Legislature sees big increase in do-over attempts

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- In backyard baseball, children can call a do-over when they swing and miss, claiming they weren't ready or paying attention.

This year, Missouri legislators tried to pitch their own version of a do-over.

In an odd ending to a long session, lawmakers spent part of their final frenzied week trying to figure out how to undo bills they had passed the week before.

In one case, they passed a health insurance bill without paying attention, realizing only afterward that it did more than they thought. A senator had sneaked in a provision legalizing certified midwives.

In another case, House members gave final passage to a massive economic development bill, knowing it contained problems but assuming it could be fixed later.

But like in baseball, lawmakers learned that you don't always get a do-over when you call for one.

When the House and Senate members adjourned their session Friday, they had passed bills making up for a couple of their previous week's moves. But they were unable to undo all of them.

Political scientist David Robertson called it amateurish.

"Some of this stuff is precedented, we've seen it before, particularly the idea of sneaking in provisions here or there that people don't fully notice or fully appreciate," Robertson said. "But we haven't seen so much -- or at least so much publicity -- about buyer's regret by the legislature within a week after they passed these provisions."

In 2005, for example, it wasn't until after lawmakers had left -- and in some cases after Gov. Matt Blunt had already signed bills into law -- that close scrutiny revealed various mistakes and contradictory sections in legislation. The corrections made up a fair part of a 16-point agenda Blunt set for a September 2005 special session.

This year, however, House members identified several problems with HB327 -- the massive economic development bill -- as they were debating its final passage. But they passed it anyway, tired of trying to resolve differences with the Senate, figuring the good outweighed the bad and assuming they could fix the troublesome parts by passing new bills in the final week of the session.

They were able to patch up just two items -- narrowing a floodplain hunting privilege so that city gun ordinances weren't pre-empted (as the earlier bill had done), and narrowing a sales tax break for utilities used in manufacturing to apply only to state taxes (not also local taxes, as in the earlier bill).

One of their failed do-over attempts focused on a provision that could exempt Internet retail companies with distribution centers in Missouri from paying sales taxes. Rep. Shannon Cooper, R-Clinton, originally supported the bill but then tried to repeal it for fear it would put Missouri-based retailers at a competitive disadvantage.

But Cooper shied away from calling the bill flawed.

"They were just issues," he said.

Some lawmakers had issues with the way Sen. John Loudon, R-Chesterfield, slipped his midwifery provision into a popular health insurance bill -- using obscure language and intentionally not telling anyone what he had done.

That led to a final-week effort by some lawmakers to reverse the midwifery provision, as well as another section of that bill that would allow the state to deduct private-sector medical debts from people's tax refunds. Neither do-over was successful.

Longtime lobbyists said they had never witnessed such a final week, with so much attention on trying to undo things lawmakers had just passed.

Robertson and Webber both point to term limits as part of the cause.

Under a voter-approved measure, lawmakers are limited to eight years in each the House and Senate. It takes them half that time to understand what's going on, Webber said, and then they're on their way out or trying to move up to the next office.

For example, a senator who serves a four-year term is "a free person" after winning just one re-election -- free to pursue pet issues without worrying about the consequences at the next election, Webber said. Knowing they are short-timers also seems to make some politicians less concerned about gaining a reputation among colleagues as a skilled lawmaker, he said.

"Term limits has removed checks or curbs on bad bills," Webber concluded.

A lack of experience seems also to have led to increased influence by outside interests who are perceived as experts, Robertson said.

In the case of the economic development bill, "that willingness to listen to outside interests may have blinded legislators to the forest of the overall bill, as opposed to the trees of its individual provisions," Robertson said.

Webber supports longer term limits. Robertson adds that a full-time legislature -- as opposed to Missouri's part-time one -- might cut down on the mistakes and oversights that occur.

But neither of those changes appear likely to win voter approval.

"Missouri wants an amateur legislature, and they have it," Robertson said. This year's do-over attempts "just makes the legislature look extremely amateur."