Jeff City beat | Kit Wagar
Big steps mark last weeks of lawmaker term
In the final weeks of this year's session of the Missouri legislature, lawmakers pulled off a pair of maneuvers that were little short of stunning.
First, they killed Gov. Matt Blunt's bold gambit to sell off much of the state's student loan agency to fund a building binge on college campuses. The move was a dramatic rebuke of a sitting governor whose party controls both legislative chambers.
Second, they voted to remove limits on campaign contributions, just 12 years after 74 percent of Missouri voters approved limits and six years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling to uphold Missouri's limits as a way to fight corruption.
The saga of Missouri's student loan agency began last January when Blunt proposed selling it to the highest bidder. The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority was created in 1981 to subsidize and make a market in low-interest student loans. Over the years, the Chesterfield-based authority has grown to more than $5 billion in assets.
Investment bankers at Goldman Sachs estimated that the authority could be sold for up to $425 million. Under the threat of being sold, the authority's staff put together an alternate plan they hoped would stave off Blunt and save the agency.
The authority's board promised to provide $450 million over four years by liquidating assets. Blunt proposed using $300 billion for construction projects, primarily to expand life sciences research capability at state universities. The rest would be used for college scholarships, endowed professorships and business development centers.
The plan was criticized on multiple fronts. Critics questioned whether it would cause interest rates on student loans to rise. Attorney General Jay Nixon filed suit accusing the loan authority's board of violating the state Sunshine Law by cutting the deal behind closed doors.
The board agreed to fund Blunt's plan without determining whether such a transfer of assets was legal and without a financial analysis to determine whether the authority had the financial capacity to pull it off. In late April, the loan authority's director finally sent a letter to Blunt, warning that such a transfer was probably illegal without changes in state law.
The spending plan went through several changes in the legislature, but collapsed on the last day to pass spending bills. Rep. Carl Bearden, a St. Charles Republican, demanded that the Senate approve his higher education funding plan before the House would take up the governor's plan for new buildings on college campuses.
But state universities unleashed an all-out lobbying effort against Bearden's bill, and both measures died. Bearden's measure would have created a new college scholarship program, but also put limits on future increases in tuition and state support of state universities. Officials at state universities said the plan was intended to funnel taxpayers' money to private universities, where more than half of all state scholarships are used.
Bearden's status as a paid fundraiser for Lindenwood University, a private, 14,000-student school in St. Charles, caused state universities to question his motives. Bearden said he simply wanted future funding for higher education to emphasize students rather than institutions.
"If people want to blame me for putting students first, I'll gladly accept the blame," Bearden said.
Sen. Chuck Graham, a Columbia Democrat, said the governor tried to cram a poorly crafted deal down the legislature's throat.
"It was nothing but hubris on the governor's part," Graham said. "He didn't want to change the way he wanted to do it. They need to listen to the voices of others and get the legal authority to do this. It's a matter of doing the deal right."
In regard to campaign limits, Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields rewrote a House bill to repeal all limits on campaign contributions to candidates for public office.
Missouri has had limits on campaign contributions since 1994 when they were adopted by 74 percent of voters. Earlier that year, the legislature adopted a different set of limits. But both sets of limits were quickly challenged in court.
Most of the voter-approved limits were eventually overturned, and the limits adopted by the legislature were halted by the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. While the limits were on hold in 1999 and 2000, statewide candidates took corporate contributions as high as $100,000.
But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legislature's limits in January 2000 in a decision that also upheld limits on contributions to federal candidates and to other candidates in 29 states.
"There is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions will work actual corruption on our political system and no reason to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion among voters," Justice David Souter wrote.
The law currently limits campaign contributions to $1,275 to candidates for statewide office, $650 to Senate candidates and $325 to candidates for the House.
Shields, a St. Joseph Republican, said the effort to block the influence of money had been a spectacular failure in Missouri as political parties and politicians devised ways to get around the law. The source of campaign contributions, he said, has become obscured behind layers of political party organizations and independent committees.
Sen. Joan Bray, a St. Louis County Democrat, warned that ending contribution limits would create an unfair system that favored political insiders, incumbent politicians and well-connected candidates with contacts in the business community.
"I don't care what kind of transparency you have, if you don't have the contacts and the ability to raise the money, it's not a fair system," Bray said. "I'm afraid this will impede progress toward a truly representative government."
Kit Wagar is the statehouse correspondent for the Kansas City Star. He can be reached at 816-234-4440 or by sending e-mail to kwagar@kcstar.com.
Jeff City beat
Kit Wagar
Big steps mark last weeks of lawmaker term
In the final weeks of this year's session of the Missouri legislature, lawmakers pulled off a pair of maneuvers that were little short of stunning.
