Ron Richard

Ron Richard is The Man With A Plan. Before the legislative spring break, The Speaker told reporters he had a "plan" to "reform government top-to-bottom," but was unwilling to release it. Then Monday, House Budget Chairman Allen Icet said that House Republicans weren't even going to try to make the approximately $500M that will be required for next year's budget.

Some (including yours truly) thought this refusal to detail a full plan and reluctance to pass a reasonable budget meant that Richard was full of hooey.

But I was wrong, because Ron Richard does have a plan for cutting the state budget. In fact, his office has identified a whopping $787,000 in proposed cuts for FY11.  AND, Richard found $55,000 in savings for FY10 by eliminating cell phone reimbursements, and unspecified savings in reduced travel and photocopy costs. Impressive stuff! 

"Stay in your seats, we're going to rip and rip."

Ron Richard advising his members of a busy schedule today

The Party of Personal Responsibility and Self-Righteous Budget Hawks:

The House Budget Committee chairman [Allen Icet] said he will leave it to the Senate and Gov. Jay Nixon to make the roughly $500 million in cuts to next year's budget that were proposed by Nixon last week.

What happened to Ron Richard's "plan" to reform state government and cut the state budget?

The Associated Press writes that House Republicans' messages regarding their use of extended federal stimulus money for next year's budget have been "somewhat confused."

The AP notes that House Speaker Ron Richard said, "We weren't going to put the $300 million in anyway, were we Mr. Chairman?" two days before House Budget Chairman Allen Icet introduced budget bills with $300 million in enhanced Medicaid payments scheduled to be passed by Congress.

Speaker Ron Richard says he needs "line-by-line details" before he can evaluate Governor Nixon's outline for streamlining state government and reducing state spending. "Until we see the governor’s line-by-line details of ways to shrink state government and bridge the $500 million gap in (his) budget, we aren’t confident that he has a plan," his spokesperson said yesterday.

This is the same Ron Richard who one week ago told reporters he had a "plan" to reform state government "top-to-bottom," but couldn't share it with the world just yet.

Speaker Ron Richard has a message for all the haters who didn't like the way he blocked a House vote on autism legislation last year: Kiss his grits.

Speaking Friday with The Globe, The Most Powerful Man in Missouri cited to the recently-passed autism insurance legislation (HB1311) as evidence that he has been on the right side of the debate all along. "We were right, as usual. The House.  As usual, I was right,"  he says. Listen:

Last year, there was a consensus that something should have been done. There wasn't a consensus in the House, and I was somewhat criticized throughout the state that I just didn't ram something through.

In a short 24 hour-span last weekend, House Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) declared and then denied a desire to be on a "short list" of Republican candidates for Governor in 2016.  Such plans were not welcomed by Lt. Governor Peter Kinder, who fancies himself a viable challenger to Jay Nixon in 2012.

The story seemed to be over as quickly as it had come, until Richard was asked about it by reporters for his hometown paper, The Joplin Globe.  At the end of the interview, Richard deviated from the blanket denial he gave The Beacon last Saturday, and again said he was interested in running for governor.  But to make the math work (and not hurt Kinder's tender feelings again), Richard says the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger made up the fact that he was thinking about running in 2016.

"I just haven't made up our mind."

Speaker Ron Richard, speaking with The Joplin Globe about what the House Republicans want to cut from the state budget.  The day before, Richard told reporters that he and "House Republicans" had a plan to "reform [government] top-to-bottom," but would not release said plan until Governor Nixon "stands with them to announce it."

Listen:

The Ron Richard Roller Coaster continues:  

[House Speaker Ron] Richard also said Friday that House Republicans would not support a tax hike to help supplement the state’s shrinking revenues. In fact, he favors the opposite.

"We’d like to do a small tax cut — something to help businesses in this tough economy," he said, in discussing a wide range of issues on the table in the current session.

Ozarks First:

SPEAKER DEFENDS ALLOCATION OF EXPECTED STIMULUS FUNDS

State House Speaker Ron Richard says Republicans in the House did not use $300-million in unappropriated stimulus money to balance the budget.

An instant Ron Richard classic:

On Thursday, House Speaker Ron Richard declared during a press conference that House Republicans didn't use $300 million in federal stimulus dollars that haven't been appropriated by Congress yet.

“We thought that was … on the irresponsible side, and we decided not to do that,” Richard told reporters in front of the GOP caucus.

But the GOP spending plan introduced late Wednesday by House Budget Chairman Allen Icet does include the $300 million.

Friday afternoon, House Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) told the Post-Dispatch's Tony Messenger that he wanted to be on "the short list" of GOP candidates for governor in 2016.  And then at some point in the next 24 hours, Richard decided -- or was persuaded -- that we shouldn't believe what he'd stated the day before. 

It's not hard to see why some of his colleagues at the MOGOP's Lincoln Days celebration were freaked out by Richard's statements.  Implicit in his 2016 dreams, of course, is the assumption that Peter Kinder will not survive his 2012 campaign for governor. 

Missourinet and the AP report that Senate President Charlie Shields (R-St. Joseph) and Speaker Ron Richard (R-Joplin) are both cool to the replace the state income tax with much higher sales taxes.  Missourinet's Bob Priddy:

Senate leader Charlie Shields does not think the bill will pass but he expects a robust debate. In the event it does clear the Senate, the proposal goes to the House, which passed the bill last year. But this year, Speaker Ron Richard sees problems. “I just want to make sure there’s not any uncertainty about where we’re moving, about schools formula, about libraries, about fire districts...And I can see the amendments on the floors now, everybody getting exempted out to kill the bill...I don’t think St. Louis can take 11 or 12 or 13 percent sales tax on their retail. I don’t think that would work and I don’t think that’s proper,” he says.

UPDATE: Richard is calling for the establishment of a charitable trust to finance the Capitol renovations, which means the money would come private donations, not state taxpayers.  My tweet about the story incorrectly assumed that the people would be paying for upgrades to their  Capitol. That said, having politicans try to raise all this money from private donors sounds like a horrible idea. 

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The librul free-spending austere budget hawk Ron Richard wants $350 million to renovate the Capitol building, build a tunnel from the Capitol to the MoDOT building next door and move the Department of Transportation to some other location.

Sounds swell. But how, exactly, does the Speaker plan to find this $350 million? 

And how is this a top priority for The Most Powerful Man in Missouri?