DOUGHERTY: Good morning. Please sign in, if you intend to say, testify at all today, please make sure that you do that right now. The procedures of the House and the Senate require witness forms by every individual who intends to testify. Those are available, make sure that you also have a witness form. Has everyone who intends to testify, checked in on the form?

     Good morning, ladies and gentlemen, we'll go ahead and get started right now. We'd like to begin by welcoming you here, and welcoming your testimony.

     Just a couple of the overall ground rules, then we'll introduce the committee and get started. The testimony is being recorded and will be transcribed.

     The purpose of the committee is to hear testimony, and the committee will then, later on, begin to work through a lot of the ideas, suggestions, comments, that you have given, as well as testimony from yesterday, and try to come up with some suggestions that will be given to the speaker and to the pro tem of the Senate for the next legislative session.

     The nature of the work today is to hear public testimony. All of the Senators and Representatives cannot be here for the totality of the session today. We, initially, had almost 30 people call in and indicate to us that they would like to testify before the committee. That, being the case, it would be impossible to allow a great deal of time. The committee understands your time and effort, either taking off work, or driving a far distance to come, and we appreciate that. What we'd like to do is to begin, initially, with asking individuals to give us a summation of their remarks in about five minutes, and then allow the committee some time to ask you questions, so that we can begin to look at the particular problems that you have, and then we can use those for recommendations for the work that we do later on during the fall. So, it's not a matter of limiting time. It's a matter for us to get a handle on what your particular suggestions and problems are, and then for us to try to delve into that, to see what we can ascertain.

     I would like to introduce myself, first of all. My name is Pat Dougherty. I'm a State Representative, from St. Louis,

     SENATOR CASKEY: Harold Caskey, I'm a Senator from the 31st Senatorial District, and the co-chair of this particular meeting. Now, today, I'm assuming that we'll be taking quite a lot of testimony on antidotal type situations where folks are describing what actually happened to them. Thrust of our hearing is to determine how to draft legislation, and how to deal with particular issues in that legislation, and so, although you may have horror stories, use those only to demonstrate the changes that you think that we ought to make in the law.

     There's a basic legislative rule, that bad situations make for bad law, and so we have to be ever mindful of that. Much of what we will probably hear today are incompetent judge stories, and, perhaps, incompetent lawyers, and so, we hope that you will bear with us, and try to keep your remarks to, as close to time schedule as you can. We're going to try and hear from everyone, but the hearing will terminate at 12:30, so, kind of keep that in mind.

     SENATOR WIGGINS: Mr. Chairman?

     CASKEY: Senator Wiggins.

     WIGGINS: If I might offer a suggestion. Why don't you just give us your instructions, to the jury now, and we'll proceed from there.

     CASKEY: That's good, Senator.

     DOUGHERTY: We'll start with introductions again.

     WIGGINS: Oh, excuse me. Ladies and gentlemen, I'm Harry Wiggins, State Senator from the 10th District, Kansas City, in Jackson County, and an admirer of Senator Caskey, that you just heard.

     SENATOR BENTLEY: I'm Roseann Bentley, from Springfield, the 30th District.

     KIM GREEN: Kim Green, I work for Senator Caskey.

     SENATOR YECKEL: Anita Yeckel. I'm the Senator from the 1st District, which is south St. Louis County.

     SENATOR MCKENNA: Bill McKenna, Senator from Jefferson County.

     REPRESENTATIVE SMITH: Phil Smith, Representative from the 11th District, and I'm going to write the instructions for Senator Caskey.

     CASKEY: That's right. Write the instructions.

     DOUGHERTY: Yesterday, I was remiss, if we could ask the hardest working bunch of people to introduce themselves, the staff on the side there. We're going to skip the reporters, if we could.

     DIANE SKAGGS: Diane Skaggs, Senate Staff.

     JOAN GUMMELS: Joan Gummels, Senate Research.

     SANDY LUECKENHOFF: Sandy Lueckenhoff, Legislative Research.

     KATHY ARMSTRONG: Representative Dougherty's Secretary.

     DOUGHERTY: I'm going to go from the list, as we have checked in again. Someone has just walked in that had not checked for testimony today. Please do so. Make sure you fill out the witness forms.

     Larry and Robin Clifton will be the first ones.

     Good morning, and welcome.