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On June 11, Governor Jay Nixon held a news conference in which he explained his vetoes of four Missouri Senate bills which he said would negatively impact state and local government sales tax revenue.

Florissant Mayor Tom Schneider attended the new conference on behalf of Missouri’s cities and villages.

Schneider is a past President and member of the board of directors of the St. Louis County Municipal League and a member of the Missouri Municipal League Administration and Intergovernmental Relations Policy Committee. He offered his thanks to Nixon for vetoing Senate bills 584, 612, 662, and 693, which would have cost local governments millions of dollars according to estimates for the state budget office.

Both St. Louis County and the Missouri Municipal League had identified and quantified the extreme negative impact that these bills would have on the cities of Missouri and had expressed their alarm to the Governor’s office, requesting these vetoes.

In explaining his vetoes, Nixon said that the vetoed legislation contained more than a dozen special breaks and exemptions passed in the final hours of the legislative session, which would reduce state and local revenues by up to $776 million annually. He noted that the loss of funds caused by these loop-holes were not accounted for in the State of Missouri’s 2015 fiscal year budget that was passed by the Missouri legislature, nor in the budgets of local cities and other jurisdictions that would be impacted.

In his Governors’ letter to the General Assembly, Nixon found fault with the last-minute compromising of the legislative process and with the addition of new loopholes that will shift a greater tax burden onto the majority of taxpayers.

Schneider was received by Nixon in the Governor’s office, where they compared notes on each other’s knee surgeries. Schneider said he was glad that he could extend his personal and heartfelt gratitude to the Governor for his support for local governments.

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