ST. LOUIS–Residency requirements for St. Louis police and other city employees would be lifted under an omnibus public safety bill that passed a Missouri House vote Wednesday.
In addition to pay, city residency has been among the issues making it more difficult to attract candidates in a challenging hiring market in recent years.
House Bill 1108, which still needs a final vote before moving to the Senate, began as a bill that requires anyone on the federal sex offender registry at the national level to do so at the state level for life.
At the committee level it added on a number of other elements, including:
Mandating school districts install bullet-resistant doors and windows on all first-floor entryways and doors in school buildings.
Sentencing reform to require someone convicted of certain sexually violent crimes to serve 100% of the sentence before being eligible for probation or parole.
Creates the state crime of mail theft to address the problem of so-called “porch pirates”. A conviction of a class E felony would mean a prison term of up to 4 years.
The GOP-controlled House voted down an amendment that would have banned the purchase of semiautomatic weapons by someone younger than 20, which led to discussion of the October 2022 fatal school shooting at CVPA in St. Louis that killed two people and injured seven others. Police said the 19 year-old suspect failed a federal background check when he attempted to buy a weapon but later purchased it through a private seller when no background check was required.
Democrats attacked the provision for the bullet-resistant school materials, arguing that it meant billions of dollars that hadn’t been appropriated and that it hadn’t gone through a public hearing in a policy committee.
“We won’t address the guns so we’re going to spill billions of dollars to fortify our schools,” said State Rep. Maggie Nurrenbern D-Kansas City.