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Missouri Senate to take up FY2026 operating budget as May 9 deadline approaches
Summary
With the legislative session entering its final weeks, Missouri Senate leaders said the chamber could consider the fiscal year 2026 operating budget next week; lawmakers expressed competing priorities including restoring $300 million to the school funding formula and reducing voucher program spending by $50 million.
The Missouri Senate could consider the fiscal year 2026 state operating budget as soon as next week, Missouri Senate Majority Floor Leader Tony Luke Demeyer of Parkville said, with state law requiring the budget be delivered to the governor by 6 p.m. on Friday, May 9.
The legislature is in the final five weeks of the regular session, and attention is shifting to what one speaker called the legislature’s only constitutionally mandated duty: adopting a budget. The House drafts the initial budget before sending it to the Senate, and senators said they expect competing priorities as they prepare to take up that proposal.
Missouri Senate Minority Floor Leader Doug Beck of Afton said education should be a budgetary priority. “They’re gonna be looking to fully fund the formula to put that $300,000,000 back into it,” Beck said. He added, “I would imagine they’re trying to get that $50,000,000 of taxpayer money out of the voucher program.”
By law, lawmakers must deliver the budget to the governor by 6 p.m. on Friday, May 9; Missouri’s next fiscal year begins Tuesday, July 1. Reporting from the state capitol, Dean Morgan.
