Steve Tilley

For the last several weeks, the Indiana legislature has been in a protracted battle with workers in an effort to pass their Right to Work for Less bill.  Unfortunately for millions of workers in Indiana, the legislature succeeded today with their senate passing the bill out and which their governor, Mitch Daniels, confirmed to sign.

Take a moment to think about what happened in Indiana today:

Wages will go down - studies show the average wage for union and non-union workers in RTW4L states are significantly lower than in fair bargaining states

Fewer people will have access to health care - 21% more people lack health insurance in RTW4L states than in free bargaining states

Workplace deaths and injuries will likely rise - according to the Federal Bureau of Labor Statistics, the rate of workplace deaths is 51 percent higher in states with right to work, where unions can’t speak up on behalf of workers

Charles Jaco lets 'er rip: "It's a darn good thing there's almost no unemployment in Missouri that our schools are the nations best, our roads are in superb shape and none of our children live in poverty. Because, if none of that were true, you'd have to wonder why the Missouri legislature is wasting its time on nonsense. But since things are perfect, I guess they can get away with it."

Rep. John Diehl (R-Town & Country) is kind of a big deal when it comes to economic development (just ask him). He was the House’s chief negotiator of the amazing economic development bill which never made it out of the absolute, total failure of a special session last year which left Missouri's taxpayers on the hook for nearly $300,000 for a bunch of legislators who stood around making fools out of themselves on what turned out to be a really bad deal.

This leads to the question of why is one of Diehl's closest confidantes, Speaker Tilley (R-Perryville), kicking him off the Economic Development committee? Is someone being put in the time out chair? Diehl’s apartment may smell like rich mahogany and he may have many leather-bound books, but perhaps his incompetence has even his closest allies frustrated. And when your incompetence gets you kicked off, but others can do things like go 100% birther and question the President's citizenship and then turn around and be elected future speker… you should take a long hard look in the mirror.

From this week's Political EYE in the St. Louis American

The tipping factor already has started to tip. According to reliable, disgruntled Republican sources, a powerful Republican operative who favors state Sen. Brad Lager was the one who turned Tilley’s toxic source(s) against him to scare him out of the lieutenant governor’s race. The EYE was told this before Lager declared he had entered the LG race, which gives the report some credence. The same source said this same operative was suspected within the party of turning up trouble for current Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder in his still undeclared bid for governor. This suggests the Missouri Republican Party has started to come apart at its center, with a free-for-all fight for power starting to get underway.

From today's Post-Dispatch:

Editorial: For moment, Steve Tilley leaves behind poor legislative legacy

There is a lesson to be learned from those whose light burns brightly but goes out fast: In politics, effective governing takes serious people and years of effort.

A flash in the pan often is nothing but fool's gold.

Dave Drebes, Tony's Kansas City and John Combest are reporting that Steve TIlley will not run for Lieutenant Governor, conspicuously parked campaign van notwithstanding. 

Contrary to absurd claims that Rex Sinquefield's tax fantasies will make it so "you and me and everybody can have more money to spend, now and forever," the Everything Tax, supported by Peter Kinder and Steve Tilley, is "a loser for nearly everyone." 

They want to eliminate the tax source which brings in 65 percent of Missouri’s revenue, claiming unconvincingly that getting rid of the individual income tax will cause new businesses to flock to Missouri and produce enough new revenues to close a $3 billion budget gap.

Under their plan, consumers would pay a 5.5 percent sales tax on food, which currently is exempt. Many services would be newly subjected to a sales tax, which in most cases would be capped at 10 percent, with the state entitled to 7 percent of that amount. The state would receive more than half of the tax for its general fund and dedicated purposes. Over time, some local governments could be forced to reduce their existing sales taxes.

Instead of inhabiting a low-tax utopia, most Missourians would experience a higher cost of living and decimated state services.

We can all agree that Republicans failed Missourians during the special session.  Failed to create jobs.  Failed to keep their word.  Failed to be the leaders they were elected to be.

But if Speaker Steve Tilley gets his wish, all of us will forget that the Republicans couldn't do much more than fight with each other at the expense of Missouri taxpayers.  He'd really like you to be distracted by something else.

