Missouri House members now only have five minutes to speak on a House bill before it’s voted out of the chamber.
Members voted 106-54 on Tuesday to pass a package of rules that will govern them for the next two years.
Within that package was a change reducing the length of time a representative can speak on a House bill during the third reading process. That’s the final vote taken to pass a bill out of the House.
Members now have five minutes to speak on a bill before the final vote is taken on a House bill. They used to have 10.
The new limit only applies to House bills on final approval. Lawmakers will still be allotted 15 minutes to speak on first-round approval of House bills as well as votes on Senate bills that reach the House floor.
House Floor Leader Alex Riley, R-Springfield, introduced the rules, including the time change, to the House.
“The idea here is to provide more opportunities for more members to have an opportunity to speak on a third-read vote,” Riley said.
Democrats repeatedly spoke against the change, saying it didn’t guarantee more people will be able to speak on legislation.
Rep. Keri Ingle, D-Lee’s Summit, offered an amendment that would have kept the limit at 10 minutes.
She said that House members represent the same number of constituents and that they all worked to get elected “to represent our folks and to speak on bills and try to either persuade or dissuade folks from voting in a certain way.”
“This is absolutely limiting your ability to do that. It's hard to describe it in any other way. Taking it from 10 minutes to five minutes is cutting your time in half, cutting your ability to advocate for the people you represent in this body in half,” Ingle said.
Rep. Darin Chappell, R-Rogersville, spoke against the amendment, saying the new time limit was long enough.
“After a bill has gone through committee, after it's been discussed with the members in the halls and in the offices, after it's gone through perfection [the initial approval process], after we've heard 15-minute speech after 15-minute speech, after the lines have been indelibly etched in the issue at hand, five minutes is plenty,” Chappell said.
Rep. Jeremy Dean, D-Springfield, said the longer people can speak on the floor on the issue, the better the public record is.
“While we do a lot of our work in our offices and back in our committees and maybe in the hallways and different things, it's definitely worthy and worth it to make sure that our constituents have a record in understanding what's happening in this building,” Dean said.
Members voted down the amendment 103-51.
All but one Democrat supported Ingle’s amendment. Three Republicans voted for it.
