06.19.2008 11:46 am
With no fanfare, Blunt signs village law repeal
St. Louis Post-Dispatch
Gov. Matt Blunt signed the repeal of the village law today, according to spokeswoman Jessica Robinson. The bill will become law Aug. 28, and will reverse a law passed last year that would allow individual landowners to create villages and bypass county zoning restrictions in certain cases.
The governor’s office planned no news release on the bill signing. The bill was SB765 and was sponsored by Sen. Jack Goodman of Mt. Vernon. It was a major element of the session’s final days, as Speaker of the House Rod Jetton tried to stop the bill from becoming law.
Jetton was widely believed to be responsible for the law being inserted into an omnibus bill a year ago at the behest of developer Robert Plaster, who has also been a campaign donor to Blunt.
This is the same village law repeal that Chris Koster filibustered. After his filibuster failed, he claimed that it was to stop the voter ID bill from passing, but there was still plenty of time for Republicans to pass it if they had made it a big priority.
“Jetton was widely believed to be responsible for the law being inserted into an omnibus bill a year ago at the behest of developer Robert Plaster, who has also been a campaign donor to Blunt.”
What exactly does “widely believed” mean?
Is Mr. Messenger saying that no one knows for sure how the provision was added to the omnibus bill?
Is he saying that Jetton added the provision, and some unknown number of people think it was at the behest of Robert Plaster?
Is he stretching like a major league first-baseman to try and make it look like one of Blunt’s donors bought legislation?
This article tells me nothing, except that Blunt has quietly quashed an apparently errant law.
I guess that’s news enough, but ‘where’s the beef’?
Lazy reporting.
Jetton did it. Everyone knows Jetton did it. It’s just that somehow he was able to keep his fingerprints off it.
Slimy public officials.