Missouri Senate passes state budget Thursday evening; final vote from House needed

JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. (KMIZ)

The Missouri Senate passed the 2025 operating budget Thursday evening. The bills are now sent back to the House of Representatives, which gavels in at 10 a.m. Friday, just eight hours before the budget deadline.

The Missouri Senate started debating the Missouri state budget Thursday morning with just over 24 hours left before the budget is due on the governor's desk. About $50 billion is up for discussion in the Fiscal Year 2025 budget. The 2025 fiscal year starts on July 1.

First up for discussion was the supplementary budget. This is a bill to fund things needed before the new fiscal year starts. There are line items for nearly every state department, including the Department of Elementary and Secondary Education, the Department of Public Safety and the Department of Mental Health.

The Senate passed the education budget for 2025, which included money for a raise in the base teacher salary to $40,000. Another bill passed by the Senate Thursday includes a 3.2% pay raise for state workers, as proposed by the governor in his State of the State address .

The two chambers decided to forgo a conference committee on the budget this year, so both chambers have to pass identical versions of the budget for it to be sent to the governor's desk.

"This is a different process than normal given the time constraints that we're under, and so decisions were being made last night at two in the morning still," said Sen. Lincoln Hough (R-Springfield), chair of the Senate Appropriations Committee.

All of that has to happen by 6 p.m. Friday. If the deadline is missed, lawmakers will have to restart the budget process in a special session.

Some lawmakers spoke out in frustration with the budget process this year, saying only the appropriations chair and budget chair know what's in this budget.

"If any one senator says 'Hey, I read all the bills and I've read everything. I know everything that's in that budget,' they're lying. Because with the timeline that we've been given as senators, there's no way that we can read through all those Senate substitute bills," said Sen. Denny Hoskins (R-Warrensburg).

Many across the Capitol have complained about being in the dark on the budget. Even Gov. Mike Parson said he hadn't seen what was in it Thursday morning.

"I think the one thing that we hear that we're very concerned with,  if we are trying to shift this to a supplemental budget  just to try to hit a number, that's problematic," Parson said.

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