KINDER'S COMMENTARY: LYBYER, OTHERS LEARN ABOUT SE MISSOURI

Chairman Lybyer visits

We were fortunate to have an important visitor in Southeast Missouri this week in the person of state Sen. Mike Lybyer, D-Huggins, chairman of the Senate Appropriations Committee. Lybyer is a conservative Texas County Democrat of easygoing, friendly disposition, whose business outside the Legislature is raising cattle on his ranch. The Big Man long ago earned a reputation as a guy with a great sense of humor, as he campaigned with his trademark mule at the parades and county fairs across his 16th District.

He spent all day Tuesday touring, first the Bootheel Education Center in Malden, then stopping in Sikeston for a meeting with community leaders (including two of us lawmakers) before spending the afternoon on campus at Southeast Missouri State University with President Dale Nitzschke, Executive Vice President Ken Dobbins and others.

The southern Missouri senator also found time to go out to the Missouri Veterans Home to visit his longtime friend and mentor and my predecessor as 27th District senator, John Dennis. Lybyer's escort for the day was former Rep. Marvin Proffer, the longtime lawmaker and former House budget chairman who now represents Southeast Missouri State so effectively in the halls of the Capitol.

That evening Lybyer and others of us joined the newly elected freshmen legislators, in the second week of their statewide tour, for dinner as guests of the university. We enjoyed a fine meal and fellowship with a valued colleague of mine, who had a relaxed opportunity to learn more of our needs in this part of the state. Thanks to Mike for taking the time and trouble in a long and tiring day.

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Promising school news

Positive developments are in the offing for the coming legislative session concerning bipartisan efforts to enact major reforms in elementary and secondary education in our state. I'm still gathering information and will be more specific in a future column.

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Prefiling bills

Prefiling of bills for the 1997 session of the General Assembly began last week as it does this time every year. (Our session begins Jan. 8.) Bills that I have prefiled (or shortly will) include several that I have championed before, including a couple of environmental reform measures for which I was proud to come under sustained attack in radio ads paid for by the Sierra Club in the just-concluded campaign.

I have pre-filed (or soon will):

1) The environmental audit privilege bill.

2) the risk-assessment (or cost-benefit analysis) in environmental rulemaking bill.

3) The English-as-the-common-language bill (already law in 23 states) that is the state version of the measure long championed by the late U.S. Rep. Bill Emerson.

4) A couple of conceal-carry bills to extend to Missourians the self-defense rights guaranteed to citizens of more than 30 other states;

5) A joint resolution virtually identical to the recently passed California Civil Rights Initiative that would submit to voters for adoption in our Constitution these color- and gender-blind words.

6) The ban on partial-birth abortions that won easy Senate adoption before falling short of final passage as time expired last year.

7) An employer-reference bill that would give immunity to employers who receive inquiries about previous employees and who, pursuant to such inquiries, provide truthful, factual information about that previous employee's work history. (This last is championed by the Merchants and Manufacturers of Missouri and, with more than 20 co-sponsors, enjoys wide bipartisan support. Without such a measure, traffic in simple facts about employees' work history has nearly come to a halt, out of fear of lawsuits against the employer.)

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