The Republican Speaker of the House Ron Richerds (R-Joplin)
From a House news release:
“We are now one crucial step closer to restoring funding for Metro,” said Speaker of the House, Ron Richard. “With the possibility of many of the closed routes re-opening, we can look forward to rebuilding our state’s workforce and improving public safety.”
It continued:
Richard finished by saying, “We are hopeful that the Governor will take a stand on this issue and urge our friends in the Senate to follow our lead and pass House Bill 22 so that we can begin the road to economic recovery and improve the lives of hard-working Missouri citizens.” he added.
As Tony Messenger pointed out in his post, Nixon has been missing on the issue. Metro has its problems and Richards was right to not automatically just throw money at them, but the current situation is more than about Metro–it’s about people being able to get to work and a functioning transit system in an incredibly and increasingly decentralized metropolitan area.
I often criticized Nixon for his game of playing the city against the rest of the state, but I had hoped that Nixon had grown out of that. It’s clear he hasn’t. Metro is essential to a healthy metro area and while it certainly needs to continue to improve its performance, it’s far better than it was 10 years ago. The larger issue of capital costs and controlling them is different from daily operations which are fairly decent now. Richard sees all of this, why can’t the Democratic Governor?