First, they killed Gov. Matt Blunt's bold gambit to sell off much of the state's student loan agency to fund a building binge on college campuses. The move was a dramatic rebuke of a sitting governor whose party controls both legislative chambers.
Second, they voted to remove limits on campaign contributions, just 12 years after 74 percent of Missouri voters approved limits and six years after the U.S. Supreme Court issued a landmark ruling to uphold Missouri's limits as a way to fight corruption.
The saga of Missouri's student loan agency began last January when Blunt proposed selling it to the highest bidder. The Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority was created in 1981 to subsidize and make a market in low-interest student loans. Over the years, the Chesterfield-based authority has grown to more than $5 billion in assets.
Investment bankers at Goldman Sachs estimated that the authority could be sold for up to $425 million. Under the threat of being sold, the authority's staff put together an alternate plan they hoped would stave off Blunt and save the agency.
The authority's board promised to provide $450 million over four years by liquidating assets. Blunt proposed using $300 billion for construction projects, primarily to expand life sciences research capability at state universities. The rest would be used for college scholarships, endowed professorships and business development centers.
The plan was criticized on multiple fronts. Critics questioned whether it would cause interest rates on student loans to rise. Attorney General Jay Nixon filed suit accusing the loan authority's board of violating the state Sunshine Law by cutting the deal behind closed doors.
The board agreed to fund Blunt's plan without determining whether such a transfer of assets was legal and without a financial analysis to determine whether the authority had the financial capacity to pull it off. In late April, the loan authority's director finally sent a letter to Blunt, warning that such a transfer was probably illegal without changes in state law.
The spending plan went through several changes in the legislature, but collapsed on the last day to pass spending bills. Rep. Carl Bearden, a St. Charles Republican, demanded that the Senate approve his higher education funding plan before the House would take up the governor's plan for new buildings on college campuses.
But state universities unleashed an all-out lobbying effort against Bearden's bill, and both measures died. Bearden's measure would have created a new college scholarship program, but also put limits on future increases in tuition and state support of state universities. Officials at state universities said the plan was intended to funnel taxpayers' money to private universities, where more than half of all state scholarships are used.
Bearden's status as a paid fundraiser for Lindenwood University, a private, 14,000-student school in St. Charles, caused state universities to question his motives. Bearden said he simply wanted future funding for higher education to emphasize students rather than institutions.
"If people want to blame me for putting students first, I'll gladly accept the blame," Bearden said.
Sen. Chuck Graham, a Columbia Democrat, said the governor tried to cram a poorly crafted deal down the legislature's throat.
"It was nothing but hubris on the governor's part," Graham said. "He didn't want to change the way he wanted to do it. They need to listen to the voices of others and get the legal authority to do this. It's a matter of doing the deal right."
In regard to campaign limits, Senate Majority Leader Charlie Shields rewrote a House bill to repeal all limits on campaign contributions to candidates for public office.
Missouri has had limits on campaign contributions since 1994 when they were adopted by 74 percent of voters. Earlier that year, the legislature adopted a different set of limits. But both sets of limits were quickly challenged in court.
Most of the voter-approved limits were eventually overturned, and the limits adopted by the legislature were halted by the 8th Circuit U.S. Court of Appeals. While the limits were on hold in 1999 and 2000, statewide candidates took corporate contributions as high as $100,000.
But the U.S. Supreme Court upheld the legislature's limits in January 2000 in a decision that also upheld limits on contributions to federal candidates and to other candidates in 29 states.
"There is little reason to doubt that sometimes large contributions will work actual corruption on our political system and no reason to question the existence of a corresponding suspicion among voters," Justice David Souter wrote.
The law currently limits campaign contributions to $1,275 to candidates for statewide office, $650 to Senate candidates and $325 to candidates for the House.
Shields, a St. Joseph Republican, said the effort to block the influence of money had been a spectacular failure in Missouri as political parties and politicians devised ways to get around the law. The source of campaign contributions, he said, has become obscured behind layers of political party organizations and independent committees.
Sen. Joan Bray, a St. Louis County Democrat, warned that ending contribution limits would create an unfair system that favored political insiders, incumbent politicians and well-connected candidates with contacts in the business community.
"I don't care what kind of transparency you have, if you don't have the contacts and the ability to raise the money, it's not a fair system," Bray said. "I'm afraid this will impede progress toward a truly representative government."
Kit Wagar is the statehouse correspondent for the Kansas City Star. He can be reached at 816-234-4440 or by sending e-mail to kwagar@kcstar.com.
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