Legislators throw paper copies of bills into the air at the close of the 2006 session.

Chiseled in stone on the state capitol in Jefferson City is a Latin phrase that translates as “Let the welfare of the people be the supreme law.”
Not many Missouri legislators speak Latin these days. Even fewer seem to agree with the sentiments expressed in the state motto.
Unemployment is at the highest level in 25 years. The number of uninsured almost certainly is more than 815,000. If ever “the welfare of the people” needed a boost from state lawmakers, it is now.
But welfare is a narrowly defined epithet to this crowd. So the 2009 legislative session stumbled to a close on Friday evening with few accomplishments and even less help for those truly in need.
It will be remembered as a season of missed opportunities.
Given the chance to expand health insurance to 35,000 working parents — at no expense to state taxpayers — lawmakers came up empty.
Economic development and education reform were hung up for most of the session, as was an extension of unemployment insurance that was approved only as the session wound to a close.
The FBI reportedly was nosing around the state capital asking about pay-to-play. But ethics reform? Lawmakers got nothing, and neither did the people of Missouri.

Not that the session was a complete loss. Legislators found time last week to legalize the sale of beer growlers — 64-ounce jugs of draught beer for off-premise consumption. Voters will need a few of those as they contemplate the wreckage of the 2009 session.
Lawmakers cut funding for people with serious mental illness. They had to be shamed into providing money so foster parents could buy diapers for 2-year-olds in state custody.
But they repealed the state motorcycle helmet law and went on record supporting plants that slaughter horses.
At least there was less partisan bickering than in past sessions. But it was replaced by nasty intramural squabbles that brought the people’s business to a grinding halt. Republicans in the House couldn’t find common ground with Republicans in the Senate. Some Senate Republicans couldn’t seem to stomach each other.
That is the bitter fruit of term limits. Experience, statesmanship and tact have left the building, replaced by inexperience, ideology and ignorance — or at the very least by a shallow understanding of important issues and an inability to engage their complexity and subtlety.
Here’s how that played out on some of the most significant issues of the day:

Medicaid. Gov. Jay Nixon, a Democrat, campaigned on reversing the disastrous 2005 Medicaid cuts and restoring coverage to more than 100,000 who lost it.
But he introduced a more modest plan. It would have extended coverage to about 35,000 working parents earning up to about half the federal poverty level — $9,200 for a mother with two children.
Mr. Nixon would have paid for it with $52.5 million from Missouri hospitals, which would have triggered $93 million in matching federal funds.
Republican lawmakers never seriously considered the governor’s plan. Doing so would be a tacit admission that the Medicaid cuts, for which many of them voted, were a mistake. Even worse, it would mean handing a political victory to a Democrat.
Instead, Sen. Tom Dempsey, R-St. Charles, crafted a more complex bill that would have covered many of the same working parents with a limited, privatized version of Medicaid.
Even that couldn’t pass muster with ideologues in the House, however. Rep. Allen Icet, R-Wildwood, set the tone when he fumed about covering “able-bodied adults.”
The House instead came up with an ill-conceived plan to cover people who were “uninsurable” because of pre-existing medical conditions. It would have expanded coverage to about 8,700 in 2009. That’s just over 1 percent of the more than 815,000 Missourians, based on estimates from the unemployment rate, who are currently uninsured.
In the end, even that was too ambitious.

CWIP. Legislative leaders lined up early to support a deeply flawed utility bill written at the behest of AmerenUE.
The so-called CWIP bill would have removed key consumer protections that prevent utilities from charging for the costs of new power plants until they begin producing electricity. CWIP, an accounting term for the prohibited charges, stands for construction work in progress.
AmerenUE wants to build a new nuclear reactor in Callaway County. Although utility executives said they wouldn’t make a final decision until 2011, they insisted that the law had to be changed right now.
Repealing CWIP would have been like giving AmerenUE a cost-plus construction contract. Provisions in the bill would have limited regulators’ oversight and allowed the utility to charge customers even if it later decided not to build.
Early on, however, it looked like a sure thing. House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin, included CWIP as part of his “Family Recovery Act” legislation — though it was never clear how overpaying for utilities would benefit struggling Missouri families. Senate leaders also expressed support.
But consumer groups, including large industrial electric customers, balked. And when it came up for public hearing, it encountered strong opposition.
CWIP ultimately foundered following a 10-hour filibuster that came to symbolize much of what’s wrong with the Legislature.
It featured a pair of Republican senators — freshman Kurt Schaefer, R-Columbia, and veteran Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau — trading accusations that each had been paid off by the opposing side and were controlled by warring political consultants.

Some solace can be found in the fact that a few other sure disasters were averted. The maligned effort to manipulate how judges are selected in Missouri died a merciful death. The public will be spared — at least for the time being — what probably would have been a nasty, multimillion-dollar campaign designed to undermine the professionalism and independence of the state judiciary.
Sen. Jeff Smith, D-St. Louis, deserves praise for strategically and doggedly standing up to intense pressure and beating back a foolhardy campaign to strip the city of St. Louis of its single greatest economic development tool: the historic preservation tax credit program.
Other items that passed in the closing hours of the session include elements of Gov. Nixon’s economic development proposals and measures relating to education. They could be positive developments — constructive steps forward, like the $12 million in emergency funding to Metro to restore some essential transit services.

When the need was greatest — when the “welfare of the people” demanded  more compassion, more cooperation and more creativity — the Legislature fell short of the mark
All Missourians are the poorer for it.