Missouri Senate leaders’ legislative priorities going into 2023 session

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The 2023 Missouri legislative session starts Wednesday. As expected, Republicans and Democrats in the State Senate have differing priorities.

Republican Party

Republican State Sen. Caleb Rowden, of Columbia, returns to the Capitol this year with a new title: Senate President Pro Tem. The position will have to be ratified by the full senate Wednesday. The former majority leader has already prefiled several bills for the upcoming session.

Rowden's proposed bills illustrate some of the top priorities for the Missouri Republican party. One creates a Parents' Bill of Rights and the other raises the threshold for initiative petitions.

Last year, the Parents' Bill of Rights got off to an auspicious start by breaking the record for the most public testimony for a House Bill. However, it didn't make it to the finish line.

Rowden's bill has many of the same principles as the bills introduced in the Missouri House of Representatives last year. One notable one: "The right to control their children's health and identifying markers, including but not limited to, the right to opt out of health measures not required by state order or statute."

Republicans have tried to change the initiative petition process for a few years. Initiative petition is what allowed Missouri voters to add medical and recreational marijuana to the state Constitution.

Rowden's bill proposes raising the threshold to pass an initiative petition question to 60% instead of a simple majority. If these standards were in effect in 2022, Amendment 3 legalizing recreational marijuana would not have passed.

Democratic Party

Minority Leader State Sen. John Rizzo (D-St. Louis) will return to the leadership position he previously held. Rizzo said education and gun regulation are some of the top priorities for Democrats this year.

"We're currently 50th in the country on starting salaries (for teachers), and that's after Gov. Parson did a great job last year at getting them a raise," Rizzo said. "We're still at 50, so we're going to work to hopefully increase that."

Rizzo said Missouri Democrats are against changing the initiative petition process.

"They just cannot stand when the State of Missouri votes," Rizzo said. "We'll be pushing back on a lot of bad ideas this year."

One place both parties mostly agree is sports betting. The holdup, Rizzo said, comes from lobbyists for physical casinos and virtual gambling machines fighting against each other.

"It's been a stalemate that's happened in the legislature for quite a while," Rizzo said. "I think it was actually the first bill that was introduced, so maybe we'll have a crack at it early in session."