Missouri
IP debate kills other legislative efforts as Missouri session ends Friday
JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — State lawmakers are poised to end the regular session of the General Assembly Friday having largely done a lot of what was expected when the session began in January, with one exception that has muddled the legislative process over the past two weeks.
Lawmakers approved a budget before last Friday’s constitutional deadline. They renewed a medical provider tax known as the Federal Reimbursement Allowance, which puts more than $4 billion into the state’s Medicaid program.
But a key GOP priority– asking voters to make it harder to amend the state’s constitution in anticipation of an abortion rights initiative petition question being on the August or November ballot–is unlikely to pass despite supermajorities in both chambers.
A small faction of Republicans in the Senate known as the Freedom Caucus sought near-immediate action on initiative petition reform when lawmakers came into session in January and held up legislative action while battling with Senate leadership.
Instead of the current “50+1” simple majority, Republicans sought to require a majority of voters in five of the state’s eight congressional districts. The Senate ultimately sent the House a version of the bill that stripped out so-called “ballot candy” of requiring voters to be citizens and to ban foreign spending on initiative petition campaigns–things that are already illegal under state law–after Democrats filibustered in February.
The House restored those provisions and sent them back to the Senate, where Democrats again filibustered, starting Monday until Wednesday afternoon, setting a record at roughly 50 hours.
The bill was ultimately sent to committee when Republicans did not have enough support to take what is considered a nuclear option in the Senate–moving the previous question–to force a vote. That led to more threats from Freedom Caucus members to hold up any other business that might come before the chamber before Friday’s deadline.
When the Senate twice gaveled back into session Thursday, there were skirmishes between Freedom Cacus members and GOP members aligned with leadership that quickly led to adjournments.
The House on Thursday said it would not agree to the committee request from the Senate on the initiative petition measure and instead sent it back to the Senate unchanged, setting the stage for one more battle in the Senate Friday, either with the potential for one final Freedom Caucus or Democratic filibuster.
The House did give final passage Thursday to an omnibus property rights bill that would ban municipalities from passing eviction moratoriums that weren’t authorized under state law. The bill included three separate pieces of legislation authored by State Rep. Jim Murphy, a Republican from South St. Louis County. One bars homeowners associations from preventing people from raising chickens, an issue Murphy conceded was a big deal for his grandchildren. Another exempts non-profits from St. Louis County requirements for electronic vehicle charging stations, while the third would give business owners rebates on taxes and fees in the event a local government prompted a shutdown, harkening back to the COVID era.
Another bill Murphy shepherded wasn’t so fortunate.
He sponsored legislation that would clarify that the city of St. Louis could not collect an earnings tax based on remote work done outside the city. The legislation passed the House in late March and got out of a Senate committee on May 6.
“It was high on the Senate calendar. It had a path to get done, and then the Senate just simply shut down for the last week as they’ve done in the past. We’re hoping in the future that somehow we get a Senate that will work the entire session rather than closing down the last week or so. It’s unfortunate,” he said. “It got very close to the end and unfortunately suffered the fate of many great bills that should have passed this year. Hopefully next year we’ll do much better.”
Another legislative casualty is a Senate bill that, if passed, would have authorized St. Louis County to hold a vote for a sales tax to support early childhood education and care. Backers conceded that it won’t get across the finish line this year. A proposal to put a similar question before voters in the city of St. Louis in November is similarly in doubt.
For a legislative session that figures to see a relatively small number of bills reach the governor’s desk this year, Murphy is taking “a win is a win” approach.
“Getting three things across the line in this session was probably as much as you could hope for,” he said.
KANSAS CITY, Mo. — A resident of a home was able to escape serious injury Friday following a house fire in Kansas City, Missouri.
Crews were dispatched around 12:33 p.m. Friday to the 8000 block of Euclid Avenue in Kansas City.
The one-story residence had “heavy smoke and fire” showing when firefighters arrived, per a press release from KCFD.
The fire department brought one person from inside the house to safety, and the individual did not need medical treatment.
City Planning and Dangerous Buildings was requested.
