Ron Richard changes tune on Missouri bonding initiative
JEFFERSON CITY — What a difference a couple of weeks makes.
When Gov. Jay Nixon first sent a letter to lawmakers urging them to get behind a capital building proposal that would involve floating at least $700 million in bonds, Speaker of the House Ron Richard was supportive.
The House had approved such a proposal easily during the session, and Richard had voted for it. Here’s what Richard told me the day Nixon sent out his letter:
“It seems like a reasonable request to me,” he said in response to whether the bond issue should be discussed in a special session. “I think it’s a good way to put people back to work.”
Richard said he would have to be “sensitive” to what the final number was in the bond issue, and that he told Nixon in a phone call that he didn’t want the state’s credit rating to be hurt. He also said he wouldn’t support the proposal if it involved a tax increase.
Supporters of the plan argued in the session that there would be no tax increase because the state is about to finish paying off bonds that were originally used to finance a building project supported by then Gov. Kit Bond a couple of decades ago.
During the session, it was Richard who supported the bonding issue while Nixon was silent, a point Sen. Kurt Schaefer criticized Nixon for.
But today, after Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder signaled his disapproval of the idea, Richard changed his tune. Now he says it’s a bad idea.
“The Governor’s bonding plan is nothing more than a big spending debt plan,” Richard said in a news release. “The money he wants to use to pay for yet another new government program will bury our state under a mountain of debt for the next two decades. The House will remain committed to fiscal discipline and one-time spending projects that will create jobs and boost Missouri’s economy.”
The entire debate is remarkably similar to the debate during the Legislative session over funding for Metro.
During the early debate over Metro funding, Nixon was largely silent. And early on, Richard was decidedly negative toward the idea, suggesting St. Louis voters had already made up their minds on that issue.
Then Kinder got out front and started making hay in St. Louis about pushing for the Metro funding. Shortly thereafter, Richard said he, too, was in favor of the funding, and he took a shot at Nixon for his silence.
Deja vu?
“It seems like a reasonable request to me,”
Way to go Ron Richards, while you’re in the realm of reasonable requests, how about letting the Medical Marijuana bill goto committee, since you’re so hell-bent on blocking it for the past few years, it hasn’t moved.
Is that such an unreasonable request, to let the legislative process work, and not have some grandstanding speaker of the house block progress?
Thanks in advance, Non-Rep Ron Richards
Speaker Richard and Lt. Gov. Kinder are showing great leadership on this issue. I travel the state extensively meeting with everyday people. They are furious about what the big government approach in Washington and are against growing government here at home too.
The bond issue undoubtedly be dressed up with a lot of nice things, encrusted with fake diamonds and made to look as good as possible but the bottom line is, it’s still a pig. Using the federal stimulus program and its allure of low interest rates is extremely poor public policy.
Gov. Nixon already violated the letter and spirit of the stimulus plan which was a bad idea to begin with, filled with waste, earmarks, and the seeds of a debt-encumbered, poorer America when he used it to pay for tax refunds which should have come from withholdings not borrowed money. Now, he wants to place the people of Missouri further in debt than the federal government already has. Bad public policy.
Speaker Richard and Lt. Gov. Kinder have taken the right stand and the majority of the citizens are behind them.
I think it seems funny that the Lt. Governor has seems to have so much pull over the Missouri House, I thought there were three arms of government in Missouri not 2.5. Richards seems to enjoy the role of flip-flopper, who know republicans would be so good at that! Grow a spine Richard quit placating to the Lt. Governor.
Typical Republican toe the company line between Richard and Kinder, and you too, Mr. Bearden. You travel the state speaking extensively to those that share you narrow view. Your boy Matt Blunt had plenty of time to screw up this state, now step aside and see if it can be fixed.
Carl,
Normally, we agree with each other, but this is one issue that I’m going to have to go in the opposite direction on. The core of the original capital building proposal is not about growing the size of government or creating more intrusions into our everyday lives. It’s about ensuring we have top-notch facilities at public institutions around the state for our children to receive a quality higher education from.
Ultimately, it is incumbent upon the state to ensure that, if we are going to offer a public education system, that it be funded. And the truth of the matter is that, at many campuses, our buildings are falling apart and we don’t have the money necessary to both provide that top-notch education and do so at an affordable price.
The problem of this proposal is not that there is a proposal at all. The problem is that we have allowed too many state legislators to try and grease it up so that they have a reason to vote for it. We had legislators who have no public institutions in their district demanding projects as a means of getting their support-and unfortunately, that was a bipartisan project that many took place in. In its current form, I am tempted to agree with you.
But to boil the entire project down to a wasteful governmental boondoggle is wrong. At the core, this proposal is good. So, let’s work on stripping off all the unneccesary projects and get it back to what it should be–providing some much-needed revitalization at our universities. And let’s work on convincing our state legislators of the same.
My regards, good sir.
John, you’ve had your chance to make a logical point, and you screwed it up. Now step aside and let me make some logical points in return.
First of all, you make such a compelling point. After all, Republicans hold absolutely NO seats in the legislature, do they…oh wait, they do. Apparently, 89 districts of about 31,000 people each and 23 districts of about 164,000 each agree with Republicans on the state level, as opposed to 74 and 11.
But, if we were to even hypothesize that Republicans hold no power and no representation, let’s go back to 2005-you know, the year that Republicans had to come in and clean up the financial mess left by your party’s governor, Bob Holden. Yeah, Democrats really backed away then and let the Republicans try to clean up the situation, didn’t they? Oh, no, wait…they did everything they could to try and sink the Republicans. Apparently, working together for the sake of the state is something Democrats believe in only when they are the ones who might have to take the blame for it.
Nick
Carl did make the point that a number of these are good projects. I have no reason to doubt him. But I don’t think you answered his main point about taking on more debt especially after all the debt we incurred as part of the federal stimulus.
My prediction is this. In a few years after they do all this deficit spending politicians in Jefferson City will be calling for a tax increase to reduce the deficit.
Cut spending in other places but don’t increase the deficit. The Republicans in Jefferson City should not be like the Republicans in Washington or they will fall also.
There was an article in the paper a few weeks ago about Nixon spending taxpayer money flying around the state. He should clean up his own house before he asks taxpayers to deficit spend million of dollars.
It’s not an issue of the projects so much as the issue of what money should be used to cover them.
20 year bond issues backed by one, maybe two-time stimulus funds?