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Sept. 13, 2023 |  By: Rudi Keller - Missouri Independent

Budget vetoes may face override in Missouri House, but Senate vote unlikely

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By Rudi Keller - Missouri Independent

Missouri House leaders want to flex their muscles, state Senate leaders want to limit chances for personality clashes and Gov. Mike Parson reportedly expects his vetoes – $555 million in spending and one statutory enactment – to survive Wednesday’s gathering of lawmakers.

Except for the administration of Gov. Jay Nixon – a Democrat who faced veto-proof Republican majorities in both chambers – successful veto overrides are relatively rare in the General Assembly. 

Even against the odds, Nixon often prevailed on big items like a tax cut in 2013 and right to work in 2015. 

At the constitutionally mandated veto session Wednesday, House members will have 201 line-item vetoes from 14 appropriation bills on the agenda. On almost every item, Parson’s veto letters stated he was making the cut “in an effort to help ensure the financial stability of Missouri beyond my administration and the current General Assembly.”

The single statutory enactment vetoed by Parson is a wide-ranging bill addressing criminal justice issues. It is a Senate bill, so any action to override would have to start in the upper chamber.

The House will likely vote on Parson’s vetoes of several law enforcement items and funding set aside for highway projects, House Budget Committee Chairman Cody Smith, R-Carthage, said in an interview with The Independent.

While the exact items won’t be decided until a GOP caucus, Smith mentioned pay raises for the Missouri State Highway Patrol and a law enforcement training center in O’Fallon as possibilities in law enforcement funding. 

The transportation projects that will possibly come up for a vote include $2 million for a U.S. Highway 61 bypass in Hannibal and $28 million to add lanes to a busy section of Interstate 44 in Springfield.

“By the time we walk out to the floor, we will have a very clear plan of action on what overrides we want to make, and the ones that we intend to override will be successful,” Smith said.

Senate factions

Any successful House override vote sends that item to the Senate. But Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Lincoln Hough, R-Springfield, said he’s not likely to ask his colleagues to vote on anything.

Republicans hold 24 seats in the Senate and a successful override needs 23 votes. There were five to eight Republicans who voted against moste spending bill, making their support unlikely on an override, and he also expects several GOP senators will want to show party solidarity with Parson, Hough said.

Since Parson issued his vetoes in June, Hough said, several members have asked his help in overriding one or more spending vetoes. Some of those same lawmakers, he added, have been critical of the budget’s overall size, $51.8 billion as passed in May, and earmarked items added by other legislators.

Right after Parson issued his veto, Sen. Nick Schroer, R-O’Fallon, posted on X, formerly known as Twitter, that because projects in his district were axed, it would be “a hell of a lot harder for bloated spending and special interest pork to make its way out of the Missouri Senate.”

In an interview with The Independent, Schroer said he wants a vote on $12 million to match local funding for a law enforcement training center in O’Fallon and a $5 million appropriation to help St. Charles deal with drinking water contamination.

“If the governor is going to veto a lot of these bills without even looking at them and contacting the legislators to see what the issue truly is, then I’m going to have to take a stand for the people in my county, the fastest growing county in the state,” Schroer said.

Schroer said he spoke to Hough and feels he has a commitment to put the items to a vote if the House overrides the governor.

But Hough said Schroer’s strident rhetoric about other spending items – and his votes against most budget bills except the one with St. Charles projects – will work against an override.

“They talk about a bloated, wasteful, overspent state budget and then they call and say, ‘Hey, can we override and spend some more money?’” Hough said. “And I tell them, ‘wait a minute, aren’t you the same guys that have been on the radio all summer, calling me all sorts of names?’”

Factional fights almost derailed Senate floor votes on the budget in May. Sen. Rick Brattin, R-Harrisonville, wanted to pass legislation blocking a possible landfill in south Kansas City and ended a filibuster on the last day for passing spending bills.

Brattin was appeased with an appropriation of $100,000 to study the need for landfills in the region but it was vetoed by Parson. Rep. Mike Haffner, R-Pleasant Hill, said he won’t ask for an override because the hurriedly written budget amendment had flaws.

Instead, Haffner said, he will work next year “to fix the process of planning, siting and community involvement for new landfills.”

