The 2021 version of the Missouri Legislative Session is nearly over. I am writing this May 10th, the last Monday of the last week of the session. At this point, there are two MIBA priorities that have passed the Senate.

SB 106, the Division of Finance revision bill, sponsored by Sen. Crawford has been Truly Agreed to and Finally Passed; and HB 697, the PACE revision bill, sponsored by Rep. DeGroot only needs one more vote in the House to be on the way to the Governor. We anticipate the PACE bill will be Truly Agreed to and Finally Passed by the House sometime this week.

At this point, in addition to the PACE bill, there are still a couple of issues pending that will take plenty of floor time, lessening the chances of passage for deserving and not-so-deserving bills. The session closes at 6 p.m. Friday, May 14th. Issues that could be show-stoppers are:

• SB 1, the Federal Reimbursement Allowance bill (sponsored by Sen. Dan Hegeman), is a must-pass as it is a self-imposed tax on health care providers used to draw down the lion’s share of Medicaid funding ($3 Billion) for the state.
• SB 262, the 12.5 cent fuel tax increase bill (sponsored by Sen. Dave Schatz), 2.5 cents a year over 5-years, is a must-pass for Sen. Schatz.

It’s always a pleasure working with the MIBA staff, legislators, and the other financial institution organizations on issues before the legislature. We’ve had several issues involving mandated banking services to certain industries, legislation restricting the enforcement of federal gun laws and penalties imposed on financial institutions for not banking certain industries that have kept us busy. All in all, we have been successfully navigating these issues this year.

So, as COVID restrictions begin to roll back and things get back to normal, here’s hoping everyone has a great second half of 2021, and we don’t have a special session!