Richard Spokesperson: "Ron Just Didn't Have The Votes" For Autism Bill Because GOP Members Were Lying

A new story from KY3's Dave Catanese has an fascinating quote from Speaker Ron Richard's spokesperson on why House leaders refused to allow a vote on autism legislation last year.

"Ron just didn't have the votes [last year]," said Richard spokeswoman Kristen Blanchard. "Publicly legislators were telling people they'd vote for it, but behind closed doors they were saying they couldn't. The Speaker wants everyone to be able to have their input on the bill," she added.

So the Speaker's spokesperson is asking us to believe a significant portion of the GOP caucus was lying to the public about supporting the bill?  Nice! 

Catanese doesn't challenge the assertion from Richard's office in his article, except to weakly state that "some blamed the House for failing." 

In reality, there are numerous published accounts are at odds with Richard's "we didn't have the votes" story. Sen. Scott Rupp (R-Wentzville), for example, said in May the bill had 110 votes in the House -- more than enough for passage.  And in July, the Post-Dispatch reported that "Richard had already been outed by other Republicans as being the reason the bill never came up for a vote."