An investigation into the cause of the fire is underway.
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A lawsuit filed Wednesday, May 13 seeks to knock a proposed constitutional amendment off Missouri’s 2026 ballot that would give lawmakers new power to expand sales taxes to eliminate the income tax, arguing legislators bundled too many subjects into one proposal and wrote misleading ballot language.
The lawsuit, filed in Cole County Circuit Court by attorney Chuck Hatfield on behalf of a Missouri resident, challenges a proposed ballot question that would ask voters to amend the Missouri Constitution to begin phasing out the state individual income tax.
The measure, approved by the legislature last month, is expected to appear on the November ballot unless Gov. Mike Kehoe moves it to another election. Kehoe has made eliminating the income tax one of his top priorities, arguing it would make Missouri more competitive with states that do not tax individual income.
But the lawsuit argues the proposal is constitutionally defective and should be blocked from any ballot. In the alternative, it asks the court to rewrite the summary statement voters would see.
The lawsuits central legal argument is that the proposal violates constitutional limits on ballot measures by including more than one subject and effectively amending multiple articles of the Missouri Constitution.
“This is precisely the logrolling harm the multi-article rule was designed to prevent,” the lawsuit argues, contending voters who support eliminating the income tax could be forced to also accept provisions they oppose, such as expanding the sales tax or changing how road funds and local taxes are handled.
The lawsuit also argues the proposal would improperly expand the constitutional role of the state auditor by requiring the office to calculate reduced tax rates triggered by the amendment. The petition contends that duty is not related to auditing the receipt or expenditure of public funds, which the Missouri Constitution says is the limit of the auditor’s authority.
Instead, the lawsuit argues, the amendment would give the auditor a new rate-setting or revenue-modeling role, including authority to calculate changes affecting tax rates set elsewhere in the constitution.
A spokesperson for Secretary of State Denny Hoskins, who was among the named respondents in the lawsuit, did not respond to a request for comment.
If passed, the proposal would direct lawmakers to set a revenue baseline and triggers for phased-in reductions in the top tax rate. It also allows five years for the legislature to write a new sales tax law, which must be directly tied to cuts in the top income tax rate in a manner supporters hope will not increase or decrease revenue.
Currently Missouri has an income tax with a top rate of 4.7% for taxable incomes greater than about $9,200 a year. The sales tax is 3% for general revenue, but earmarked state taxes and local options stack on top of that, creating a rate that is 7% to 8% in most locations and can be as much as 12% in some special districts.
The sales tax applies to physical goods and excludes services. The Missouri Constitution prohibits lawmakers from applying the sales tax to real estate transfers and any goods or services not currently taxed, but those provisions would not apply to any sales tax plan passed as a result of the constitutional amendment.
Missouri gets about 65% of its state revenue from income tax, about 22% from sales tax and the rest from other sources including a corporate income tax. To replace the revenue from the income tax without expanding coverage of the sales tax would increase the tax rate by as much as 8.5%.
State law exempts residential utility costs, prescription drugs and groceries from all or a portion of the current sales tax. There are also dozens of other sales tax exemptions, mainly tied to business operations as an economic development tool.
The lawsuit also challenges the ballot summary approved by lawmakers.
The summary asks voters whether the Missouri Constitution should be amended to “phase-out the individual income tax based on revenue growth,” “reduce personal property and other local taxes when local revenues increase,” “modify the sales and use tax to eliminate income tax and reduce local taxes” and “protect local funding for public schools and other purposes.”
The lawsuit argues that language is unfair and insufficient because it does not tell voters that the amendment would allow lawmakers to tax services now protected from sales taxes, would temporarily exempt certain tax increases from constitutional limits on new annual revenue and would permanently bar lawmakers from reimposing an individual income tax once it is eliminated.
The lawsuit takes particular aim at the word “modify,” arguing it fails to convey the breadth of the sales-tax authority voters would be granting lawmakers.
“A voter reading ‘modify the sales and use tax’ would not be apprised that the resolution authorizes the state to begin taxing services such as haircuts, legal fees, home repairs, medical services, accounting, and any other service currently exempt from sales tax,” the lawsuit states.
