Politics

The Missouri State Highway Patrol would need to ask lawmakers for permission to purchase vehicles that cost more than $100,000 under a bill sent to Gov. Jay Nixon.

For the month of April, Missouri employers added more than 12,000 new jobs while the state’s unemployment rate dropped to 6.6 percent.

Missouri lawmakers have voted for a third time to reinstate local taxes on cars, trucks and boats bought from out-of-state dealers or in private transactions.

The state Supreme Court struck down such taxes in 2012 but said a local "use tax" could be levied on such purchases if local voters approved. Legislators approved proposals to reverse the ruling's effect last year and again this year. But Gov. Jay Nixon vetoed both, including the most recent one last month.

The top lawmaker in the Missouri Senate says there will be no vote this year on a revision of the state's criminal laws or a $1.2 billion bonding program. Both measures already passed the House. But Senate President Pro Tem Tom Dempsey says they are too complex to bring up with just a few days remaining before Friday's mandatory adjournment for the 2013 session.

It appears that Democrats in the Missouri Senate have successfully stopped legislation that would have redefined what constitutes a maintenance project and exempted those being done on public property from the state's prevailing wage requirement.