This article first appeared in the St. Louis Beacon, Sept. 15, 2011 - The Missouri General Assembly held a veto session Wednesday without attempting any veto-override votes -- a fact that irked some Republican legislators and surprised a few Democrats.
"People's heads were spinning,'' said state Rep. Stacey Newman, D-Richmond Heights.
By law, the legislature must hold a veto session to consider whether to override any of the governor's vetoes of bills passed by the General Assembly during its regular session.
But state House Speaker Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, acknowledges being a pragmatist. If he doesn't have the votes, he didn't want to waste the House's time.
That, in essence, was Tilley's reason Wednesday for not attempting to override Gov. Jay Nixon's vetoes of 14 bills passed during the regular session earlier this year. particularly in the state Senate.
"We didn't think there was anything we could get to 109 votes with," Tilley told reporters. "Instead of trying to make political speeches, we decided that we wouldn't do that."
The House has 105 Republicans, four short of the number needed to override the governor. Four Democratic votes would be needed.
The Missouri Senate also is pragmatic. The Senate has such a large Republican contingent -- three more than the 23 needed to override any veto -- that the chamber went to lunch today while it waited to see what the Missouri House would do.
If the House couldn't get an override tally, it was pointless for the Senate to hold a vote, said President Pro Tem Rob Mayer, R-Dexter, in an interview later.
Last spring, during the regular session, Tilley wasted no time in conducting a successful House override of Nixon's veto of the bill redrawing the state's congressional boundaries. The speaker conducted the vote as soon as he had four Democrats committed -- opting against delaying the vote until this week, out of concern that at least one of the four might back out.
(The Senate also swiftly held an override vote that day as well.)
But this time, the House couldn't budge any Democrats. Newman, head of the Democratic Progressive Caucus, said the overall House Democratic caucus of 57 Democrats -- one of the smallest in the party's House history, by the way -- was committed this week to stick together to block any attempted override of the most controversial bill on the veto list.
That bill was Senate Bill 3, which laid out how the state would implement a government-issued photo ID requirement for voters, should such a requirement be approved by Missouri voters in 2012. The General Assembly already has placed the proposed requirement on the ballot; Nixon had no say in the matter.
Democrats object to the mandate, saying many elderly, poor and minority voters lack government-issued IDs or the documents -- such as birth certificates -- needed to obtain one. Republicans say the requirement will help guard against voter fraud.
Nixon sided with the Democrats in his veto message.
Mayer said later that he would liked to have seen Tilley try a vote anyway. Ditto for another elections bill, and for a bill -- HB 430 -- that would have barred local governments from banning billboards within their borders. The bill also had a provision, sought many legislators, that would have repelated the state's licensing law for moving companies that critics say impedes competition.
Newman said that House Republicans did aggressively lobby Democrats in a failed quest to override Nixon's veto of HB 430, but were unable to peel off enough Democrats because of the billboard provision.
Mayer and other Senate Republicans were particularly chagrined that the House failed to try to veto HB 430, and several senators complained Wednesday afternoon on the floor.
But neither chamber took a vote.
