Missouri Gov. Parson signs bill to boost state worker pay, fund Medicaid expansion

Missouri state workers will get pay raises, the Medicaid system will remain funded for the rest of the fiscal year and schools will get nearly $2 billion in federal aid under a supplemental budget bill Gov. Mike Parson signed Thursday.

Swift passage of the bill, after weeks of delay in both the House and Senate, allows the state to avert multiple crises.

The school aid had to be allocated by March 24. Failing to meet that timetable would result in the state being forced to return the funds to the federal government. Kansas City Public Schools alone is waiting on $64 million from the bill.

And Medicaid had been getting close to running out of money. Under Medicaid expansion, 66,500 new enrollees have received health benefits but lawmakers last year had refused to add funds for their coverage.

The legislation, which adds close to $4.6 billion to the budget for the fiscal year that ends July, also includes a line blocking Planned Parenthood from receiving Medicaid dollars -- part of a renewed effort by conservatives to “defund” the provider after a similar budget move was struck down in the state Supreme Court.

Federal law already prohibits Medicaid from paying for abortions in most instances.

The House worked quickly to approve the bill after the Missouri Senate passed it on Wednesday night, and Parson signed it soon after. He had originally wanted it on his desk Feb. 1.

Nearly two months into the legislative session, it was the first bill that passed the Senate after weeks of gridlock. Hardline conservatives and GOP leadership had been at a standstill first on a congressional map, then on other legislation and more recently on a member’s wearing of overalls onto the chamber’s floor.

The latter issue dominated legislative business on Tuesday. But Sen. Mike Moon, the Ash Grove Republican who wore the allegedly offending garment, and Senate President Dave Schatz, a Sullivan Republican, declared a truce late Wednesday afternoon with mutual apologies offered.

The budget bill passed on a vote of 25-7. After a few hours of filibuster, all ten Democrats supported the bill despite their unsuccessful attempts to remove the Planned Parenthood line, explaining they wanted to hasten along passage of Medicaid dollars and schools aid.

Conservative lawmakers in the House had removed funds for Parson to raise wages for state workers to at least $15 an hour. The Senate’s bill restored those raises. The bill also provides all state workers, who are experiencing a turnover rate of 26%, a 5.5% boost in pay.

After signing the bill, Parson said the raise is “long overdue.”

Several Democrats in the Senate on Wednesday said they believed the Planned Parenthood line would get thrown out in court or result in repercussions from the Biden administration. Federal regulations give Medicaid patients a choice of their medical provider, a position Planned Parenthood has called on Biden to reaffirm.

Republicans for several years had passed language in regular budget bills blocking Medicaid dollars to abortion providers, “or any affiliate or associate,” to target Planned Parenthood. A Planned Parenthood clinic in St. Louis is the state’s only abortion clinic; the organization also operates 11 clinics statewide that provide low-income patients pap smears, birth control and other health care.

After being denied Medicaid payments from the state, Planned Parenthood sued, resulting in a 2020 Missouri Supreme Court ruling that lawmakers could not make policy through the budget bills.

But conservatives have not given up their efforts to block the provider from the state health program. Hardliners last summer tried to couple such a measure with renewal of a critical hospital tax that funds Medicaid, and GOP leaders formed a special committee dedicated to studying how to achieve the “defunding.”

“The courts have already told us that this legislation through this budget process is unconstitutional,” said Sen. Jill Schupp, a Creve Coeur Democrat. “Why are we going through it again? Why are we wasting the taxpayers time and money?”

Sen. Dan Hegeman, a Cosby Republican and the Senate Appropriations Chair, said he believed a state Supreme Court case upholding the Medicaid eligibility expansion last year opened the door to allowing lawmakers to choose certain coverage to block through the budget.

“I find their decisions contradictory right now,” he said.

The latest budget bill adds the Planned Parenthood line in a different section of the legislation than the version the court struck down in 2020. But Bonyen Lee-Gilmore, spokeswoman for Planned Parenthood of the St. Louis Region, said “nothing is new.”

“This attempt to ‘defund’ Planned Parenthood was just as unpopular and illegal then as it is now,” she said.

This story was originally published February 24, 2022 at 5:04 PM.