MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG
Mo. Digital News
Missouri Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Mo. Digital News
MDN.ORG:
Missouri Digital News
Less than one week after the legislature's special session began, it finished work on the budget that it had failed to approved by constitutional deadline for the regular session.
The budget impass was cleared when the Senate agreed to a total ban on state family planning funds from going to Planned Parenthood.
The budget now goes to the governor who has left open the possibility he might use his line-item veto powers to strip out that funding ban -- despite a state supreme court decision that the governor cannot use his line-item veto power to remove just language from an appropriation.
The last official act of the special session was Senate confirmation of the House Budget Committee chairman, Sheila Lumpe to join the utility-regulating Public Service Commission. PSC membership required her resignation from the legislature.
The House approved Tuesday and sent to the Senate the two budget bills the legislature failed to pass during the regular session.
For the family planning section, which created the gridlock with the Senate, the House approved a complicate five-section provision designed to block Planned Parenthood from getting any of the family planning funds.
The House Budget Committee approved for full House debate the two budget bills lawmakers failed to pass in the regular session.
The House is scheduled to take the bills up Tuesday.
Rather than trying to find a solution to the family planning dispute upon which lawmakers deadlocked in the regular session, the committee sent to the full House the conference committee version.
In the meantime, representatives of the various factions on abortion negotiated through the evening to come up with a compromise plan to offer to the full House.
At issue is how to prevent family planning funds from going to Planned Parenthood while, at the same time, assuring that the funds can go to other private organizations providing family planning services.
Last year, a federal court threw out the legislature's attempt to single out Planned Parenthood from family planning funding.