20 April 2005: Bicycle Safety Bill: Contact your own Missouri legislators

There is good news--and something you can do to help--on both the House and the Senate sides of the Missouri legislature. Please read on!

Missouri House
Note that MoBikeFed lobbyist James Farrell (in a recent report from Jefferson City) says we ought to start contacting our own representatives with the message

Please support House Committee Substitute for SB372, the Bicycle Safety Bill.

The reason is that the next step in the Missouri House, is that SB 372 will come to a vote on the floor of the House.

The House is working its way through the Consent Calendar right now. It is hard to say exactly when they will reach SB372 (as of April 20th, 2005, it is 56th on the calendar). But most likely it will come to a vote i nthe House within a few days.

You can look up your own representative here

House members by name
House members by zip code

Missouri Senate
On the Senate front: your emails/calls to the Senators have not been in vain, because Sen. Engler is planning to offer HB 632 (sponsored by Mike Sutherland) as an amendment to HB 512.

HB 512 is one of the big transportation omnibus bills.

Senator Dolan (chair of the Transportation Committee) has indicated he will accept the amendment. That should happen very soon. So you can also write your own Missouri Senator with this message:

Please vote to support the Bicycle Safety Bill (HB 632, sponsored by Rep. Mike Sutherland) which Senator Engler will offer as a floor amendment to HB 512.

You can look up your own senator:

Senators by name
Senators by zip code

All this is complicated--but in a good way.

We basically have our bill going on two separate and independent tracks. That means twice the hearings, twice the votes, and so on, but . . . it also gives it twice the chance of passing. If EITHER version passes, we're OK.

And that's a GOOD thing!