Lawmakers seek fix for nursing home law

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. -- Legislators will seek to fix a recently discovered flaw in a new nursing home reform law that inadvertently would have barred people with minor criminal offenses on their records from working as in-home care providers.

Gov. Bob Holden added the issue to the agenda of a special legislative session that began Monday. The primary purpose of the session is for lawmakers to again consider proposals to end certain tax breaks and other measures to pump additional revenue into the state treasury.

Holden signed the nursing home bill into law in June, and it took effect Aug. 28.

State Sen. Bill Foster, R-Poplar Bluff, said in-home care providers began contacting him last month regarding a section of the law that requires workers to pass stringent background checks for employment in the field.

"We were going to have to terminate people over some very minor issues," Foster said.

For example, Foster said one long-time employee with an exemplary work record was at risk of being fired because of a 16-year-old conviction for writing a bad check. The legislature's intent was protect the elderly from abusive care providers, not punish employees with unrelated criminal problems in their pasts, Foster said.

Foster is sponsoring the cleanup legislation.

In addition to providing for tougher background checks, the original nursing home bill also increased fines for violations of state standards and made penalties more difficult to avoid.

Senate President Pro Tem Peter Kinder, R-Cape Girardeau, agreed the statute as written had unintended consequences that need to be addressed. Kinder sponsored the original bill, which passed last spring with strong bipartisan support.

"This is the kind of thing that happens in the legislative process," Kinder said.

Kinder said the minor, technical change should pass easily in both legislative chambers.

The other bills filed on the special session's first day related to the governor's call for more state revenue. All should be familiar to lawmakers, having been unsuccessfully pursued both in the regular legislative session that ended in May and an earlier special session held in June.

Four parts of tax code

Holden, a Democrat, specifically asked lawmakers to again consider closing four so-called loopholes in the tax code. Those provisions currently allow some companies to avoid paying corporate income taxes, provide a sales tax break to purchasers of luxury boats, allow businesses to keep excess sales taxes collected from customers and give employers a discount for withholding income taxes from workers on timely basis.

Other proposals introduced by lawmakers include removing the $500 per gambling session loss limit at casinos, increasing the taxes paid by casino operators and instituting a temporary sales tax increase that would be phased out after three years.

None of the measures is expected to make much progress in the legislature, where Republicans control both chambers.

The special session will coincide with the legislature's annual veto session that begins Wednesday. Lawmakers will attempt to override Holden's rejection of several bills, most prominently measures to allow Missourians to carry concealed weapons and that would impose a 24-hour waiting period on women seeking an abortion.

mpowers@semissourian.com

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