MOHELA plan put on hold
March 16, 2007
Bipartisan scuffling has forced the most controversial — and perhaps most comprehensive — higher education bills this session to temporarily sit on the table in the Senate until at least March 26, when the General Assembly will return after its spring break.
The Lewis and Clark Discovery Initiative, a proposal by Gov. Matt Blunt, would use the sale of assets of the Missouri Higher Education Loan Authority to get funding for capital projects across the state.
Debate of the bill has been a staple in the Senate this session, which included concerns about which buildings to fund and debate on stem-cell research and on a report by MOHELA advisory firm Liscarnan Solutions LLC that advised MOHELA against the sale of its assets.
Debate reached its peak on March 8 when Blunt, with support of Republican senators, altered the list of capital projects funded.
The changes featured dropped funds for medical-related buildings, including an $85 million Health Sciences Research Center at MU. The new list focused mainly on agricultural projects. MU would lose more than $40 million in the new version of the bill.
Monday night, Sen. Chuck Graham, D-Columbia, began a filibuster during debate about the umbrella higher education bill. The filibuster lasted nearly 15 hours.
"They started talking about the bill on the Senate floor Monday evening and discussion went almost to 11 Tuesday morning," Senate Communications Office spokesman Mike Asmus said. "There were several times during those 15 hours that the parties could have reached an agreement, but they didn't."
The filibuster included nearly every Democrat in the Senate and resulted with the bill being laid over, Asmus said.
When a bill is laid over, it is taken off the floor but put on the Senate Informal Calendar, and the Senate majority leader can take it off the calendar to return to debate at any time.
"The date and time is not fixed," Senate President Pro Tem Michael Gibbons said. "But it will happen."
The Democrats used the filibuster to deter debate and the possibility of the bill moving to a vote.
"Certainly, I believe the filibuster was successful in what the Democrats believe in," Sen. Maida Coleman, D-St. Louis, said. "It was to stop a piece of legislation that did not make accommodations for students."
Democrats have said they are mostly upset with the sale of student loan assets and the governor's abandonment from the original plan.
Rep. Jeff Harris, D-Columbia, withdrew his support for the plan after the Liscarnan report, and other Democrats seem to have followed.
"I am an opponent of destroying the low-interest loan agency for the sake of building buildings," Sen. Joan Bray, D-St. Louis County, said.
Bray said she was upset with the plan because of poor responses from her caucus.
"Anytime I talk about MOHELA in my district, people make it clear what they want MOHELA to be doing," Bray said. "Because families have seen tuition skyrocket in the past few years, they know what it should be doing."
Gibbons said the Democrats are putting politics over people.
"They are playing politics simply to attempt to defeat a good plan proposed by the governor," he stated in a news release. "It is time to stop playing politics with our students' educations and pass these measures to make college more affordable for all Missouri students."
A majority of Democrats don't believe the plan will make college more affordable and instead proposed a version of the plan in which state bonding would fund capital projects.
"The legislation relative to bonding was part of the Democrats' answer to MOHELA," Coleman said. "Wes Shoemeyer created the legislation that would create funding that would allow moneys to stay where it would help students and let buildings be built."
Bray said she understands the desperate need for capital improvements in the state, but she would like to find a better way to fund the projects.
"I would like us all to work together to form a good public policy," she said. "Use bonding and supplant that with general revenue funds. I would be happy to sit down with the administration and form some plan like that."
Four versions of the MOHELA bill have been introduced as substitutes on the Senate floor, and Bray said she had heard rumors of a possible fifth version that could be proposed if the bill is brought back to debate on the floor.
"We have no idea when, and if, it will be coming back," Coleman said. "Either way it comes, Democrats will be ready to fight a piece of legislation that takes away our future ability to be a viable workforce for the state."
Asmus speculated that the bill would be brought back.
"It's been my experience that with bills that are of major importance, they at least get it to the point that there is a vote on it," Asmus said. "It's surprising sometimes that, once things have cooled off, how quickly it can be brought to a vote."
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