State Senate approves 'paycheck protection' with changes

For the second time in three weeks, the Missouri Senate worked into the night debating a controversial bill.

But this time, the lawmakers agreed to a compromise that allowed the "paycheck protection" measure to come to a vote after only 6 ½ hours, instead of the 13-hour filibuster two weeks ago on a tort reform bill.2

"This act allows public employee labor unions to withhold fees from public employee paychecks, only upon the annual consent of the employee," Senate sponsor Dan Brown, R-Rolla, explained. "This act also requires the public employee's for public employee labor unions to use fees and dues for political purposes."

Senators rejected a proposed amendment to limit the bill's effects only to state employees, but approved an amendment from Senate Minority Leader Joe Keaveny, D-St. Louis, that "has to do with the availability of the data (only) for the public employees - since some firms have both public and private employees. We wanted to make sure that the data keeping track of the public employees was available only to the public employees - and not the private employees."

Brown supported the change, telling reporters after the vote: "It makes sense."

The Senate made changes to the House-passed bill, so it goes back to the House - where representatives can accept the Senate's changes or ask for a conference committee to reach some compromise.

Brown said: "You have to realize that we had, like, eight different rewrites on this bill.

"We worked really hard to try to make this acceptable to both sides."

Keaveny agreed.

"The difficulty was in getting to a spot where we could have the compromise," he said. "Once we started talking, Sen. Brown was pretty agreeable."

Three years ago, lawmakers passed a similar bill and Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed it.

And the Legislature didn't have enough votes to meet the two-thirds over-ride margin.