In an effort to draw the public's attention away from republicans' failings, Tilley is making a big to-do over asking Missouri's auditor to investigate the collapse of the Mamtek deal in Moberly.

But get this, Moberly's own representative, Randy Asbury (R), has asked Tilley to back down.  If Tilley's request for an audit were approved, it wouldn't be the first investigation into the Mamtek dealings.  It wouldn't even be the second.  Or third, or fourth.  If the Auditor is asked, per Tilley's request to the governor, to investigate the Mamtek situation, it would join four other investigations already underway by the Securities and Exchange Commission, the Missouri Attorney General, and two legislative committees.

Asbury himself says it best:

If Moberly is left alone, Asbury wrote, it can solve the problems. Instead, the city “has been a political pawn in the midst of a media-frenzy,” draining the effort to find a new user for the factory.

“I do not fear investigations; however, I do question how many are necessary to complete the task,” he said.

Over three months after Rob Mayer and Steve Tilley stood up and said they had a deal, the special session ends not with a bang but a whimper.

“We adjourned sine die because obviously, the House and Senate are miles apart on the different versions of the economic development bill, and it would be fruitless to continue onward and waste the taxpayers’ money,” said Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer a Republican.

Steve Tilley and Rob Mayer in Kansas City on their pre-session media tour

Missourinet's Bob Priddy reacts to the effective end of this year's special session: 

The special legislative session crashed and burned about 7 p.m., Monday, October 17, in frustration and deadlock. There will be some heavy finger-pointing.  There will be some disagreements about whether the House or the Senate was the cause of an excruciatingly slow and painful downward spiral from September 6th, the day of the session’s already-flawed launch. One-hundred ninety-seven people, members of the House and Senate, were injured but are expected to recover by January....

This was something none of us had ever seen before.  An absolute, total, failure.  And dispirited lawmakers were voicing only faint hopes at the end that things will be appreciably better for the regular session in January. In a perverse way, though, the collapse is instructive...

Rob Mayer and Steve Tilley in happier times.

July 20 - Steve Tilley: "We finally reached an agreement."

July 20 - KMOX: "The announcement featured Mo Senate Leader Robert Mayer, R-Dexter and Mo House Speaker Steve Tilley, R-Perryville — both saying they are ready to pass a wide ranging jobs package that goes beyond China Hub."

July 26 - Rob Mayer: Governor Jay Nixon "'was somewhat cautious or hesitant...'He had concerns about opposition in either chamber. He wanted to make certain that we had a degree of certainty' that the economic development bill would pass."

September 23- Steve Tilley on Rob Mayer: "The House has done every single thing that we said we were going to do...I assume that when Rob Mayer told me this is the deal that they could get this done -- It's not my job to micromanage the Senate.  I assumed he could get it done. It's clear that he couldn't. I'm not necessarily blaming him, because I think he's trying to get it done.  But obviously he wasn't successful..."

September 22 - Rob Mayer: "I’m not optimistic at all."

September 23 - Steve Tilley: "I think Brad Lager says one thing and does another."

September 23 - Steve Tilley: "Functionally, The Senate's Broke"

September 23 - Bob Priddy: "We agree that we’ve never seen a special legislative session that is such a mess as this one."

September 24 - St. Louis Post-Dispatch: "The man most responsible for delaying, and possibly killing, the bill you care about is named Steve Tilley, a Republican from Perryville who is speaker of the Missouri House."

The St. Louis American’s Political Eye has some pretty astute observations about the hot mess that is the 2011 special session. Infighting has put House Speaker Steve Tilley and his fellow Republicans on shaky political ground. The Eye has more: 

Every Democrat in Missouri was just handed a tremendous campaign advantage in 2012: look at these Republicans; all they care about is business and they control both houses of the Legislature overwhelmingly and they still couldn’t get an economic development bill passed – twice! They messed it up once in the general session, and then after promising the governor they had reached an agreement and spurring him to call them back to a special session, they still couldn’t get it done.

