JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — House Speaker John Diehl began his tenure in leadership by reorganizing the committee structure of the Missouri House, a move that he said would streamline the legislative process. Now Diehl is looking to yet another reorganization that he says will improve the bill drafting process and save the taxpayer money, but has some members crying foul.
Diehl, a Republican, pulled funds for legislative research through his budget chairman, Rep. Tom Flanigan, out of HB12, one of about a dozen bills that comprises the Missouri state budget, and appropriates funds for general administration.
Legislative research plays a role in drafting legislation, and is a non-partisan entity. The department is largely responsible for consent resolutions, securing fiscal notes, and making changes to already-drafted bills, and drafting signed, completed legislation into Missouri statute. Both the House and Senate have their own research departments which draft the majority of legislation filed in either chamber. Diehl hopes to fold personnel and resources from legislative research into existing House and Senate research staffs.
“The plan to reorganize Legislative Research is meant to optimize the resources of the House, Senate and Joint Committee in order to remove duplicative government functions and utilize the services of staff members in a manner that more effectively adds value for legislators and taxpayers,” Diehl told The Missouri Times. “The non-partisan professional staff serving the General Assembly work diligently to answer the needs of all members of the General Assembly.”
Diehl’s office indicated that it wasn’t their intention to simply eliminate legislative research jobs, and that the move would not impact the accuracy or speed of acquiring fiscal notes for legislation.
Lawmakers favoring the move say that legislative research has foggy accountability. Technically, they are overseen by the Joint Committee on Legislative Research, while their counterpart research departments report directly to House and Senate leadership, respectively.
There has been occasional friction, particularly between House members and legislative research staff, Diehl’s supporters say.
But not every lawmaker in the building sees the move as good management. Removing legislative research from the process forces all members in the House to use House research to draft legislation, a staff that reports directly to House Clerk Adam Crumbliss, whose direct superior is House Speaker John Diehl. That process, Democrats say, makes it harder to draft non-partisan legislation.
“If all you have are partisan political staff drafting your laws, that’s all you’re going to get,” said Rep. Jeremy LaFaver, D-Kansas City, who sits on the budget committee. “Now if John Diehl wants to have a state legislature that is absolutely as dysfunctional and as partisan and as nasty and mean as Washington D.C., this is a good path to take.”
LaFaver — who uses legislative research to draft all of his bills — favors the opposite of Diehl’s move. In his perfect world, House and Senate research staff would go away and legislative research would be beefed up with more personnel and equipment, streamlining bill drafting into a single office. The National Council of State Legislatures touts the model as a “best practice.”
The language in HB12 will have to survive yet another vote in the House Select Committee on Budget, a series of floor votes, and the slog through the senate before it becomes law.
Collin Reischman was the Managing Editor for The Missouri Times, and a graduate of Webster University with a Bachelor of Arts in Journalism.
