Author

Phill Brooks

Phill Brooks

Phill Brooks has been a Missouri statehouse reporter since 1970, making him dean of the statehouse press corps. He is the statehouse correspondent for KMOX Radio, director of MDN and an emeritus faculty member of the Missouri School of Journalism. He has covered every governor since the late Warren Hearnes.

COMMENTARY
Missouri House

Capitol Perspectives: Divisive ideological fights in Missouri’s legislature

By: - May 2, 2022

Missouri’s legislature enters its final days of the 2022 legislative session facing an unusually large pile of partisan and ideological divisive issues. In an election year, it is not unusual that some legislators seek to highlight issues that will inspire their party’s loyalists to vote. This year’s partisan issues include requiring a photo ID to […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Rethinking Missouri Senate filibusters

By: - April 15, 2022

After so many decades covering the legislative process, I’ve gained an appreciation about Senate filibusters. So many times, I’ve seen benefits from the power of a senator or two to speak for as long as possible to delay hasty action. Filibusters can be effective tools to forge compromises that sometimes involve other issues before the […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: There’s got to be a better way

By: - April 4, 2022

This year’s process to redraw Missouri’s legislative districts represents the danger of handing that responsibility to partisan politicians. Every 10 years following the national census, district lines must be redrawn to meet the U.S. constitutional requirement for near equal distribution of population among the districts. The 2018 Clean Missouri ballot issue gave the job of […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Ukraine’s example for Missouri lawmakers

By: - March 17, 2022

The Russian invasion of Ukraine promises to be a fascinating issue for Missouri lawmakers in the session’s closing weeks. Already measures have been filed to prohibit state and local government from purchasing Russian products and ban contracts with businesses that have ongoing contracts with Russian “strategic industries.” There also are bills to suspend for six […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Diminishing words of inspiration

By: - March 4, 2022

Missouri’s governmental and political discourse on several major issues has descended from words of inspiration into hateful partisan and ideological rhetoric that leaves little room for compromise. The hateful language we have heard from the Senate congressional redistricting filibusters and the objections from women senators about the animosity is just one example. “I pleaded with […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Missouri Congressional redistricting

By: - February 18, 2022

The extended Missouri Senate filibusters about congressional redistricting is a reminder about how bitter and divisive this issue can be. This year it has involved an historically long Senate filibuster, objections by women legislators about the tone of the debate, a tweet by the governor’s communications director that escalated the gender issue and repeated arguments […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Legislative targeting of education

By: - February 4, 2022

This year’s session of Missouri’s legislature has been flooded with measures to control what local public schools must do or cannot do. It represents an erosion of the reverence I regularly heard from lawmakers of both parties about the near sanctity of local control over education by locally elected school district board members. Beyond that, […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: The profound change in Missouri’s legislature

By: - January 26, 2022

This column is prompted by a question from a long-time statehouse observer as to why Missouri’s legislature has become so divided. My answer involved the number of changes in the statehouse over the decades. A major cause has been the deep and growing ideological divide for the public and elected public officials. Years ago, a […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: A possible partisan legislative food fight

By: - December 31, 2021

Missouri’s election year legislative session begins with many of the bills filed raising partisan disputes. Proposed limits on COVID-19 restrictions are a major focus. Well more than two dozen bills were pre-filed to restrict COVID-19 mandates. Some would block mandating a test, mask or proof of vaccination. One measure even would make any employer, including […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Personal attacks in Congress versus Missouri 

By: - December 13, 2021

The recent personal and racially tinged partisan attacks by a couple of U.S. House members, and the absence of swift discipline, stands in stark contrast to how legislators treat one another in Missouri’s General Assembly. This contrast reminded me of a speech by the late Sen. Richard Webster made on the night of his final […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: Missouri Gov. Parson’s unprecedented attacks on journalists

By: - December 7, 2021

I begin this column with a confession. We journalists are reluctant to report about ourselves because under journalism ethics, a reporter should avoid covering something in which the reporter has a conflict of interest. But Missouri Gov. Mike Parson’s continuing attacks against news organizations and specific reporters are so unprecedented that I feel compelled to […]

COMMENTARY

Capitol Perspectives: WKRP lessons for Missouri

By: - November 18, 2021

The 10 deaths at a packed Houston, Texas, concert crowd raised powerful and haunting memories for me from an episode of an old TV series more than four decades ago — “WKRP in Cincinnati.” The series was one of the best comedy shows I’ve seen on TV. It also was an addictive series because it […]