The dynamics of the Senate mean Democrats would have to join Republicans in voting for any overrides, but Hough said he can’t make any deals to bring Democrats’ favored items to a vote. Only spending items overridden in the House can be brought up for a Senate.

“Everything in that budget is somebody’s something, right?” Hough said. “So it’s a priority and it’s important for someone and just because in your opinion you think it’s worthwhile doesn’t mean that I’ve got 22 other people to think your priority is worthwhile.”

Senate Majority Leader Cindy O’Laughlin, R-Shelbina, also said she doesn’t expect a successful veto override in the Senate. 

“I have not had anyone, you know, contact me encouraging me to try to work out a way to override the governor,” O’Laughlin said. “I mean, from my own perspective, in general, you don’t look for ways to fight with the governor.”

If a member didn’t support most of the budget, it will be difficult to convince colleagues to support an earmarked item, she said.

“Sometimes people are not very self-aware, is my observation,” O’Laughlin said. “Everything in the Senate is about relationships. You know you can have a total disagreement with someone, but you also have to have a mutual respect for each other and understand that everybody sees everything somewhat differently.”

How members voted on budget bills on final passage is not relevant to whether any particular item is worthwhile, Schroer said. And good policy should not be held hostage to personalities, he added.

“This isn’t high school,” he said. “This isn’t a time where we can be vindictive, because of personalities. This is a time where you look at the policy.”

Budget dynamics

Most of the items Parson vetoed from this year’s budget were from the hundreds of earmarked items that added $1.1 billion to the budget total. The House added only a few earmarks to the budget, mainly transportation items, and used money from the massive state surplus for targeted increases.

Most of the other items were added in the Senate. The overrides Smith may seek are mainly among House-added items.

For example, there are eight lines in the budget where Parson vetoed funds added by the House to boost pay 20% for most Missouri State Highway Patrol employees.

Parson used other funding to provide some additional pay for troopers, Smith said, but he thinks an override would help stabilize turnover in the agency.

“It’s a struggle to find new and good law enforcement officers and frankly, to keep the ones that you have that are veterans of the force,” Smith said.

House Democrats may not be eager to override the items Smith wants to fund, said Rep. Peter Merideth of St. Louis, the ranking Democrat on the House Budget Committee. There is little to be gained from making demands in exchange for Democratic support, he said.

“I don’t see a lot of points in haggling over trying to get Republican support for overrides in the House if they’re not even going to come up in the Senate,” Merideth said.

During a ceremonial bill signing in his office last week, Parson said he doesn’t expect any successful overrides, the St. Louis Post-Dispatch reported.

Lawmakers added the earmarked items because they had  historically high fund balances available. The state treasury held $7.8 billion in general revenue and other unrestricted funds on June 30. While revenues have sagged so far this fiscal year, they are on track to meet estimates made in January.

Parson said he’s protecting the fund balance.

For Smith and Schroer, overrides are a way of asserting legislative independence. With Missouri tilting heavily Republican, the GOP is favored to hold on to the legislature and executive branches for years to come.

Override votes are an important part of the legislature protecting its co-equal status, Smith said. Party solidarity among Republicans who have all the state executive offices and control the legislature isn’t justification for accepting that the governor always gets the last word on spending, he said.

“When we write an appropriation, we intend for it to become law and for those dollars to be expended for those purposes,” Smith said. “So yeah, I do think that it’s important that the legislature balance the scales and that the executive branch should not be able to veto with impunity.”

O’Laughlin, however, said the legislature can show it is not a rubber-stamp for a GOP governor without using overrides.

“Barring unusual circumstances, the governor is going to have the last word,” O’Laughlin said. “Okay, let’s say we do get a veto override. There’s still always the question of, are they actually going to spend the money if the governor doesn’t want them to.”

Parson – like every governor – can also use promises of future support in exchange for votes to sustain his overrides. That is what has been going on leading up to the veto session, Merideth said.

“The governor, from what I hear, has been, at least behind the scenes, shaking people a little bit on it,” Merideth said, “and sort of offering-slash-threatening to restore things in the supplemental (appropriations) or in the next year’s budget, based on whether people vote to override his stuff.”