JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. – While the House strictly gaveled in and out until Tuesday at the start of this week’s extraordinary legislative session, multiple senators took the opportunity in the upper chamber to voice their concerns about Gov. Eric Greitens’ call for more time in Jefferson City.
Some feared the ramifications of his call could open up the session to more wide-ranging rate changes by utility providers in Missouri instead of the stated intent of the special session to bring a steel mill to the Bootheel region in the old Noranda facility.
But other senators on both sides of the aisle sharply criticized attacks from A New Missouri, Inc. against one of their own: Sen. Doug Libla, R-Poplar Bluff. Libla became the latest victim of a robocall campaign by the Greitens-backed nonprofit name because he is one of those senators concerned about granting more ratemaking privileges to Missouri’s few state-approved monopolies.
However, A New Missouri, Inc. called voters in his Senate district to say that he was against a new plan to bring 500 jobs to the state of Missouri. Libla said during an inquiry with Sen. Rob Schaaf that A New Missouri, inc. had even called his own home.
Libla, a businessman of 40 years, said he understood the need for job creation and prided himself on creating jobs, but wondered at what cost those jobs would come.
“I admire people that have created jobs, that have signed payroll checks on the front,” Libla said. “I don’t admire people talking about how jobs are created…. But what about the job providers we already have, job creators that don’t want to see their electric bills be unscrutinized by the Public Service Commission?”
While Libla said he was not in the business of character assassination, and declined to speak ill of the Governor, several senators questioned the motives and tactics employed by Greitens trying to achieve his policy agenda. Sen. Bill Eigel, himself a first-time officeholder, was one of the more conciliatory senators, saying that while the governor has made it clear he wants to have a strong working relationship with the Senate, he found that after a year in the body he had a newfound appreciation for the other elected officials in the chamber.
“I’m very hesitant for anyone to describe the body as a third grader or is here for disingenuous purposes,” Eigel, R-St. Charles, said.
Sen. Jason Holsman agreed, adding that such name calling did not “engender” anyone in the Senate to his policy goals. He also criticized Greitens for not even discussing the issue of a new steel mill with Libla.
He accused Greitens of cheap politics.
“If you want to have a partner in the legislature to move an agenda forward, then work with us and stop the campaigning in the district of the 25th without discussing the issue with him,” Holsman said. “Don’t disparage this chamber by calling us third graders because you want to score political points in a non-ending campaign.”
But the real ire came from Schaaf, who himself was the target of A New Missouri Inc. in the past. He said Greitens rhetoric rang hollow when he called a special session that could benefit a corporation that gave him $178,000 during his campaign.
“This governor, he ran on a platform of ethics and of not allowing those who would be self-serving to come to the people’s house for their own self-serving interests,” Schaaf said, before adding that he so far was not living up to that promise.
Libla also took time to defend himself from ads that had said he wanted to deny jobs to people in the Bootheel.
“I’m not going to attempt to rationalize the things that are being brought against me,” Libla said. “Everyone in Poplar Bluff that knows my family, knows we’re good community people.”
The Senate introduced several bills and then adjourned until a technical session to be held Wednesday.
