Joan Bray

 Lawmakers and their staff must always be careful not to campaign on government time, as Rep. Schupp ran into recently.

Today's Missouri Ethics Commission filings raise this issue again, this time for State Senate candidate Barbara Fraser.  On her filing, we see one of Sen. Joan Bray's Legislative Staffers being paid by the campaign for mailings and fundraising.  It is important to find out whether or not any of this campaign work was done on state time.

The Senate began its floor debate of ethics legislation proposed by Sen. Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph).  As outlined in the Post-Dispatch, his bill

would add more heft to the Missouri Ethics Commission, require more disclosure of campaign donations made during the legislative session, ban most committee-to-committee transfers and broaden the definition of lobbyist. The bill would also make it illegal for lawmakers to work as political consultants for other lawmakers.

The debate lasted a little more than two hours, and was put on hold when it became clear that Sen. Jason Crowell (R-Cape Girardeau), a close friend and client of disgraced Rod Jetton, announced that he had a series of amendments.  Listen to the whole debate:

This is not good news:

Senate Majority Leader Kevin Engler [R-Farmington] also is bracing for trouble. Eight of the 10 senators term-limited in 2010 are Republicans. Of the 10 additional senators term-limited in 2012, seven of them also are Republicans.

"Over half my majority is term-limited, and most of them aren't running for higher office, so they have no responsibility to the voters," said Engler, R-Farmington. "Some things that would be tempered before will not be tempered now, because their objective is, 'So what? You sure don't care what the public thinks. I can kill everything if I want, because I'm not up for election."

The idea of Republican Senators being even less "tempered" in their obstructionism and extremism gives me the heebie-jeebies.

Contrary to earlier reports, GOP Representatives Allen Icet, Rick Stream and David Sater refused to since the conference committee report for House Bill 11, the budget bill for the Department of Social Services. The report was approved by a 7-3 vote.

Senators of both parties signed on the report -- Sens. Gary Nodler, Robert Mayer, Joan Bray, Timothy Green and Scott Rupp all support the compromise HB11. Democratic Representatives Chris Kelly and Kiki Curls also signed the report.