Today on the House floor we debated Rep. Jason Smith’s bill to require Missouri counties and (thanks to an amendment) cities to report their spending on the Missouri Accountability Portal. I thought it’d be a 163-0 vote. Turns out I was wrong. 25 Democrats voted against an amendment requiring the City of St. Louis to join the 21st century in reporting its spending in an easily accessible online database.

I was honored to witness three Mid-Missourians receiving the Legion of Honor: Lloyd Cain, Frank Crooks and Francis “Bud” Jones. All three served nobly in World War II – and their bravery and public service makes anything we do in the state capitol pale in comparison. Also, I learned that Bud Jones not only worked with my grandmother at the Highway Patrol, but also was in the same class as her at Fatima High School many years ago.

Video from Missouri News Horizon.

I believe it is vitally important that the people of Missouri have confidence that their elected officials make decisions based on the merits rather than their own financial interests or the financial interests of close family members.

Recently, an organization named ‘Renew Missouri’ submitted a ballot initiative to Missouri Secretary of State Robin Carnahan which would create a new renewable energy mandate in our state. Their petition would require a transfer of hundreds of millions of dollars from Missouri’s electric ratepayers to renewable energy suppliers in our state. Secretary Carnahan’s brother Tom holds perhaps hundreds of millions of dollars of investments in renewable energy. (His company, the Wind Capital Group, received a reported $107 million in federal stimulus funds.)

Regardless of where you stand on the issue of renewable energy mandates, all Missourians should agree that the initiative petition process should be free from undue influence as a result of huge personal or family investments in an industry with such a large stake in the outcome of an initiative petition. As such, I’ve requested Secretary Carnahan to recuse herself and her office from its traditional role in initiative petition proceedings – and to allow the Attorney General to take over her office’s role.

It is my sincere hope that Secretary Carnahan will do the right thing. Regardless of her decision, however, the House Interim Committee on Gov’t Oversight will look into this issue in January.

My letter is linked here: Request for SOS Carnahan to Recuse from Renewable Energy Petition Process

Why Noranda’s Wall Street Minders Oppose Long-Term Affordable Clean Energy for Missouri

On KWOS last week I was asked why Noranda Aluminum Company is so opposed to a new nuclear plant in mid-Missouri. My answer is linked above. In short, their opposition (and the opposition of their big business coalition members) is driven by short-term profit seeking to keep up with the demands of the quarter-to-quarter mindset on Wall Street that helped push our nation into our current economic malaise.

From the MissouriNet:

House creates committee to look into Mamtech (AUDIO)

The House and Senate now both have committees on Governmental Accountability, both charged with looking into what happened to the Mamtech sucralose plant in Moberly.

Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) Photo courtesy of House Communications

In a time of budget cuts, the House Committee on Governmental Accountability says it wants to make sure no taxpayer dollar goes wasted. Committee Chair Jay Barnes says his committee is staffed by some of the most knowledgeable House members on the budget, like Budget Chair Ryan Silvey and Chris Kelly. Barnes says both of them are very thorough in their questioning, which could mean a lot of long meetings.

Barnes says his committee’s goal is not to craft legislation, but just to look at all the facts and hear from all the interested parties before making any decisions about what to do to stop something like this from happening again.

Barnes says his committee mirrors the Senate, but is acting independently. He says it’s important to have the committee in both chambers so that there are knowledgeable people in both the House and Senate on the issue, should a bill come up regarding it.

He says the committee will be calling its first meeting at the end of November, tentatively. He says he has requested a long list of documents and testimony for the first meetings, so he wanted to give all parties time to prepare.

Here’s today’s press release on saving the pro-life pregnancy resource center tax credit which, without the amendment, would have expired in 2015. Side-note: quick-thinking saved the day here. This was an amendment-to-another-amendment. The original saved the food pantry tax credit – which I support. As soon as debate started, I thought, “Whoa, why don’t we have an amendment to save the pregnancy resource center tax credit too.” Much thanks to the reps who killed time to give House Research enough time to draft the amendment to the amendment in the middle of debate.

Jefferson City, MO – Representative Jay Barnes (R-Jefferson City) successfully amended the jobs bill under consideration by the Missouri House Thursday to save pro-life pregnancy resource center tax credits from expiration in 2015.

“Pregnancy resource centers offer assistance, comfort and support to mothers facing difficult pregnancies,” Barnes said. “These centers save and improve the lives of both Missouri mothers and children.”

The pregnancy resource center tax credits provide personal income tax credits to Missouri taxpayers who make donations supporting these life-affirming charitable organizations. Without Barnes’ amendment, the credits would have expired in 2015.

These pictures are from today’s float trip on the Maries River. The gondolier in the front is Rep. Bill Reiboldt from Neosho. We had a great time. And thanks to the presentation by Rep. Tom Loehner, learned a lot about stream-bank erosion issues and the problems of land-owners on the Maries River.

I heard from a lot of people this weekend about my quote in this AP article on the Facebook fix. Here’s the quote:

The only two House members to vote against the repeal Friday were Republican Jay Barnes of Jefferson City and Democrat Mike Colona of St. Louis. Both are attorneys. And both suggested that local school districts could end up adopting policies that still infringe on free speech, essentially multiplying the lawsuits that could be filed.

“We just traded one big unconstitutional ball of wax for 529 little balls of wax,” Barnes said.

Governor Nixon has not stated whether he’s going to sign the bill or not.