Gov Nixon and first session
The Kansas City Star
May 18, 2009
Jay Nixon on Friday became the first Missouri governor of the last three to get through his first session in office without suffering a crippling political blow.<
The Democrat ended his inaugural round with state lawmakers by overseeing passage in the session;s final hours of a sweeping jobs creation package; a priority he started pushing for even before the session began.
Without a jobs bill to ease the strain of 25-year-high unemployment, the appraisal of Nixon&;s first session would have been far different.You bet we scored this session, Nixon told reporters moments after the session ended. The extra point may have been blocked, but we scored a touchdown
Other Nixon priorities that passed included elimination of a decades-old political patronage system for awarding drivers license fee offices, money for a program aimed at encouraging about 900 students to become doctors or nurses to alleviate a shortage in that field, and steady funding for state universities that will freeze student tuition in the coming year
Keeping tuition flat may have been accomplished anyway because of existing state and federal laws, but the new governor still trumpeted the achievement
This year, while students in many other states will face large tuition spikes, Missouri students wont see their tuition rise by a penny; Nixon said
But the governor fell short in a few areas. He helped broker what was hailed as a creative plan for providing health care to an additional 35,000 low-income Missourians without spending state tax dollars, but he saw it collapse in the sessions final two days
Some Republicans recoiled from the idea, saying it expanded welfare and ripped open an old political scab from Republican Matt Blunt;s years in office.
Nixon, who had worked hard for the plan, saved his most forceful end-of-session rhetoric for that issueThe legislature;s failure to expand access to health care this year was shortsighted, but I will continue to pursue this issue
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