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
JEFFERSON CITY - The President Pro Tem of the Senate filed a lawsuit against the governor Monday to undo the executive order that grants unions the right to collect service fees from nonunion state employees.
"Governors are not kings; they are temporarily elected custodians of the executive branch, and it is legislators who, acting through the legislative process... make laws, not governors who do that by decree," said Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau.
Kinder joined St. Louis City Democrat Rep. Charles Quincy Troupe along with several state employees and state organizations to sue the governor and challenge the constitutionality of Holden's union rights order.
A long list of some of the state's more powerful lobbying organizations joined in the suit including the Missouri Chamber of Commerce, the Missouri Municipal League and the Missouri State Teachers Association.
Jerry Nachtigal, spokesman for the governor, defended Holden's actions as constitutional.
"The governor is confident the courts will uphold his authority," said Nachtigal. "We really don't believe this lawsuit has a chance."
Kinder had already appointed a special Senate committee to investigate the constitutionality of Holden's executive order, but the Democrats he appointed to the committee boycotted both of the meetings.
Legislative action against the governor's order is "unlikely of success" because it could easily be blocked in the Senate, Kinder said.
"Our stunning success is the large number of people and groups who've come aboard," Kinder said.
Holden signed the executive order on June 29, 2001. It covers the 30,000 state employees whose departments are directly under his control. The order sets up binding federal arbitration and allows unions to ask the state to collect service fees from the paychecks of non-union government workers.