Francis helps lead censure action against MO House member accused of sex with intern

State Rep. Rick Francis of Perryville (R-145) is part of the 10-member bipartisan Missouri House Ethics Committee that voted in December to recommend censure of a colleague, Rep. Wiley Price IV of St. Louis (D-84), accused of sex with an intern, harassing a staffer who reported the claim and lying while under investigation.

"(Price) put a stain on the whole body of state government and we're not sweeping this under the rug," said Francis, a farmer and former educator first elected in 2016.

The full House took up the ethics panel recommendation and voted Jan. 13 to formally censure Price by a vote of 140-3, stripping Price of his committee assignments, prohibiting him from any leadership positions in the General Assembly's lower chamber and requiring him to pay nearly $22,500 to cover the cost of the investigation into his conduct.

"This is the first (Missouri) House member to be so disciplined in the state's 200-year history," said Francis, a reference to Missouri becoming the 24th U.S. state in 1821.

"I've spent a year working on this," added Francis, "(and) it is important to protect the workplace environment and to say clearly we're not going to tolerate this behavior."

Price nearly faced expulsion but a move to remove him failed.

"It takes 109 votes to expel a member, that's two-thirds of the 163-member House and only 91 voted yes," Francis said.

Price, who was elected in 2018, has refused to resign and has been assigned to a windowless hearing room in the basement of the Missouri Capitol in Jefferson City.

Price told the St. Louis Post-Dispatch the Republican-controlled House leadership is trying to force him to quit but he has maintained his innocence.

Francis said he and other Ethics Committee members unanimously agreed Price was in frequent contact with a Capitol intern in late January 2020, though the two have denied any sexual relationship.

The panel found Price committed perjury in denying he contacted the intern and determined credible evidence the legislator threatened an assistant who reported Price's dealings with the young staffer.

The process used for the ethics investigation was adopted in the fall of 2015 in response a scandal forcing House Speaker John Diehl to resign two days before the end of that year's legislative session.

Diehl was found to have sent sexually suggestive texts to an intern, including messages sent while Diehl was overseas representing Missouri on a trade mission.