Missouri's House voted to require ride-sharing companies like Uber, Lyft and Sidecar to insure their drivers while searching for riders on their company's cell-phone app.

The House approved the bill 153-1 after a 10 minute discussion on the floor.

Uber, Lyft and Sidecar currently insure their drivers and passengers for up to one-million dollars of liability while ride-sharing. However, those drivers are not covered while searching for riders. Their personal insurance covers driving for private matters, but most plans do not cover any commercial use of their vehicle, such as driving for Uber.

"By the end of 2015, a total of 29 states had enacted laws to protect not only the drivers, but their passengers and the public by closing the insurance gaps that left drivers and the public vulnerable in an accident," said Rep. Noel Shull, R-Kansas City,

Uber was not immediately available for comment.

Rep. Bob Burns, D-St. Louis County, also spoke in favor of the bill.

"This talks about the insurance issues to make sure the public is protected in case of an accident."

No representative spoke against the bill, and the lone voter against was not immediately available for comment.

Other bills have been filed that would impose restrictions on the ride-sharing companies including prohibiting cash payments or picking up drivers who hailed for a ride rather than through an Internet-based application.

• Get the bill, HB 1563
• Get the rollcall
  
• Get the radio stories

Medicaid recipients could be charged co-pays and fined for repeatedly missing medical appointments under a measure given first-round approval by Missouri's Senate.

The bill comes after Gov. Jay Nixon called for more funding to medicaid this year.

A health-care provider could charge a Medicaid recipient an escalating fee for repeatedly missing doctor appointments starting at up to $5 for missing the a second appointment within three years.  The maximum fee that could be charged would rise $10 dollars for missing the third and up to $20 for every missed appointment after that within a three-year period.

In addition, there would be a mandatory $8 fee if a Medicaid recipient sought emergency-room care for a condition that was not an emergency.

Supporters argued that missed appointments was one of the significant reasons that some medical-care providers decide not to take Medicaid patients.

But Democrats argued against the bill.

"I understand that eight dollars or five dollars might be minor to somebody, but to many of my constituents, they don't have the five dollars to go out and buy groceries," said Sen. Gina Walsh, D-St. Louis County.

Joining Walsh in opposition was Sen. Jill Schupp, D-St. Louis County.

"You can either pay for an appointment that you weren't able to make it to, and deny your family a loaf of bread, a dozen eggs, a gallon of milk and two sticks of butter, or you can try to reschedule if you need to get to the doctor and not have to pay that amount so that you can take care of your family," Schupp said.

During the debate, Sen. Rob Schaaf, R-St. Joseph, urged critics to come up a compromise.

"What I'm asking you to do is, if you don't like the language, come up with a compromise," Schaaf said. "How about instead of $5, make it $3."

Both Walsh and Schupp then introduced amendments to the bill that would allow patients to miss their first appointment without charge, and any missed appointments afterward would illicit a fee.

Also added onto the bill was a measure requiring greater financial disclosure by health-care providers.

The measure would require hospitals to report to the Health Department the costs of the 140 most common procedures.

In addition, a health care provider would have to provide a patient with an estimated cost of treatment within five days of a cost-estimate request.

• Get the bill, SB 608
  
• Get the radio stories

Texting while driving would be banned and seat belts would be required under measures heard by the Missouri State Senate Transportation Committee.

Missouri law current prohibits texting only for those under 21 years of age.

The bills presented to the committee on Wednesday, Feb. 10 would extend the texting prohibition to all drivers.

Doug Horn, an Independence lawyer, said the bill would help protect passengers from becoming the victim of collisions caused by distracted drivers.

"Because of the volume of traffic, there's just more distracted drivers on the road," said Horn, who identified himself as a "crash" lawyer. "You can't trust the other driver to do the right thing anymore."

But one committee member said he was concerned about the ability to enforce the bill.

"I think it's something we'd all agree is appropriate, but how do we enforce it?" asked Sen. Dave Schatz, R-Franklin County. "The fact is I'm not looking for another reason for police or highway patrolmen to pull people over."

The seat-belt requirement bill would give police the right to stop and issue a ticket for a driver not wearing a seat belt. Currently, a ticket can be issued only if the driver had been stopped for some other driving violation.

