KINDER'S COMMENTARY: IT IS POSSIBLE TO DISAGREE AND STILL HAVE A LOT OF RESPECT

The 1997 session of the General Assembly that ended May 16 was by far the most hectic and taxing for me personally and, not coincidentally, easily the most rewarding in all respects. Service on the Appropriations Committee turned out to be every bit as time-consuming as I had been told it would be. During much of the session, this committee meets early in the morning, before the Senate goes into session, and then again in the evening, following Senate adjournment at 6 p.m., when members return to the Capitol after a dinner break. There is a lot of work to be done in overseeing a state government now spending nearly $15 billion in all its far-flung departments. The experience has given me a new appreciation for State Rep. Mary Kasten, who has served on the House Budget Committee for years now, and for all the others of both parties who have diligently served.

In the Senate, much-discussed and often-feared political fallout from last year's election campaigns, for the most part, simply didn't materialize. The 34-member Senate, by and large, continued to function, usually marked by the rather clubby atmosphere that has characterized it for generations. (This emphatically isn't true in the Missouri House of Representatives, where sharp-elbowed partisanship and unchecked majority power is the rule in the much larger chamber. My heart goes out to House Republican colleagues in the minority party for nearly 45 years.)

It helped that we had in leadership two senators who ran the chamber consistent with its finest traditions. Those would be President Pro Tem Bill McKenna, D-Barnhart, and Majority Floor Leader Ed Quick of Clay County in the Kansas City area. McKenna, an easygoing Irishman with a great sense of humor, absolutely refuses to take himself seriously. When one senator from south St. Louis County took to the floor to introduce a group of visiting youngsters from Lindbergh High School, a smiling presiding officer McKenna broke up a chamber full of his colleagues with this: "Senator, that reminds me, I think one of my ex-wives went to Lindbergh!"

Incidentally, as this newspaper has reported before, McKenna, who hopes to teach after leaving the Senate next year, is a graduate student working on a master's degree in public administration at Southeast Missouri State University. He will write his thesis on his two years as pro tem.

Ed Quick is a low-key guy, a onetime firefighter and aide to former U.S. Sen. Tom Eagleton who is known for his innate decency, honesty and forthrightness. When a key bill was likely to be considered in floor debate this session, the majority leader was always quick (pun intended) to inform us all when it would come before the body. Sadly, a couple of years before I arrived in Jefferson City, Ed Quick was indicted and stood trial on federal charges for allegedly stealing a few thousand dollars in federal grant money. In a prosecution that undoubtedly shouldn't have ever been filed, Quick was acquitted after colleagues of both parties testified for him as character witnesses. Although I didn't know him at the time, had I been acquainted with him then, I would gladly have been willing to testify under oath to vouch for Ed Quick's character.

All this I can say without apologizing or believing it inconsistent that I worked overtime for weeks to bone up on and defeat one of Ed Quick's key legislative proposals. Sen. Quick was Senate floor handler for House Bill 811, also known as the "Kids Care" bill. HB 811, which allegedly sought to extend health insurance to uninsured children, can be the subject of a later column, and in truth part of the story has already been reported in the press. Suffice it to say that when the curtain fell at 6 p.m. on May 16, there were some hard feelings at opposition tactics used to defeat this bill. None of which should be allowed to obscure the very real truth that this year's Senate leadership conducted business with honor and distinction.

Occasional differences on principle aside, I am proud to claim Bill McKenna and Ed Quick as friends.

~Peter Kinder is assistant to the president of Rust Communications and a state senator from Cape Girardeau.