If approved, the Unborn Child Pain Prevention Act, filed by Sen. Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, would mandate that physicians inform women seeking abortions at or after 20 weeks of the fetus' capacity to feel pain. Missouri doctors would then be required to offer to administer anesthesia to a fetus before an abortion.
"Sometimes the eminent domain process doesn't provide adequate notice that there is a proposed taking in that area including their property," said Senator Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, and member of the task force. "I think where we are heading on [this] is that we need to firm up the process and guarantee people whose property is potentially going to be taken that they deserve adequate notice."
Senate Appropriations Chairman Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, said he supported shifting the appropriation to the development of agricultural-related genetic research at Northwest Missouri State University because he had never even heard of the plan for the Columbia campus.
The Senate finished their version Wednesday, agreeing to a compromise that would soften a cut to adoption subsidies sought by Blunt. Under the deal brokered by Sen. Chuck Gross (R-St. Charles County) the eligibility ceiling was bumped up from 200 percent of the federal poverty level to 250 percent of the poverty line.
Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, said he was working with the governor's office to eliminate the cuts by removing an automatic transfer of higher education dollars into a reserve fund.
"The 5 percent cut to higher ed was not because I thought we needed to reduce the funding to higher education," said Senate Appropriations Committee Chairman Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles. "But it was something I thought should be considered by the committee."
The debate, which turned into free-ranging discussion on accountability to the populace and lobbyist influence, prompted Sen. Chuck Gross, R-St. Charles, to set his two cell phones and palm pilot upon his desk and briefly decline to use his microphone.