Jetton accuses Lipke of deceit

Missouri House Speaker Rod Jetton took an unusual step Monday and attacked the work of a fellow Republican lawmaker to explain why state Rep. Scott Lipke was not chosen to lead a committee in the Missouri House of Representatives.

Lipke, R-Jackson, and Jetton, R-Marble Hill, are from adjoining districts. Lipke is the only returning House member who led a committee in 2006 who was not named chairman or vice chairman of a committee this year. Lipke had been quiet about the issue, saying only that he was disappointed, until Jetton last week asked two fellow lawmakers to write a letter justifying the move.

Monday Jetton himself addressed the issue, pointing to a provision in a major sex crimes bill from 2006 that repealed to Missouri's ban on homosexual acts, a law that had been unenforceable since a U.S. Supreme Court decision in 2003.

"The reason Scott is not a chairman today is because he snuck those 14 words into this bill," Jetton said at a news conference in downtown Cape Girardeau. The statements issued Monday are Jetton's first public explanation of his action since announcing committee chairmen on Jan. 10.

As a result, Jetton said, Lipke lost the trust and confidence of his fellow Republicans. Jetton accused Lipke of misleading him after the repeal provision was reported by the Southeast Missourian two weeks after lawmakers adjourned last year.

"When I first talked to Scott about this, he said it was just a mistake, that the research folks put it in and he just didn't think it was a big deal," Jetton said. "Now he says it's the right thing to do, and it needed to be changed. As I look back at how this was done, clearly he deliberately had a plan to put this language in there and repeal the gay sex ban, and he deliberately tried to keep it from anybody's attention so we wouldn't know about it."

Conservative Republican lawmakers would not have voted unanimously in both the House and Senate in favor of the bill if they had been aware of the provision, Jetton said.

Lipke's statement

Lipke wasted no time in firing back at Jetton. He said he has reviewed all his work on the bill -- a measure known as Jessica's Law that imposed tough penalties on sexual predators such as lifetime parole after serving long prison terms -- and can prove it was thoroughly reviewed.

The provision erasing the language directed at sexual relations between adults of the same gender, a misdemeanor under Missouri's sexual misconduct law, was in the first version of the bill filed last year, Lipke noted.

That version, and later versions prepared by the committee, were e-mailed to almost every prosecutor and judge in the state for commment, Lipke said. The final version, a compromise between the Senate and the House on various aspects of the measure, was accompanied by a four-page summary that noted the repeal and that it was the position the House had taken in earlier votes, he said.

"I don't know how to do it any better," Lipke said. "It was a fairly large bill condensed down to four pages," he said. "No one voiced any objections."

Jetton is making excuses for failing to pay attention to the measure if he truly was concerned about the repeal, Lipke said. "There was no effort to deliberately withhold this from anybody. He tries to say you sneak something in, but it is there from the beginning. All I can say is that Speaker Jetton has chosen to attack me unjustly and he has tried to impugn my integrity, and I am going to let the facts speak for themselves."

Punishment

In his statement, Jetton points out that at least one lawmaker, Sen. Matt Bartle, R-Jackson County, did notice the repeal. As he worked on the bill in the Senate, Bartle reinstated the provision banning gay sex. But the House-passed version was in the bill as it came out of a conference committee, and Bartle voted in favor of the bill with the repeal on the Senate floor.

Lipke's punishment was forced on him by the House caucus, Jetton said. "I didn't go to the caucus and say, 'Hey, are you mad at Scott?'," Jetton said. "I didn't stoke it up. They came to me, and they were upset." Lipke, however, said he had spoken to only one member privately about the issue and that he explained himself during a caucus meeting in August with no visible anger. A House member, speaking privately, said the repeal was never a major issue in caucus. In addition to attacking Lipke in the news conference, Jetton issued a two-page letter outlining his objections to retaining him as a committee chairman. The letter opens with a reference to Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder's tenure as Senate president pro tem and a conversation the two had in which, Jetton said, Kinder said he understood that Jetton "had no choice but to make the change."

But later in the day Jetton called the Southeast Missourian and asked that the reference to Kinder be removed. In a statement issued late Monday, Kinder said the conversation focused on the responsibility of the leader of a legislative body to take responsibility for his actions. Jetton said he had no choice in removing Lipke, Kinder said, adding that he urged Jetton to speak publicly about the move.

"People were directing questions to me for which I lacked both facts and context to respond," Kinder wrote. "Rep. Scott Lipke is a friend of mine. I consider Scott to be an excellent attorney, father and lawmaker. I continue to have faith in his abilities to continue to be a strong voice for the people of his district."

rkeller@semissourian.com

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