In addition, the measure before the Senate committee would extend the seat-belt requirement to passengers in the vehicle.

Maureen Cunningham, the executive director of the Brain Injury Association of Missouri, said enforcement of seat-belt laws could prevent brain injuries and reduce collision fatalities.

"It's about safety," Cunningham said. "It's about safety for everyone on the road. If somebody chooses not to wear a seat belt let them get pulled over and get the fine that is already enacted."

But Schatz, said he was uncertain that the bill would encourage citizens to change their behavior.

"It comes down to personal responsibility," Schatz said. "You can't legislate common sense."

Tony Shepherd, legislative officer of Abate for Missouri, said he opposes the bill because it inconveniences truck drivers and gives the government power to regulate measures that do not necessarily guarantee driver safety.

"We keep hearing that seat belts will save your life," Shepherd said. "Seat belts will not save your life, they will help save your life."

In past years, giving police the power to stop a driver for suspicion of not wearing a seat belt has met opposition from some black legislators who voiced concerns it could be used as an excuse by police to stop black drivers.

• Get the texting bill, SB 569.
• Get the other texting bill, SB 821
  
• Get the seat-belt bill, SB 820
  

The Missouri Supreme Court has held that a state constitutional amendment approved by voters in 2014 does not change state law that bans all convicted felons from possessing firearms.

The 2014 amendment defines the right to bear arms as an "unalienable" right.

But the amendment also provides that the firearms right does not prohibit the legislature from the power to restrict gun rights for "convicted violent felons."

Before the court was whether the constitutional language giving the legislature power to restrict the rights of violent felons meant the legislature could not restrict the firearms rights of other felons -- like financial cheats.

In two separate 5-2 decisions, the court held Tuesday, Feb. 9, that the constitutional amendment does not prohibit the legislature from banning non-dangerous felons from firearm possession.

The court's decision in the first case noted that the new provision in Missouri's Constitution does not explicitly preclude the legislature from restricting the rights of more than just violent felons.

"It would have been simple for the people to include language in Amendment 5 prohibiting the legislature from regulating possession of firearms by nonviolent felons," Judge Laura Stith wrote in the majority opinion.

In a dissenting opinion, Judge Richard Teitelman drew a distinction between violent felons like rapists and murderers from non-violent criminals.

"I fail to see how restricting the constitutional rights of those who bet on horse races or divulge the names and addresses of donors to a state-established trust fund is narrowly tailored to the prevention of gun violence," he wrote.

The court's decision was a victory for the amendment's legislative sponsor who now is running for the GOP nomination for attorney general -- Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia. He had been attacked that his 2014 legislative proposal that went on the ballot would open the door to make it easier for criminals to get guns.

Consistently, Schaefer had argued that was not the intention of his proposal -- a position now upheld by the Missouri Supreme Court.

In a related case, the court also upheld a state law that bans a convicted felon from obtaining a concealed weapons permit.

• Get the constitutional amendment
  

The House Children and Families Committee heard two bills to increase adoptees access to their biological parents' information Tuesday, Feb. 9.

The increased access is crucial for adopted children to find their birth parents. Laura Long, an intermediary in efforts to reconnect the original parents with adoptees, argued that the bill still does not do enough to open up records for adoptees.

"They'll give you the redacted social history, but once the information is released they don't send out the information without the white-out. Adoptees could really use that, it's interesting."

The committee was told that the information some adoptees look for is difficult to attain due to the secretive nature of the adoption process. Anne Silea, with Lutheran Family and Children's services, said the nature of reconnection after adoption is complicated.

"A lot of women that we talk to now, when we're doing searches, are really taken-aback by the fact that [their name] might not be confidential anymore."

However, many biological parents look forward to meeting with their children. Annette Driver is one of those mothers.

"There's actually people here trying to tell you to keep a birth child away from their natural connection and it's not as bad as it seems. Most of these women do at least want to know that their child is OK."

Another bill gives birth parents the option to register a contact preference along with the child's original birth certificate.

Legislation to expand access to adoption records have been filed for many years, but have made little headway. Critics argue that if the original mother did not consent, disclosure of her name would be an invasion of privacy.

