Legislative Session Update - Week 4

Water and Gas Surcharges

Both the House and Senate Committees who oversee utility legislation are considering bills to expand infrastructure replacement surcharges for private monopoly water and gas utilities. In the House, there has been some concern over expansion of these surcharges, but only residential customer advocates opposed the expansion of the gas Infrastructure System Replacement Surcharge (ISRS).

House Bill 1992, sponsored by Representative Bill Kidd (R-Independence) would expand the gas ISRS to allow for customers to be charged for not only the replacement of “worn out or deteriorated pipes”, but would expand the unjustified surcharge for nearly any steel or iron pipes in the entire system.

AARP is opposed to any surcharge that operates outside the regular and expansive review contained in rate cases before the Public Service Commission (PSC), but HB 1992 would actually overturn a court decision that would require Spire to return ill-gotten funds to their customers around Missouri. Basically, they broke the law, got caught, and now they want to change the law.

Senators Filibuster on Redistricting Rollback

The CLEAN Missouri ballot initiative, which was supported by AARP, included within it a non-partisan way of re-drawing the lines for Missouri’s legislative districts. Under the new Constitutional Amendment, a non-partisan demographer is to be appointed by the State Auditor and confirmed by the State Senate. That demographer would then draw the maps to be approved by the redistricting commissions. These districts would be required to be contiguous and compact, but also pass a partisan fairness test to ensure that they are not gerrymandered.

The General Assembly has had significant concerns about this new process and are attempting to return to the old way of drawing districts. There is also a concern that Senate Joint Resolution 38 would no longer require that the districts be drawn based on the most recent Census data and instead focus on eligible voters, drastically changing the way that population has been considered in the past.

The eight remaining senators in the Minority Caucus filibustered into the early morning hours on Thursday to block the legislation from moving forward.