Lawmakers, including 26 lawyers, return to Capitol for 2023 session

Missouri lawmakers are back in Jefferson City as the 2023 legislative session kicks off.

The 102nd Regular Session of the Missouri General Assembly began at noon on Jan. 4, as Missouri Supreme Court Judge W. Brent Powell swore in members of the House representatives while Chief Justice Paul C. Wilson administered the oath to members of the Senate who were elected in November.

This year’s legislature includes 20 lawyers in the Missouri House and six in the Senate, including six newly elected House members who are taking the oath for the first time and three new Senators who previously served as representatives.

Secretary of State Jay Ashcroft opened the session with a speech in the House in which he called for lawmakers to, among other things, address the state’s “sobering crime pandemic” by passing “truth in sentencing” legislation and making it easier to appoint special prosecutors.

House Speaker Dean Plocher, a Republican from Des Peres and an attorney, named similar priorities in a speech after he was sworn in by Supreme Court Judge Mary R. Russell. Plocher didn’t specify any particular policy, but he called out “dysfunctional local government where some officials even refuse to prosecute violent offenders.”

“We cannot be innocent bystanders as unchecked crime causes systematic destruction of our state,” he said.

In the Senate, President Pro Tem Caleb Rowden, who was sworn in by U.S. District Judge Stephen N. Limbaugh Jr., said his priorities included making constitutional amendments more difficult to pass, saying recent initiative petitions have left the Missouri Constitution “inundated with words like bingo and marijuana” that would be better in statute.

While some pending bills would make it more difficult to get measures onto the ballot, Rowden called for such measures to get more votes before passing.

“I simply and firmly believe that the threshold for changing our constitution should be higher than a simple majority,” he said.

The session ends at 6 p.m. on May 12.