of sixth-grade girls.
• Allowed high schools to offer elective Bible courses, added "under God" to the Texas pledge of allegiance, and added a $5 per visit tax on visits to strip clubs.
• Divested the state pension fund from Sudan.

Notably, the legislature refused to enact any major anti-immigrant bills or a voter ID bill that would have undermined voting rights in the state. This reflects trends in the state towards more progressive leadership, highlighted by the emerging leadership struggle in the House that will dominate politics going into the next session.