It also argues the phrase “protect local funding for public schools and other purposes” is argumentative because the word “protect” encourages support for the measure rather than neutrally describing what it does.
“If the people are allowed to have a fair vote, they’ll vote this amendment down,” Hatfield said in an interview May 13. “But the ballot summary the legislature wants to show them is just not fair or accurate.”
The governor called on lawmakers in January to place an income-tax phaseout on the ballot, saying voter approval would allow lawmakers to act next session.
Supporters of the amendment have argued that eliminating the income tax would help Missouri attract residents, jobs and investment. During debate over the proposal, Republicans framed it as a long-term economic growth strategy and a way to let Missourians keep more of what they earn.
Opponents have argued the plan would shift the tax burden toward sales taxes, raising costs for people who spend a larger share of their income on taxable goods and services. They have also warned that the ballot language does not make clear that voters would be authorizing a broader sales tax in order to replace revenue from the income tax.
The lawsuit asks the court to permanently block Hoskins from placing the measure on any ballot. If the court declines to do that, it asks for a new summary statement that “fairly and accurately conveys the central purpose and probable effects” of the amendment.
This story was first published at missouriindependent.com.
A bill requiring pornography websites to conduct age checks before granting access is headed to Missouri Gov. Mike Kehoe.
Commercial websites and platforms must already verify that users are at least 18 if more than a third of their content is sexually explicit as part of a rule enforced by Missouri Attorney General Catherine Hanaway since December.
The bill, sponsored by Republican state Rep. Sherri Gallick of Belton, would codify that rule in state law, requiring websites to use third-party age verification providers.
“One of the things that was really compelling to me is that a lot of people growing up in today’s age look at a phone or they look at a computer, and they think that is reality,” Gallick told The Independent. “It’s very demeaning to women and to children.”
Sites that don’t comply would be subject to civil penalties, including fines up to $10,000 per day in violation of the law and an additional $250,000 if at least one minor accessed sexually explicit content. Sites could be charged $10,000 per violation of a provision prohibiting age verification providers from retaining users’ identifiable information.
The House passed the bill 112-25 Wednesday, May 13, with 20 Democrats and 5 Republicans in opposition and 11 Democrats voting “present.” The Senate passed the bill 32-0 on Tuesday, May 12, sending it back to the House for approval of a minor amendment.
The bill got initial House approval last year but was dropped from the calendar before getting a formal vote due to a challenge in the U.S. Supreme Court to a similar Texas law.
“The fear was, ‘Okay, what if they don’t uphold that? Then we would have to make some changes,’” Gallick said.
The court sided with Texas in July 2025, ruling that the state’s requirement that users prove their age by showing government-issued identification did not violate adults’ right to access constitutionally-protected content.
During House debate in March, Democratic lawmakers questioned the potential effectiveness of the bill and raised the possibility of unintended consequences.
Democratic state Rep. Eric Woods of Kansas City said young people are likely to find ways around age verification requirements.
“Kids are smart,” Woods said. “There are VPNs. There are browser settings that allow you to skirt around some of this stuff.”
House Minority Leader Ashley Aune, a Kansas City Democrat, argued that age verification requirements could lead more prominent porn websites to block access in Missouri, driving traffic to less scrupulous sites with fewer content safeguards.
“The websites that are less inclined to follow the rules also tend to be the types of websites that are filled with child sexual assault material, that include nonconsensual sex acts,” Aune said.
The porn industry’s largest website, Pornhub, blocked access in Missouri after Hanaway announced her office’s rule, issuing a statement calling the new rule ineffective and raising data privacy concerns.
Gallick said that while she realizes some young people will still access sexually explicit material, putting age verification requirements in state law is an important step to protect children. She said pornography can be used by bad actors to “groom” children to engage in sexual activity.
“When there’s a leak in your house you turn the water off,” Gallick said. “When there’s pests that come into your house, an exterminator comes in and cuts off the source. This is the source. Children do not need to view pornography.”
This story was first published at missouriindependent.com.
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