JEFFERSON CITY — The Missouri House has changed its mind again on a bill allocating about $330 million in federal stimulus funds.

On a vote of 117-42, the House tonight passed the spending bill and sent it to the Senate.

The…

UPDATE: Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder is blaming Gov. Jay Nixon for the defeat of the Metro funding. In a conference call with reporters, Kinder alleged that Nixon worked against the bill. Kinder was joined by several African-American legislators from St.…

JEFFERSON CITY — Democrats staged a walkout today when Republicans bypassed normal House procedures to advance a proposal cutting the state income tax.

The fracas took place in the House Rules Committee, which was reviewing the GOP’s new proposal giving Missourians…

Baer

JEFFERSON CITY – Calling the cuts to St. Louis public transportation a “crisis,” Metro transit CEO Bob Baer pleaded his case to a Missouri House committee Wednesday for $35 million in emergency funding.

For the past month, Baer has been quietly working…

Tuscumbia bridge: The "first" stimulus project?

JEFFERSON CITY — Here’s an interesting question: How many taxpayer dollars were spent by states trying to stake their claim to being the “first” to spend federal stimulus dollars?

As has been reported at the Post-Dispatch and…

UPDATE: In a rare move, the Senate reconsidered the supplemental budget bill it had already passed but not delivered to the House, and then amended it so that MoDOT had legislative authority to spend federal stimulus money. The bill now…

Susan Montee

JEFFERSON CITY — With a cool $4 billion in federal stimulus funds expected to flow into Missouri, “now is not the time to cut the resources available” to track the money, says Joe Martin, chief of staff to state…

Nixon at the site of a stimulus project near Tuscubmia

Republicans may be leery of spending federal stimulus funds on ongoing state services. Gov. Jay Nixon isn’t.

At a luncheon he hosted today at the Governor’s Mansion for the Missouri Press/Associated Press…

Missouri senators sat through a phone conference this afternoon with representatives of the National Conference of State Legislatures to try to get a handle on how much federal stimulus money is flowing to the Show-Me State.

The simple answer is a…

Blagojevich

SPRINGFIELD, Ill. - Gov. Rod Blagojevich won’t be allowed to spend any money from a federal stimulus package if he survives his impeachment trial that begins today.

A provision in the stimulus package legislation stipulates that Blagojevich may not direct the…