Gov. Jay Nixon spent the majority of his Tuesday press conference discussing executive orders meant to jump-start his economic development plan.
House Speaker Ron Richard, R-Joplin, had praised Nixon's proposal when it was released last December. I asked him for his thoughts about how he felt the plan was progressing.
The Missouri House spent most of the morning and part of the afternoon debating their rules.
Fun, I know.
But debates over the rules have often turned feisty. In 2007, Democrats were furious when Republicans created a bunch of "special committees." The Speaker of the House has the power to appoint members of the minority party to special committees, a power that Democrats argued trampled all over their authority.
State Rep. John Bowman, D-St. Louis, for example, often joked about how he was part of a special committee dealing with agricultural issues. Bowman's district was almost exclusively urban.
This year, the new rules reduced the amount of special committees to under a dozen. And while the Democrats didn't get everything they wanted, many ended up voting for the rules. State Rep. Chris Kelly, D-Columbia, publicly praised House Majority Leader Steve Tilley, R-Perryville, for making the rules easier on the Democratic minority.
Tilley, Richard and state Rep. Brian Nieves, R-Union, talked about the debate over the rules on Thursday:
