Missouri passes $49B budget but cuts request from AG Eric Schmitt over mask lawsuits
Missouri Attorney General Eric Schmitt’s budget will be $500,000 smaller than he wanted this upcoming year — a request slashed by both legislative chambers in response to Schmitt’s decision to sue dozens of school districts over COVID-19 mask mandates.
The Missouri General Assembly sent its roughly $49 billion spending plan, infused with about $3 billion in federal COVID-19 spending, to Gov. Mike Parson’s desk on Friday. It was packed with boosts to public universities, starting teacher pay, school transportation and Medicaid expansion. The state also tacked on a controversial $500 million plan to offer tax credits to offset Missourians’ tax liabilities.
But missing from the record-setting budget was money originally allocated by the House to help Schmitt hire five more attorneys for the Office of Solicitor General, which defends the state in lawsuits over constitutional issues. Sen. Lincoln Hough, a Springfield Republican, requested that the Senate Appropriations Committee cut the money late last month. Both chambers finalized the cut this week.
On the House floor Friday, Rep. Peter Merideth, a St. Louis Democrat, reiterated Hough’s reason for cutting the money.
“As the Senate wisely put it, we probably shouldn’t be giving (Schmitt) that money when he seems to be using it to sue basically everybody in Missouri for campaign purposes,” he said. “I’m glad to see that we stuck with the Senate’s position on that and kept that money out.”
Merideth later doubled down, posting on Twitter that it was probably “a good idea to defund him a bit.”
The cut to a Republican’s budget request by both GOP-controlled chambers was viewed as a surprise move. The state was able to make significant contributions elsewhere this year due to its unusually high bottom line. It appeared to illustrate legislators’ irritation in some of Schmitt’s spending decisions as he campaigns for U.S. Senate.
Earlier this year, as Missouri schools struggled to stay open amid the surging Omicron variant, Schmitt filed lawsuits against dozens of school districts for enacting mask mandates. He argued that the mask rules were “arbitrary and capricious” — although many viewed the suits as politically motivated.
In the months after, as the number of COVID-19 cases fell rapidly across the state, most of the school districts have filed motions to dismiss the lawsuits.
Chris Nuelle, Schmitt’s spokesman, said in a statement: “We will continue to fight government overreach at all levels with whatever resources the legislature gives us.”
The denial of the request comes as Schmitt’s campaign in the Republican primary for U.S. Senate has ramped up in recent weeks. The attorney general has made frequent appearances on national TV programs, criticizing a host of issues including alleged censorship of conservative talking points by media organizations and the Biden administration’s response to immigration.
He has largely centered his campaign on his lawsuits, which have also pushed back on policies of the federal government. This week, Schmitt announced he had joined Louisiana Attorney General Jeff Landry in a lawsuit against Biden for “allegedly working with social media giants such as Meta, Twitter, and YouTube to censor and suppress free speech, including truthful information, related to COVID-19, election integrity, and other topics, under the guise of combating ‘misinformation.’”
Schmitt has also made two trips to the southern border with Mexico, part of his campaign’s hard-line stance on immigration.
Rep. Brad Hudson, a Cape Fair Republican, on Friday said he would vote for the budget even though he felt that the legislature was denying a request from an office that “does good work.”
“Unfortunately a lot of the discussion surrounding this has been with regard to masking lawsuits, but really that team is involved in that very little,” he said. “There are very few folks in this team, they are working some long hours and I think the money there would’ve been justifiable. Certainly in a year when we are spending so much money in so many other places.”
