FLORISSANT MAYOR THOMAS SCHNEIDER VISITS STATE CAPITAL TO THANK GOVERNOR NIXON FOR HIS SUPPORT OF LOCAL GOVERNMENTS

On June 11, Governor Jeremiah “Jay” Nixon vetoed four Missouri Senate bills which would have negatively impacted state and local government sales tax revenues.  Florissant Mayor Thomas P. Schneider attended the Governor’s news conference on behalf of Missouri's cities and villages.

Mayor Schneider directed former Missouri State Senator Tim Green, who is retained by the City of Florissant, to express the Mayor’s concern to the Governor that Florissant alone could lose nearly $1 million in revenue.  That deficit, combined with St. Louis County’s mega-losses, would compromise the delivery of municipal services and thwart progress in the Florissant Valley.

 Mayor 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 Governor 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, Governor 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.

Mayor Schneider was pleased to be received by Governor Nixon in the Governor’s office, where they compared notes on each other’s knee surgeries and commiserated about other mutual pains in the rear. The Mayor was very glad that he could extend his personal and heartfelt gratitude, to thank the Governor for his support for the local governments that are on the front lines to provide the protection and services that the great people of the State of Missouri have come to expect from their cities and local governments.

                                                                        ###