House Happenings for May 21st, 2008

IT’S OVER!! The Second Regular Session of the 94th Missouri General Assembly ended at 6 pm on May 16, 2008. It’s finally over, it ended, but it ended without much of a bang. Personally, I think that’s actually a pretty good thing. Remember, the population of our State is fairly evenly split between the two major parties, each of which has philosophical differences about what’s good for you and me. Normally when we look at what happens legislatively, about half of us think it’s a good thing and about half of us think it’s a bad thing. The Republican Party has enjoyed a strong majority of members in both the Missouri House and Senate, as well as the Governor’s office, so it would have been possible to pass unlimited legislative policies. About half of us are thankful that didn’t happen.
I suspect that, during the next few weeks, you will hear a lot about several major accomplishments and I suspect you’ll also hear several criticisms. We did address several important issues; however, I believe that most of the accomplishments are fairly superficial. Time will tell, but I really don’t think you will experience many significant changes in what goes on with your family or in your area.
Governor Blunt’s surprising announcement, early in the session, set off quite a few political reactions and some of those reactions may have contributed to our relatively quiet session. Our Governor did maintain some priorities and at least a couple of them made it through, although perhaps not exactly in the form he would have preferred.
One of those was CCS HCS SS SCS SB 711, which addresses property taxation reform. All property values are routinely re-evaluated by respective county assessors. When they have a substantial increase in assessed valuation, then the appropriate government entities usually apply a reduction in levies against total valuation in order to limit the tax increase on individual homeowners or businesses. Some areas of the state have not been doing the second stage of that calculation, even though it was already law to do so, and many homeowners have been treated unfairly. This law will require tax rate rollbacks by all political subdivisions in assessment years. It also increases the income limits for homeowners who qualify for the senior citizen/disabled person property tax credit. Now limits will be raised from $25,000 (in 2007) to $30,000 (in 2008) with an additional income exemption of $4,000 for a spouse who previously had been allowed $2,000. There are several other components of the bill, some of which will place hardships on local county officials trying to meet new deadlines for calculating and providing notice of tax estimates to individual taxpayers. In addition, there will probably be surprises for many of us with some unintended consequences that may result from the new law. Again, time will tell.
I’m still trying to analyze what all was included in the last week of activity and I’ll try to discuss some of the major stuff in the next few articles. If you need to contact me, I can be reached at jim.whorton@house.mo.gov or 573-751-1649 or at the district office at 660-359-3988.