EXPENSIVE LEGISLATION.
How a $15 Piece of Pot Metal Would Cost the State $4,000
Jefferson City, Mo., February 24, 1897
It costs the people of Missouri $65 every minute the House of Representatives is in session. The cost of the Senate is about $38 a minute; total, $103 per minute for legislation in Missouri. No bill can get through the House in less than 25 minutes, even if it has no opposition and no speech is made upon it. Fifteen minutes are consumed by the Senate in the passage of a bill under equally favorable circumstances. Forty times $103, therefore, represents the actual cost to the people incurred in the enactment of a law that encounters no opposition.
Mr. McCollum, of Ripley County, one of the greatest retrenchers and reformers in the House, introduced a bill this morning to pay a man $15 for a double-barrel shotgun, furnished the State of Missouri in the troublous times of war, back in the sixties. It would cost the taxpayers $4,000 to pay its distressed citizen his $15. The bill is unique. Here it is in full:
Whereas, On the 20th day of December, 1861, Thomas Carpenter furnished one double-barrel shotgun of the value of $15 for the use of the Quartermaster's Department of the First Division of the Missouri State Guard, which amount is certified in favor of said Carpenter against the State of Missouri and signed by M. H. Moore, Division Quartermaster, First Division, Missouri State Guard, Certificate No. 191 and date Camp New Madrid, December 20, 1861; and
Whereas, said certificate has been endorsed by Thomas Carpenter, and V. A. Bell is the legal holder of the same at the present time and that said certificate has never been paid; therefore be it enacted by the General Assembly of the State of Missouri, as follows:
Section 1. That the sum of $15 be allowed and appropriated out of the contingent fund of this State to V. A. Bell in payment of said certificate aforesaid, and the State Auditor be required to audit the same and the State Treasurer pay said sum of $15 when audited and presented for payment.
Mexico Weekly Ledger, Mexico, Missouri, March 4, 1897