Area lawmakers push bills ranging from texting ban to film tax credits

Area lawmakers plan to introduce bills for the 2019 state legislative session dealing with everything from texting while driving and right to work to condemnation proceedings and film tax credits.

Bills can be pre-filed, starting Dec. 1. The session begins Jan. 9.

Wayne Wallingford

State Sen. Wayne Wallingford, R-Cape Girardeau, plans to introduce a bill to ban motorists from texting while driving in Missouri.

�It is a huge safety thing,� he said.

Current state law only prohibits drivers younger than 21 from texting and driving.

Missouri is one of only a handful of states that don�t explicitly ban texting for all drivers.

Wallingford also wants to provide more money for Area Agencies on Aging and senior centers. The Republican lawmaker plans to introduce legislation to levy a 5 percent fee on health-insurance premiums, phased in over a two-year period.

When fully implemented, the fee would generate an estimated $7.3 million in revenue. Half of the money would go to Area Agencies on Aging and the other half to senior centers, he said.

Wallingford also plans to reintroduce a bill that adds a rebutable presumption that both parents should have approximately equal parenting time in child custody cases. Studies show children need both parents, he said.

The bill, however, would allow judges to consider incidents of domestic violence in considering the best interests of the child.

Kathy Swan

State Rep. Kathy Swan, R-Cape Girardeau, plans to introduce similar legislation on the House side.

She also wants the Legislature to reinstate a tax credit for film companies shooting movies in Missouri.

The tax credit expired in 2013. Since then, she has proposed unsuccessfully to reinstate it.

Missouri is losing out on film productions because it no longer has a tax credit, she said.

The movie �Gone Girl� was the last major film to be shot in Missouri. Scenes for the movie were filmed in Cape Girardeau, boosting the local economy, Swan has said.

Swan also plans to reintroduce a bill to change Missouri�s condemnation law to better protect property owners in the wake of her legal battle with the City of Cape Girardeau.

Swan and her husband, Reg, fought the city in court, accusing the local government of taking their land unfairly by offering well below the appraised value for a little more than 3 acres of woods behind their home.

The Swans and the city eventually settled the case.

Swan first introduced the bill in the 2018 session. It would require cities and other condemning entities, at the time of the offer, to provide a property owner �with a clear, concise and understandable disclosure statement� describing the effects of the project on the property being taken.

The goal, she said, is to provide �full transparency� to property owners.

Her legislation would require cities and other entities to disclose everything from the projected loss or damage to trees and other landscape features to changes to the grade of the site and location of ingress and egress.

Any offer to a property owner not complying with such provisions would be considered nonconforming. If a judge finds that to be the case, the city government or other condemning entity such as a utility company would be barred from restarting the condemnation process on that property for two years, according to the measure.

Rick Francis

State Rep. Rick Francis, R-Perryville, Missouri, is pushing for an abatement of state sales tax on building supplies for developers of single-family homes in Perry County.

Francis said the Perry County government and Perryville city government officials have said they would be willing to abate their local sales taxes on such items.

But Francis said the plan likely will only work if the Legislature takes similar action.

The Perryville lawmaker said industries in Perry County are unable to hire needed workers because of the lack of housing.

Holly Rehder

State Rep. Holly Rehder, a Scott County Republican, thinks there�s a way forward for right-to-work legislation even though Missouri voters in August overwhelmingly defeated a right-to-work measure that would have barred collection of fees from private-sector workers who choose not to become union members.

Rehder said she plans to introduce a bill to allow voters to adopt such laws on a county by county basis.

The GOP lawmaker said she also plans to reintroduce a bill to enact a prescription drug monitoring program statewide to allow doctors and pharmacists to detect whether patients have been shopping for pain killers.

Barry Hovis

Newly elected state Rep. Barry Hovis, R-Gordonville, said he doesn�t take office until January. As such, he has not drafted any legislation.

Hovis said he is still learning the operations of the Legislature. But he said he is interested in finding ways to crack down on fraud and abuse in the spending of tax dollars.

mbliss@semissourian.com

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