Jason Rosenbaum

As the Missouri General Assembly is poised to give voters another chance to decide how to draw state House and Senate maps, one of the lesser-discussed parts of the debate is how judges will gain expansive power if voters scrap the Clean Missouri system.

Under a ballot measure that recently passed the Senate and will likely be approved in the House, bipartisan commissions will have first crack at redistricting instead of a demographer. But the truth is the commissions have been historically irrelevant because they tend to deadlock along party lines and then turn over authority to appellate judges. 

There’s been little insight into how the judges actually came up with House and Senate districts — until now.

Updated at 5:30 p.m. with Greitens' comments on Facebook

After almost 20 months and nearly two dozen subpoenas, the Missouri Ethics Commission closed an investigation into former Gov. Eric Greitens’ campaign by fining him $178,000 — which could be significantly reduced with a prompt payment.

Soon after the ethics commission handed down its decision, Greitens took to Facebook for the first time since May 2018 to react to the news — and hint at a political comeback.

While Greitens signed a consent order about failing to disclose in-kind donations, the ethics commission dismissed a slew of other allegations against the former governor. That included running an illegal shadow campaign operation to avoid the state’s campaign-donation laws.

Missouri Republicans will push ahead on a ballot item changing how state House and Senate districts are drawn — an effort that Senate Democrats stalled at least temporarily Thursday.

It’s a legislative battle in which the Republicans can still prevail because they have the numbers to break a filibuster. But it’s a whole other question whether voters will find favor with the proposal, especially because it does away with a state legislative redistricting plan Missourians overwhelmingly ratified in 2018.

State Rep. Cody Smith is the latest guest on the Politically Speaking podcast. The Carthage Republican spoke with St. Louis Public Radio’s Julie O’Donoghue about his role as House Budget chairman — and his thoughts on overhauling Missouri’s criminal justice system.

Smith was first elected to the Missouri House in 2016 in a district encompassing parts of Jasper County in southwest Missouri. He became Budget chairman after his predecessor, Scott Fitzpatrick, was appointed as state treasurer.

The Missouri General Assembly’s 2020 legislative session began with procedure and ceremony: lawmakers reading the Bill of Rights, new legislators being sworn in and hundreds of bills being formally introduced.

But even though Wednesday’s opening was fairly mundane, legislators from both parties are expecting fierce debates in the coming weeks over state legislative redistricting and gun violence — issues that could play a big role in the impending 2020 elections.