Historical November–December 2014 article. Dates, prices, services and contacts describe the source period; current availability has not been established.
The Legislature convened on Sept. 10 for the annual veto session.
This year, the secondhighest number of bills received the governor’s veto.
In addition to the 33 bills available for override consideration, the 55 line-items vetoed in the Fiscal Year 2015 budget resulted in a record number of items vetoed.
This led to a record number of veto overrides. Among the 125 total vetoed lineitems, 47 were overrode, returning to the budget approximately $41 million.
Some highlights of the budget for $3.5 million for a reading program specifically for provisionally and unaccredited school districts, $3 million for recruitment and training for teachers in academically deficient school districts and $150,000 for the Bright Futures Program.
On a positive note, the following day the governor released $143 million in funds he had withheld from Missouri students and schools, including $43 million in performance funding for higher education and $100 million for the foundation formula for public schools.
I cannot in good conscience allow my personal support of individual budget items to outweigh my duty to protect Missouri’s balanced budget.
The state government of Missouri runs on a budget, which at the end of the day must be balanced.
While I wholeheartedly support many of the underlying programs that were vetoed from the budget, I also support the governor’s hard decisions of how to balance this budget.
These short-sighted veto overrides will leave our budget hundreds of millions of dollars out of balance while revenue collections are down.
The General Assembly should have considered all of the governor’s line item vetoes as a whole in order to weigh the balance of all programs being cut. Instead, only the two budget chairmen determined the 50 or so politically expedient line-item vetoes that would be brought up to override.
To solve one program’s shortfall, we must take from another. November 4 election: Amendment 2: The introduction of prior charges or convictions is extremely prejudicial therefore I OPPOSE Amendment 2. Amendment 6: This amendment only allows for six days of early voting and does not include weekends.
I OPPOSE this measure because it disenfranchises people who are eligible to vote, but have limitations on transportation and work flexibility. Amendment 10: I OPPOSE Amendment 10 because it would not allow the governor to have discretion on how to manage finances and balance the budget that is delivered by the Legislature.
We should fully fund education and stop cutting revenue so the governor does not have to cut necessary services and programs out of the budget.
Originally published in The Times of Skinker-DeBaliviere, November–December 2014.
Read this article in the original newspaper issue.
Original source: SD_Times2014_11.pdf, printed page(s) 4; PDF page(s) 4.
