Statehouse Blend Missouri KCUR Studios

The 2020 session of the Missouri General Assembly, which convenes Wednesday, promises the usual array of legislative wrangling and partisan bickering — all with an election looming in November. In this episode of Statehouse Blend Missouri, we bring you a preview, which first aired on KCUR's Up to Date on Jan. 6. Host Steve Kraske spoke with Brian Hauswirth, news director of Missourinet, and Jaclyn Driscoll, the statehouse reporter for St. Louis Public Radio.

In this very special episode of KCUR’s Statehouse Blend Missouri podcast, we joined forces with St. Louis Public Radio’s Politically Speaking podcast to round up the 2019 session of the Missouri General Assembly.

Missouri Auditor Nicole Galloway ’s been busy, looking into Clay County’s finances, the attorney general’s office and raising questions about the state’s tax revenues and budget issues. She sat down with KCUR's Samuel King on April 15 (Tax Day) to discuss all of these things, as well as what it’s like to be the only Democrat holding a statewide office. Subscribe to Statehouse Blend Missouri: iTunes , Google Play , and on the NPRone app .

Before getting into the Missouri House, Democrat Robert Sauls was a prosecutor, a public defender and a military lawyer. Perhaps it's no surprise, then, that he has focused on criminal justice reform in his first term, cosponsoring bills that seek to change sentencing laws and create special veterans treatment courts. Sauls spoke with Statehouse Blend Missouri host Brian Ellison about life as a newbie legislator, and where he thinks the state budget, which is advancing through the General

Missouri state Rep. Ashley Bland Manlove is the granddaughter and niece of state lawmakers, but she’s already making her own mark two months into her first term.

Missouri's budget director announced this week that revenues are down 7 percent compared to last year. While that may change as more people file their taxes, lawmakers are looking for new ways to bring in money while faced with tax cuts they instituted on top of growing expenses for health care, infrastructure and education.