Lawyers impact veto session

Twenty-four of the bills the Missouri legislature passed in the 2016 were vetoed by the governor. Two of the vetoes were overridden and became law during Regular Session in the spring. The other 22 were up as potential overrides for Veto Session on Sept. 14.

In a previous capitol report, I let you know that one representative would be absent because he had been in a car wreck. He hydroplaned his vehicle into a sign post, and was in critical condition on a ventilator for several days, and later was shipped to Nebraska for special rehab. That representative, Bill Lant – a farm and feed salesman and Sunday school teacher from Pineville – surprised us by making it back for veto session. He looked pretty good for a 69-year old who had just been in a major car accident, and we were glad to see our friend up and about.

A quick review of veto overrides: To pass during regular session, a bill needs 82 yes votes in the House and 18 yes votes in the Senate. But if the bill is vetoed by the governor, a bill needs 109 yes votes in the House and 23 yes votes in the Senate to become law.

The two bills that will get the most ink in the press are the Gun Bill (SB656) and Voter Photo ID (HB1631). Republicans are in favor of voter photo ID and Democrats are dead against it (for reasons too lengthy to go into in this report). In years past a lot of political gamesmanship surrounded photo ID bills. Republican Senate leadership would sacrifice photo ID to get the outnumbered Democrats to not filibuster and allow passage of other bills that Republicans wanted and Democrats didn’t (a filibuster is where one Senator talks endlessly, thereby running out the clock so that not only the current bill doesn’t pass but neither does any other bill still left on the docket).

Would that happen again in veto session? Would some bill become a sacrificial lamb in some back room political deal? If so, a lot of legislative work would go to waste, and the people of Missouri would not be well-served.

Though these questions hung during the start of veto session, toward the end it was clear that nothing shady was going to transpire and the political process was executed smoothly. In the end, 15 of the vetoed bills were brought up for a vote, and 13 of them were passed. These 13 went into effect the moment both the House and Senate had completed their override votes. Not only did the noteworthy gun bill and voter photo ID pass, so did three bills pertaining to agriculture – Livestock Liability (SB844), Animal Disease Traceability (HB1414), and Non-Taxable Ag Disaster Relief (SB641).

Sadly, two bills that did not get brought up pertained to tort reform and would have put some necessary limits on how trial attorneys (the type of lawyers that make a living suing people and businesses) could perform.

While these measures had enough support to be passed in regular session, they would not have passed veto session since a number of legislators are trial attorneys and would have defeated them. This is also part of the reason they were vetoed, since our governor is an attorney also and seems to be influenced by the trial attorney lobbyists. Maybe that won’t be the case next year.