JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — Rep. Raychel Proudie has been picked to once again lead the Special Committee on Urban Issues for this legislative session.
Rep. Scott Cupps, a Republican from southern Missouri, will serve as co-chair. The committee will also be made up of Reps. Rasheen Aldridge, Marlon Anderson, Bill Falkner, Barry Hovis, Mark Sharp, Rudy Veit, and John Wiemann.
“I am honored to remain chairman of the Committee on Urban Issues for Missouri’s 101st General Assembly and look forward to working with the committee to improve the quality of life for our neighbors,” Proudie, a Democrat from St. Louis County, said on social media.
That said, I am honored to remain chairman of the Committee on Urban Issues for Missouri's 101st General Assembly and look forward to working with the committee to improve the quality of life for our neighbors!
— Raychel Proudie (@RCProudie) January 28, 2021
Noting the announcement of the committee came after others for the year had already been assigned, Proudie said: “Setting an agenda [and] seating a committee to do the BEST work takes time.”
“[Ensuring] folks with INTEGRITY, real skill, and a sincere desire to discuss and tackle issues calling for legislative attention is paramount to a committee’s success; citizens in urban areas certainly deserve such thought and effort,” she said.
Proudie is the only Democratic chair of a House committee so far this year. She also served as the special committee’s chair during the second session of the 100th General Assembly.
Last summer, Proudie hosted a sizable and bipartisan event to clean up the city of Kinloch in her HD 73. The effort included a fundraising campaign, gathering supplies, and organizing volunteers to pick up around the community.
“Instead of another election cycle coming and going and saying, ‘Somebody ought to be doing something,’ instead of asking for permission to take charge of some kind of effort to bring attention to this area, I just took it upon myself to do,” Proudie said at the time.
Proudie was first elected to serve parts of North St. Louis County in 2018. She is a certified teacher and school counselor in Missouri, Illinois, and Louisiana and has worked in both traditional public and charter schools in urban and rural areas.
As the committee was just established Thursday, no bills have yet been assigned to it.
For more on House committee chairs, click here.
Kaitlyn Schallhorn was the editor in chief of The Missouri Times from 2020-2022. She joined the newspaper in early 2019 after working as a reporter for Fox News in New York City.
Throughout her career, Kaitlyn has covered political campaigns across the U.S., including the 2016 presidential election, and humanitarian aid efforts in Africa and the Middle East.
She is a native of Missouri who studied journalism at Winthrop University in South Carolina. She is also an alumna of the National Journalism Center in Washington, D.C.
Contact Kaitlyn at kaitlyn@themissouritimes.com.
