PRESS RELEASES PROVIDE PARTY INSIGHTS

Many times news articles omit or don't give the full message or statements handed out in press conferences.

The following are the two Republican press releases handed out at the press conferences immediately following the adjournment of the Missouri General Assembly last Friday:

Senate

Legislature Adopts Responsible, Commonsense Legislation While Protecting Citizens Against Record Tax Increase Proposal in 2001 Session

The 2001 session of the General Assembly has adjourned after lawmakers won bipartisan consensus on congressional redistricting, passed a balanced budget, improved access to women's health care and used tobacco funds to address teen smoking and drug abuse.

"It has been a good session for the citizens of this state," Senate president pro tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, said. "We passed legislation needed to help citizens, such as a balanced budget and redistricting, and we balked at a record tax hike without increased accountability. I think citizens want government that is substantive, rather than sexy, and I think we've given citizens substantive government in this legislative session."

Kinder, leading the first Republican majority in the Missouri Senate in 53 years, said lawmakers worked through differences -- often in extended floor sessions -- to hammer out compromises to help citizens. The result: a session of successes and of unresolved issues.

"We fully funded the formula for public education, yet we failed to improve urban education with charter schools or to place the Kansas City School District under more responsible state governance," Kinder said. "We used tobacco funds for research and to keep kids off drugs, but we failed to move millions from the pockets of tobacco attorneys to help fund programs for citizens or help teachers gain national certification.

"We improved retirement programs to retain and attract the best possible teachers, but we failed to persuade the governor to send us appointments to the St. Louis Election Board to help clean up election fraud in our biggest population center."

Kinder said the Legislature had not accomplished perfect government, but it had succeeded in securing better government, including addressing several issues that had stymied previous General Assemblies.

"After years of hard work, Sen. Morris Westfall has succeeded in lowering the legal limit for drunken driving to 0.08 percent," Kinder said. "As a result, we will have safer roads, and we will qualify for millions in additional federal highway dollars.

"We have passed laws to help address the problems of teen smoking," Kinder said. "And we've cleaned up and approved $7 million for Grandparents as Foster Parents programs to help sustain families that otherwise could be torn apart."

Lawmakers this session approved a measure to increase access to women's health care and expand coverage of illnesses. This measure allows women to receive direct treatment for ob/gyn care and expands Medicaid coverage to include breast and cervical cancer.

Other accomplishments include:

* Prompt-pay legislation to prevent consumers from being trapped in billing battles between insurance companies and health-care providers.

* Preventing the use of the death penalty against the mentally retarded.

* Jakes' law to protect citizens against the release of dangerous criminals without adequate checks for warrants in other jurisdictions.

* Tougher laws to keep minors from getting tobacco products.

* Prohibited same-sex marriages.

* Established tougher penalties for methamphetamine production and possession of the dangerous new party drug, ecstasy.

Kinder added that this session, as all sessions, should be judged not only by what was passed, but what was not passed, including issues expected to receive continued consideration by lawmakers.

"For eight years, the leaders of this state have been unable to find an acceptable solution to our transportation problems. Now, we have a new governor and House and Senate Leadership," Kinder said. "While we were unable to agree this session, I believe we can still forge a responsible plan that balances accountability and provides adequate revenues to fund our transportation needs."

Kinder said that over the next few weeks, he will ask the governor and other Legislative leaders to come together in an effort to develop a bipartisan agreement that can be supported by both rural and urban interests.

Kinder also said that he was especially concerned about continuing efforts to address the problem of prescription drug costs for senior citizens.

"After an exhaustive bipartisan effort to help our older citizens with spiraling drug costs, we were unable to finalize a solution. Through these negotiations we learned that there is strong bipartisan support to create a workable prescription drug plan," Kinder said. "Today, we have joined with the governor to create a bipartisan task force to prepare a workable plan. The governor will then call a concurrent special session during the veto session to allow lawmakers to address this issue for our state's older citizens."

House

Republicans Focus on Missourians' Priorities and Protect Them From Monster Tax Increase

During the 2001 legislative session, Missouri House Republicans focused on the key priority issues facing Missouri while protecting taxpayers from the governor's proposed tax increase.

"We concentrated this year on making government work for the people of Missouri," House Republican leader Catherine Hanaway, R-Warson Woods, said. "Republicans introduced legislation this session to improve education, address Missouri's urban education crisis, restore accountability to our transportation administration, provide a prescription drug benefit for seniors and institute commonsense budget reforms. It makes no sense why we spent hours debating horse racing on the floor of the House when 34,000 students are languishing in the unaccredited Kansas City School District.

"Unfortunately, though the governor and the speaker of the House promised to work in a bipartisan manner, it was clear that they were bent on passing their priorities without regard for commonsense legislation Missourians want," Hanaway continued.

"A lot of good legislation that would have helped Missourians did not see the light of day," assistant Republican leader Patrick Naeger, R-Perryville, said, "For example, the Missouri Senior Rx Plan, which would have provided an immediate 10 to 25 percent discount on all prescription drug purchases of lower-income seniors, and a non-controversial measure to institute performance-based state budgeting were disregarded by the Democratic leadership. These and other essential bills were sentenced to die in committee simply because they were guilty of being written by Republicans."

"Although an accountability measure for our transportation administration was not passed, Republicans did have a great success in fending off the governor's mammoth $747 million tax increase," Republican whip Charlie Shields, R-St. Joseph, said. "We need reform and accountability at the Missouri Department of Transportation. The governor simply wanted to fill potholes with more tax dollars. This would have been the largest tax increase in Missouri history and would have hit lower-income Missourians the hardest because of its sales tax component."

Note: The opening paragraph in the governor's press release stated:

"When I spoke to the General Assembly in my State of the State Address on Jan. 30, I outlined 17 initiatives I believed were important to address for all Missourians this session. When you add the congressional redistricting issue, that brings the total to 18. As the 2001 legislative session comes to a close, I am pleased to say 15 out of these 18 initiatives have been approved by the legislature. As we assess the 2001 legislative session, in light of the unanticipated budgetary difficulties we faced, keeping the state economy strong with a fiscally responsible budget is a major accomplishment."

The full text of the governor's and the House Democrats' press release are to be printed later. The Senate Democrats issued no press release.

P.S. Quality is more important than quantity. Last year's session passed 83 bills. This year's session passed 202 bills, almost exactly the average for the last 15 years. Also a legislative body that will term limit over 50 percent did not pass the term-limit extension bill.

Gary Rust is chairman of Rust Communications.