It’s a humiliating failure by Republican legislators, and by all rights it should lead to substantial losses in 2012. Democrats have a long way to go towards taking back control of either chamber, but Republicans just made it much easier for them to start winning back some ground.

Ann Wagner called the resolution passed by the Missouri House “an affront to a great corporate citizen of the St. Louis area and the state of Missouri.” This comes after an editorial from the St. Louis Post Dispatch taking the Missouri House leadership to task for passing the resolution.

The Resolution passed by the Missouri House disparaging Boeing's F/A-18 Super Hornet in favor of the Texas-built F-35 was wrong and is an affront to a great corporate citizen of the St. Louis area and the state of Missouri. The F/A-18 Super Hornet is important to the United States Military as they complete critical missions around the globe in the name of freedom and prosperity.

A big win for Steve Tilley, Birther Tim Jones, Jeff Roe and former possible statewide candidate Caleb Jones: "This is what the Republican-led Missouri House did Thursday when it was supposed to be debating a jobs bill in the now five-week old Missouri Legislature's special session: It took a break to pass a worthless — but not meaningless — resolution that directly slapped the face of one of the state's biggest employers. Missouri House Republicans have made their stance quite clear. They are pro-wasteful federal spending, pro-GOP consultant, pro-Texas. They're equally anti-middle class, anti-Boeing, anti-progress. And they are opposed to any jobs bill that might bring thousands of new jobs to St. Louis. We hope the business community that has been so generous with campaign funds for the House Republicans is paying attention."

Steve Tilley and Rob Mayer on the air

The Post-Dispatch's take on the struggling special session: "In America, but especially in Missouri, money talks. The man most responsible for delaying, and possibly killing, the bill you care about is named Steve Tilley, a Republican from Perryville who is speaker of the Missouri House. In recent years, Mr. Tilley has taken hundreds of thousands of dollars in campaign contributions from the primary critics of your proposal: retired investor Rex Sinquefield, who also funds the think-tank Show-Me Institute, and developers who get rich from government programs intended to build low-income housing projects. Our suggestion is simple: Next time, put your money on the right horse."

The Star: "What went wrong? The simplest explanation is that Republican legislative leaders failed to do enough groundwork before asking Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon to call a special session. The barriers seen over the last three weeks involve GOP infighting in the Senate and disagreements between the Republican majorities in the Senate and House."

Missourinet's Bob Priddy: "Those of us who have been covering state government for a few decades have done something the legislature hasn’t been able to do.  We have reached a consensus. We agree that we’ve never seen a special legislative session that is such a mess as this one.  There already has been a bunch of finger pointing about who’s to blame.  There is no shortage of suspects."

Video of Speaker Steve Tilley speaking this afternoon after the House adjourned, via Jason Rosenbaum. 

Missouri Speaker of the House Steve Tilley and Senate President Pro Tem Rob Mayer slapped lots of backs and shook lots of hands on July 20th when they announced a deal to pass an economic development package turning St. Louis’ Lambert International Airport into a major cargo hub. 

On Monday, it was a different story. State Senators like Jason Crowell and Kurt Schaefer raised concerns about job creation projections, making it sounds like less than a done deal in the Senate.

If House Republicans are looking to point fingers (Tim Jones, Ryan Silvey and the HRCC desperately want people to blame the governor) maybe they should ask Steve Tilley and Rob Mayer why their “good agreement” on the economic development bill, presented publicly almost two months ago, is starting to waiver.

Missouri Speaker of the House Steve Tilley received over $8,600 from payday loan company QC Holdings Inc. yesterday.

A few weeks ago, QC Holdings employee John Prentzler filed a lawsuit against the initiative petition that would lower the APR limit for payday loans from 1,950 percent to 36 percent. 

When talking about his run for Lt. Gov., Missouri House Speaker Steve Tilley suggested that more can be done with the office – I guess besides being Tweeter in Chief:

“I think it’s a position that it is what you make of it,” the Perryville Republican (Steve Tilley) said in an interview. “If you want to be a weak lieutenant governor, then you can be. If you want to be a strong lieutenant governor, you can be.”