"The power to determine their own lives should be the right of adopted person, and they should be granted easy access to their original birth certificates without mandated consent," one birth parent, Judy Bock, told the committee in 2015 during testimony on an identical bill.

Critics also have warned that knowledge that it could cause parents to be more reluctant to put a child up for adoption if there was a possibility that years later a child could get information about the original parent.

• Get the bill, HB 1822
  
• Get the radio stories

A St. Louis Democrat urged Maryland Heights to deny a business partner of Stan Kroenke access to taxpayer dollars.

One of the business partners to the Rams football team has proposed a large development in the region.

Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D - St. Louis, introduced the resolution Monday after the Maryland Heights City Council had already begun the process for allowing tax credit to help aid in the redevelopment.

Nasheed said by moving the St. Louis Rams football team to California, Kroenke did direct economic harm to St. Louis, and neither he nor his business partner should be rewarded for that.

"If we're not good enough to have a football stadium here, he's not good enough to have tax credits on taxpayer dollars," Nasheed said.

However, Nasheed said she would not push legislation to prevent the town from awarding developer tax breaks to Kroenke or his partner.

"I'm a firm believer in home rules. I think Maryland Heights should decide on their own," Nasheed said. "I just wanted to be able to deliver a message and let them know that the state is outraged due to the fact that Stan Kroenke just disrespected the whole state of Missouri."

The chair of the Senate Economic Development Committee, Sen. Eric Schmitt, R - St. Louis County, said anytime taxpayer dollars are involved they have to be very conscious of how that money is spent.

Schmitt said he is more concerned with the overall economic picture than specific situations like the once facing Kroenke's partner.

"I think that our job as legislators is to look at the actual issue of TIF, and are there improvements that can be made, and we'll have that discussion I'm sure," Schmitt said.

A bill to extinguish the death penalty in Missouri brought on two hours of debate in the Senate, most of which happened after the bill was set aside by the sponsor.

The bill's sponsor -- Sen. Paul Wieland, R-Jefferson County -- began the Senate debate citing his religion as among the reasons for his measure. .

"The first reason is I'm a devout Catholic and I believe in the sanctity of life from the moment of conception until natural death," Wieland said. "And I find it inconsistent of me to be pro life on one end of the spectrum and then to allow the death penalty to go without saying anything about it."

For one hour, Wieland held the Senate floor questioning colleagues who supported repeal of the death penalty.

Wieland called upon his co-sponsors to speak on the bill. This included Senators Gina Walsh (D-St. Louis County), Rob Schaaf (R-St.Joseph) and Jill Schupp (D-St. Louis County).

"Sometime people are wrongly accused and wrongly prosecuted and wrongly sent to jail," said Sen. Gina Walsh, D-St. Louis County. "The other thing I don't think it's equitable across the board."

“I truly believe that, at the end of the day, it (the death penalty) doesn't deter crime," said Sen. Jamilah Nasheed, D-St. Louis. "This is not a mechanism that will cause individuals to say 'I don't ever want to commit a murder again because I just saw Tony get the death penalty.' We still see murders occur each and every day while individuals are on death row."

Senator Jason Holsman (D-Kansas City) said he does not believe an authoritative state should be in control of life and death, but that there is not enough support for this bill in the Missouri legislature.

But after an hour of one-sided discussion, Wieland acknowledged that his bill would not pass in the Republican-controlled legislature and he promptly put the bill aside.

After allowing for the supporters of his bill to speak, Wieland set the bill aside knowing it would not gain enough support to pass.

"As Dirty Harry says, 'a man has got to know his limitations," Wieland said.

But that did not stop opponents. Even with the bill put aside, death-penalty supporters spent nearly a second hour voicing their side.

"The reality of it is, bad things happen and people have to be held accountable for it," said Sen. Mike Parson, R-Bolivar and a former county sheriff.  "If there's anything we do need to do in our society today is make people accountable when things happen that are wrong."

Joining Parson against the bill was Sen. Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia.

Schaefer attacked the bill supporters regarding their perspective on who the victim is in death penalty cases.

“So this idea that somehow the victim in this whole thing is the defendant. Who after this whole process was found guilty, and a jury determined that they warranted the death penalty. That that's the victim in this scenario, is outrageous," Schaefer said.

• Get the bill, SB 816
  
• Get the radio stories