Rep. Tim Harlan, D-Columbia, added the language of his health-care bill onto a Senate mental-health bill as an amendment Tuesday. An unfriendly reception by Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis City, had all but assured the failure of Harlan's original bill.
But Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis County, disagreed. "My secretary makes almost double what I do," Scott said. Scott said Senators are underpaid - and said he worked year-round to do his job.
Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, said the increase for lawmakers was always part of an overall hike for state employees. He said the legislature received a much smaller increase than those for the governor and state judges.
Harlan's bill was scheduled to be discussed Tuesday in the Senate Pensions and General Laws Committee, conceivably the last stop on its way to the Senate floor. But the committee's chairman, Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, said that Harlan's bill, with an expense to the state of anywhere between $150 million and $200 million per year, is too expensive to add on to the other tax cuts working their way through the legislature that would cost another $150 million or more.
Instead, the bill was assigned to the Senate Pension and General Laws Committee. Committee Chairman Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, would say only that a hearing on the bill will be held next week.
The Senate voted 18-15 in favor of a bill that would boost the retirement packages of state legislators and employees by one-third. Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, sponsored the plan.
The proposal for naming Interstate 70 after Mark Mc Gwire was discussed today. Sen. Danny Staples presented it to the Transportation Committee, in place of sponsor Sen. John Scott of St. Louis, who could not be present at the hearing.
Staples is chairman of the committee. He presented the bill in place of its sponsor, Sen. John Scott, D-St. Louis, whose mother died earlier in the day.
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