Elizabeth Althoff
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Missouri LAGERS recently honored Representative Patricia Pike as LAGERS’ first ever legislative champion.
As LAGERS continues to look for ways to build partnerships with our state policy makers, LAGERS announced this fall the creation of the ‘Legislative Champion designation’ which was created to honor elected state legislators who make exceptional contributions to either advance one of LAGERS’ legislative initiatives, or promote/defend the LAGERS system or some aspect of local government.
Representative Pike was an exceptional choice for our very first recipient and was honored specifically for her work on LAGERS’ expansion of employee contribution initiative, which she sponsored and successfully helped navigate to the finish line during a shortened 2020 session.
She ensured that House Bill 1467 received an early hearing -just 4 days into session which set the bill up to be passed by the House in early February. Because the bill made it cross-chamber so early in session, it was well positioned to be taken up following an abnormally long spring break (due to the COVID-19 outbreak). Upon the General Assembly reconvening in late April, Representative Pike worked diligently with LAGERS’ senate sponsor, Senator Onder, to ensure the bill was taken up and passed. Representative Pike was also successful in amending the employee contribution language onto Senate Bill 599 in the House which was also Truly Agreed and Finally Passed, ensuring LAGERS’ language had multiple vehicles to passage. At the end of the 2020 regular session, only 47 bills (including 2 with LAGERS’ employee expansion language) were Truly Agreed and Finally Passed out of more than 2,000 filed bills.
Additionally, she was honored for her leadership in supporting public workers in Missouri in her capacity as Chairwoman of the House Pension committee and Chairwoman of the Joint Committee on Public Employee Retirement.
Representative Pike received recognition during LAGERS’ 53rd Annual Meeting on October 30th. During the annual awards luncheon, attendees viewed a video highlighting the Representative’s work, and Representative Pike addressed the audience thanking them for the honor as well and as well as thanking the LAGERS membership for their work within their communities!
We are so appreciative of all the work Representative Pike has done, and continues to do on behalf of the LAGERS’ retirement system and all local government workers in Missouri! If you ever have a chance to visit our state capitol, please take time to stop by and thank our 2020 Legislative Champion!
