We’re going to try something a little different. In the these reports have been set to only be available to members who log into the system. That’s why, when you click on the teaser text on your phone or tablet rarely your desktop since you are mostly pretty busy and not much happens in the office you get the instruction to sign in. If you are like me you have to remember your , look up your password and by that point the urge to read the material has passed and you go on and do something else.
Most, though not all, of the upcoming will be set to public, I don’t think that means that any great secrets will be shared, most of the we’ll be talking about I’ve talked about in hearings in the House or Senate so our position is no great surprise.
Here goes:
The House and Senate got off to a very quick start this session, mostly dealing with closing the “revolving door” i.e. putting limits on how quickly a member of the General Assembly could go from being a legislator to being a lobbyist; putting limits on how long a member who became a lobbyist could keep the money they’d raised as a candidate; and “lobbyist gratuities”, a very tortured way of describing limits on dinner, lunches and sports and other events. The answer seems to be they need to wait about a year, they can’t keep the money and dinners, lunches and sky boxes may be a thing of the past, certainly for individuals, group events are a little more difficult simply because it makes little sense to lock members away from their constituents in the name of reform.
Our issues:
HB 1708 by Solon (R) allows the City of Kansas City to require limited liability companies who own or control property in the city to file an affidavit listing the name and address of a natural person who has control of the property. They are not allowed to charge a fee for the affidavit and it only applies to the City of Kansas City. At the 2015 April Business Conference in Kansas City representatives of the city made a very strong case for approval of the bill and our Mission Advocacy Committee and later the Board of Directors voted to support it. The bill has passed the House on a vote of 132 to 19 and now goes to the Senate.
HB 1862 by Cross (R) makes several changes to the landlord tenant law. In the first portion of the bill it makes it clear that the court may issue an order for execution of judgement before the time for filing an appeal has expired. The second part of the bill deals with the ability of the landlord and tenant to include a provision in the rental agreement about agreed on fees for certain cleaning services. These issues were in HB 1006 and HB 1330 from the 2015 session. The bill passed the House on a vote of 126 to 25 and now goes to the Senate.
SB 572 by Schmitt (R) adds minor municipal violations to the limits imposed last session in SB 5 on traffic fines. Political subdivisions are required to yearly calculate the percentage of its annual general operating revenue received from fines, bond forfeitures, and court costs for municipal ordinance violations and minor traffic violations, if the amount is over 20% then the amount over must be sent to the Missouri department of revenue. In St. Louis County and those political subdivisions in St. Louis County the limit is 12.5%. The bill passed the Senate on a vote of 25 to 6 and is now in the House.