Senator Seeks Special Session for Nuclear Issue
The Senator who carried legislation seeking to help AmerenUE and the state’s other publicly-traded utilities and cooperatives recoup some of the costs of an early site permit with the Nuclear Regulatory Commission is asking the governor to call a special session to try an pass the legislation.
Sen. Mike Kehoe, R-Jefferson City, sponsored legislation that would allow the power companies to raise rates to pay at least part of the $45 million permit fee.
It’s the first step to building a second nuclear powered generating plant at the Ameren site in Callaway County that already plays host to the state’s only nuclear plant.
A bill containing Kehoe’s legislation came up for debate on the Senate floor on the last day of the legislative session Friday. It was discussed for about 45 minutes before being shelved for the rest of the session.
“I was very, very, very disappointed that bill did not come through,” Kehoe told KWOS Radio in Jefferson City Saturday. “I want and believe that a second nuclear plant plant in Callaway is absolutely the best thing, not only for central Missouri, but for the entire state. I will continue to push that.”
Nixon has the power to call the legislature back into a special session. The legislature can call itself into session, but it takes three quarters of the House and three quarters of the Senate to sign a request petition.
That doesn’t appear likely to happen.
The governor called the legislature back to Jefferson City last year to discuss a package of state incentives for Ford Motor Company’s plant in Clay County.
At the time, he said a call for the special session had to be timely, had to have a tight timeline and have a consensus to pass legislation in the works when lawmakers showed up.
On Friday, the governor was asked about a special session for the site permit issue, and he seemed to lay out the same ground rules.
“We’re not going to call folks in to have a tax payer funded debating society,” said Nixon. “It took a long time to get to the measure in a final form. At this point, I don’t see that in the context that it’s in, as something that’s pressing enough at this point to consider for a special session.”
Nixon started the ball rolling on the issue in December when he called a press conference on the front steps of the Governor’s Mansion in Jefferson City to announce that a coalition of the state’s publicly held utilities and electric co-ops had agreed to help Ameren shoulder the load of the early site permit’s cost in return for legislation that allowed the utilities to recoup some of the costs by raising consumer rates.
Legislation flew through a House committee after a raucous hearing in the session’s early days. In the Senate, interested people crowded the capitol hallways during a hearing that spanned several hours before a committee chaired by the proposal’s chief opponent, Sen. Jason Crowell, R-Cape Girardeau.
Crowell and others object to the bill because they say it causes uncertainty for rate payers.
After those hearings, momentum for the bills seemed to die as most of the efforts appeared to be concentrated on the Senate where Crowell held the bill in his committee.
An effort to place Kehoe’s bill as an amendment on another energy bill was ruled out of order by Senate President Pro Tem Robert Mayer, D-Dexter, in mid-April, and the measure appeared dead.
But in the session’s closing week, the House bill appeared on the floor for the first time and passed an initial vote by a 121-21 margin. The Senate bill continued to be the focus of intense negotiations between lawmakers and lobbyists until less than an hour remained in the session on Friday.
At that point, the bill had received an amendment, new regulations for renewable energy standards for the state’s publicly-traded utilities as outlined in Proposition C, passed by voters in 2008, language that had not been seen by most Senators before it came to the floor.
The amendment added 43 pages to Kehoe’s original three page bill, and though Kehoe spoke in favor of the bill on the Senate floor, he was not sad to see the gambit fail.
“I am disappointed to see my colleagues were put in a position where they had to vote on that bill after just 40 minutes of discussion,” said Kehoe. “Yesterday afternoon’s little show might have been a great issue if we had time to debate it and people to fully understand it, don’t get me wrong.”
“But with 40 minutes left, you can’t expect people to vote on a 46 page bill.”
-Dick Aldrich
