Commencement of the First Regular Session
of the 96th General Assembly
January 14, 2011
St. Charles County, MO
by State Representative Chuck Gatschenberger
On Wednesday, January 5, 2011, legislators from across Missouri returned to Jefferson City to convene the First Regular Session of the 96th General Assembly.
The General Assembly begins each year at noon on the first Wednesday after the first Monday in January at the State Capitol in Jefferson City. Here, legislation will be introduced and debated on both the Senate and the House floors. The General Assembly meets until the first Friday following the second Monday in May.
The Missouri General Assembly is made up of 34 members of the Senate, who are elected for four-year terms and 163 members of the House of Representatives, elected for two-year terms. This year the General Assembly has 12 new members in the Senate and 81 new members in the House.
In his Opening Session Address, Speaker Tilley set forth a bold agenda for the Missouri House to attend to titled the “Show Me Solutions Initiative” that encompasses five (5) key areas: Job Creation, Taxes and Spending, Government Accountability, Education, and Healthcare. Over the next few weeks, I will focus in on each of these topics. First, I will discuss what the State of Missouri can do to help create jobs.
Our first priority is to help put Missourians back to work. If we do our job, we can take steps to improve employers’ ability to hire and retain employees, and secure certainty in take-home pay of every working family in Missouri. Government is not the solution to our bad economy, but we need to assure that our state government is not making it worse. TAX REFORM, TORT REFORM, and REGULATORY REFORM will help make our state more attractive to the business investors that will put our folks back to work. The specific legislative areas on which we will focus are:
Reducing Small Business Regulation & Taxes. The Missouri House will review and reduce job killing regulations on small businesses and work to phase-in full deductibility of federal income taxes from state taxes.
Small Business Tort Reform. This legislative item (which I have sponsored over the past few years) significantly improves the workplace environment in Missouri by strengthening the legal requirements to file a suit and capping damage awards that have gotten out of hand from a handful of poorly decided court decisions that are wreaking havoc on Missouri businesses as a whole.
Immigration. We will seek to protect Missouri workers by adopting an immigration bill similar to the law passed in Arizona, but expand it to include human trafficking and cross referencing the sexual predator list.
Nuisance Laws. We must stop repeat lawsuits from out of control trial attorneys on small businesses and family farms.
Copyright 2011 Neighbors About Town
