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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 - An eight-hour Senate filibuster Thursday killed a proposal that would have returned to Kansas City and St. Louis city schools much of $180 million saved after court-ordered desegregation ends, beginning in 1999.
The legislation's chief sponsor Sen. Harold Caskey, D-Butler, conceded that the bill is essentially dead for this year.
Rural and suburban Republican senators filibustered in opposition to Caskey's legislation, claiming their districts were not being treated fairly. Caskey's proposal -- pushed by business and political leaders from the two urban areas -- would have distributed $155 million in savings to school districts with more than 20 percent poverty. The remaining savings would go to fund transportation, capital projects and special and gifted education programs.
However, senators in opposition to the bill said distributing the money according to the poverty standards in Caskey's bill is inequitable.
"Where is the equity? The St. Louis school district is not poor. Those people (in rural districts) are poor," Sen. John Russell, R-Lebanon, said of the children in his and other rural school districts. "Constitutionally we have the responsibility to equitably fund the districts."
Caskey's bill puts more than $100 million of the savings back into urban areas, leaving the remainder to districts with a smaller concentration of poverty.
"For years we have heard that once this desegregation program is over, then we can fix our (rural) schools," Russell said. Though Russell agrees that the two urban districts should be "let down easy" after desegregation ends, he said Missouri should not be paying extra money to those urban districts for an indefinite amount of time.
"Why do we have to address this issue now? Because the business leaders are telling us to," Russell shouted across the Senate floor. For the entire day, the proposal was flooded with amendments intended to not only continue the filibuster, but pack the bill with measures that would change the entire scope and purpose of the legislation.
Russell, the key leader of the filibuster, said legislators were trading votes with Caskey for narrow amendments intended for particular special interests.
Though for the most part, opposition to the bill came mainly from rural and suburban Republicans, one powerful Senator from St. Louis voiced his concerns about the legislation also.
More than halfway through the debate, Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, said there is not enough time for a bill of such importance to make it through both chambers of the General Assembly by May 16, the final day of this year's session.
Scott's powerful Budget Control Committee must approve a proposal's cost before the Senate passes legislation. In a move to stall the bill and make it virtually impossible to pass before the final day, Scott refused to schedule his committee to a meeting. Scott's willingness to defeat the bill put him in opposition to St. Louis business leaders who support Caskey's measure.
Caskey blaimed the proposal's failure on opposition by Education Committee Chairman Sen. Ted House, D-St. Charles, and the inability of Senate leaders to keep the Senate in session long enough to force a vote.
Chairman of Missourians for Our Children's Future and former U.S. Senator John Danforth said in a prepared statement that if extra funding for St. Louis schools is discontinued after desegregation payments end, "the state will be forced to spend larger sums of money just to repair the damage." He called the Senate's failure to pass Caskey's legislation an ensuing "train wreck."