Love note from Jeff City

My Fellow Missourians:

The Spoonbill/Paddlefish snagging season is well under way on the Osage River Arm of Truman Lake.  I crossed what we call the Brown’s Ford Bridge between Iconium and Lowry City on my way for breakfast Saturday morning.  There were more boats up and down the river than you could shake a stick at!

Finally, some much needed rain is starting a Spring green-up.  People are finding mushrooms and starting to catch crappie that makes for some delicious dining!  The wild turkeys are gobbling and strutting their feathers.

The Youth Turkey Hunt is also upon us for April 8 and 9.  The Youth hunters who are age 6-15 on April 8 may hunt.  It’s amazing that hunters and anglers in Missouri generate $274 million annually in state and local taxes.  Total expenditures exceed $1.7 billion with an economic impact of $3 billion.  Hunting and fishing support 38,185 jobs in Missouri.

Missouri offers some of the best spring turkey hunting in the nation, and St. Clair, Cedar, Hickory, and Dade counties provide some of the best hunting.  For more information on this year’s spring turkey season visit: https://huntfish.mdc.mo.gov/sites/default/files/downloads/2017springturkey.pdf.

House approves fiscal year 2018 spending plan:

House members discussed and debated the Fiscal Year 2018 state operating budget for several hours on both Tuesday and Thursday this week before giving final approval to the $27.7 billion spending plan and sending it to the Senate. The House version of the budget includes record levels of funding for public K-12 education; fully funding the school foundation formula for the first time. It restores a proposed cut to school transportation funding and adds additional dollars to higher education above what was recommended by the governor. The plan approved by the House restores a cut proposed by the governor that would have impacted 20,000 seniors and disabled Missourians who currently qualify for state-funded in-home care and nursing home services.

Highlights include:

• An additional $48 million that will fully fund the School Foundation Formula for public K-12 education for the first time. The FY 2018 budget proposal appropriates more than $6 billion in total for the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education.

• Lawmakers found an additional $25 million to restore a cut proposed by the governor to public school transportation.

• The House version of the budget restores $600,000 in funding from a proposed cut to independent living centers, which help people with disabilities to increase their independence and their opportunity to participate in day-to-day life within their communities.

• An additional $1.3 million in funding for the state’s Area Agencies on Aging for use in the Meals on Wheels program that provides meal assistance to seniors.

• An increase of $15.4 million in funding for the state employee pension system, which brings the plan to a record level of state support.

• $250,000 to upgrade the state’s Amber Alert system to allow it to be integrated with the Silver Alert System and the Blue Alert System.

• $500,000 added to pilot a program to promote STEM education in middle schools.

• $62 million in new funding for road construction.

The budget bills now move to the Senate for consideration. The budget must be completed by Friday, May 5, which gives the House and Senate one month to reach an agreement on the final spending plan.

Big Bill of the week:

The House gave final approval this week to Prescription Drug Monitoring Program legislation that would implement a prescription drug tracking system in an effort to prevent opioid abuse in Missouri. If approved by both chambers and signed into law, House Bills 90 and 68 would make Missouri the 50th and final state to implement such a system to prevent the practice of doctor shopping to obtain multiple prescriptions for valuable and addictive medications.

Now moving to the Senate, the bill would require the Missouri Department of Health and Senior Services to establish and maintain a program to monitor the prescribing and dispensing of all Schedule II through Schedule IV controlled substances. The bill would require information on these drugs being prescribed and dispensed to be reported within 24 hours. By the year 2020 the information would be updated in real time.