JEFFERSON CITY, Mo. — A bill that proposes banning swimming near docks would never make it to the governor’s desk.

That’s according to State Representative Rocky Miller, who represents a portion of Lake of the Ozarks. A similar bill from two years ago would have banned swimming near commercial docks/marinas, Miller said, but he was shocked when he saw the proposal in Jacob Hummel’s Senate Bill 297 that would prohibit swimming near all docks.

Another part of the bill—the liability language—is just as bad, Miller said. It would likely result in the disconnection of electric from all docks in Missouri, or could even lead to Ameren and the Army Corps of Engineers simply refusing to permit any docks on lakes across the state. Miller said that paragraph of the bill “just doesn’t work.”

Both of those pieces would make the bill dead-on-arrival, Miller says. “As-is,” he said, ”There’s no way.”

The bill’s language has garnered it plenty of attention, he said, which may have been the intent all along.

Now, Miller says, multiple bill substitutes are being floated. The ones he has seen—even in the past few hours—have removed the “no swimming” portion and aligned the dock regulations with the current ones at the Lake of the Ozarks. He says he has been working with Hummel and Ameren to improve the bill.

“It looks like it will have a committee substitute when it comes out [of committee],” he said. But what that substitute bill will ultimately look like is unknown. But with the liability and no-swimming pieces, he said the bill would be torn apart even if it made it out of the Senate.

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