Missouri General Assembly Convenes for Veto Session

The Missouri General Assembly convened this week for the annual veto session. Veto session is an opportunity for the legislature to consider bills, or parts of bills, vetoed by the governor over the summer. During this week's veto session, the Missouri House voted to override two vetoes issued by the governor on specific line items in budget bills, but the Missouri Senate declined to take up the bills for an override vote. As a result, the veto session ended with no vetoes overridden.  

The Missouri Senate is made up of 24 Republicans and 10 Democrats. The Republican caucus includes an 8-member "conservative caucus" which often clashes with the more mainstream Republican majority. Some members of the conservative caucus sought to follow the House's lead in overriding the governor's veto on one of the budget bills, but Senate leadership and the sponsor of the budget bill did not agree with the override effort. The result was a bitter dispute between members of the majority party, which doesn't bode well for Senate deliberations going forward. With legislative redistricting on the horizon at the beginning of next year's legislative session, it is anybody's guess as to how things will unfold in January.