The Missouri Legislative session has kicked off and key pending ethics proposals continue to await an uncertain fate. Despite early optimism, “the state’s top two Democrats – Gov. Jay Nixon and Sen. Claire McCaskill – now seem uninspired” to act, according to a brutal editorial published by the St. Louis Post-Dispatch today.

Governor Nixon said he looked at the campaign finance reforms, but that mounting a “public-support campaign would be a distraction.”

Meanwhile, the leading Democrat candidate to replace Nixon, Attorney General Chris Koster, has been silent on the ethics reform issue. That should come as no surprise, since St. Louis Public Radio reported  “Koster, currently Missouri’s attorney general, has raised at least $436,000 in large donations of more than $5,000 apiece just since Nov. 1.” And of course Koster was a prime subject of a Pulitzer Prize-winning New York Times investigation on his ethically-questionable entanglements with lobbyists and corporate donors.

It’s clear that ethics in government will continue to be a top issue in the Show Me State this year, and Missourians deserve leaders who are committed to good government and reform, not perpetuating the broken status quo.