Koster announces re-election bid
Missouri Democratic Attorney General Chris Koster is running for a second term. Koster's campaign said today that he had announced his re-election bid at the home of the Jackson County Democratic Party chairman.
Koster says under his leadership the attorney general's office helped prosecute crime, tackled fraud and tried to prevent the U.S. Army Corps of Engineers from breaching a Mississippi River levee in southeastern Missouri.
No Republican candidate has announced plans yet to run for attorney general next year.
Koster was first elected in 2008 after serving a term in the state Senate. He switched parties from Republican to Democrat in 2007. In his most recent campaign finance report, Koster reported that he had $1.1 million in his bank account through the end of June.
Special session likely to end
There will likely be no vote today in the Missouri House on the wide-ranging tax credit bill. The likely result will be the end of the special legislative session.
It’s still possible that House leaders could choose to suspend the rules and take up their version of the incentives bill on the floor today – but as of last night, Speaker Steven Tilley says that won’t happen.
“That bill wasn’t voted out of committee, and so there’d be no way for us to take it up and get it on the floor," said Tilley. "I mean, it’d be a disaster trying to suspend (the) rules.”
Tilley did say that they intend to debate and pass the MOSIRA bill, which would use revenues to invest in high-tech jobs – along with the so-called Facebook Fix.
Despite threats to end the special session without a vote on tax credits, Tilley says it’s possible that the House could instead decide to come back next week. But the President Pro-tem of the Senate says he doesn’t think an extra week would help.
The University of Missouri to remain a member of the Big 12
Missouri Chancellor Brady Deaton pledged the school's commitment to the league at a packed news conference Thursday night in Jesse Hall. Deaton's comments came moments after he and other Big 12 chancellors and presidents agreed to accept conference commissioner Dan Beebe's resignation.
Deaton chairs the conference board.
He did not specifically address reports that Missouri was considering a move to the Southeastern Conference other than to note that many schools, including Missouri, "had one type of communication or another with every BCS conference" in recent weeks.