The Topeka Capital Journal
Kansas tax plan: A long way to go
Plans still hinge on sales tax rate
Posted: April 1, 2013 - 6:00pm
By John Milburn
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Negotiators from the Kansas House and Senate said Monday that they had made little progress in working
out differences in plans for further cuts in personal income taxes.
Key legislators said the main sticking point is whether to let a 2010 increase in the state sales tax expire in
July as scheduled.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback wants to follow up on massive individual income tax cuts enacted last year
by reducing rates further over the next four years. But the state must stabilize its budget, and Brownback is
proposing to keep the sales tax at 6.3 percent, rather than letting it drop to 5.7 percent in July, as provided by
law.
The Senate embraced Brownback’s proposals to keep the sales tax at its current rate and guarantee future cuts
in individual income tax rates. The House approved a bill allowing the sales tax to drop, coupled with less
aggressive income tax cuts.
Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee Chairman Les Donovan said he met for 45 minutes with
Brownback on Monday to discuss tax policy. Donovan said the sticking point remained the House’s
insistence that the sales tax rate drop this summer.
“They’re stuck on the penny. They want it to go away and we think we need it,” said Donovan, a Wichita
Republican.
Donovan’s House counterpart Rep. Richard Carlson said it will be difficult for him to move from a position
to allow the sales tax rate to expire when that was the sentiment of 82 House members earlier this session.
“There are still many differences, but we’ll work through them,” said Carlson, a St. Marys Republican.
Negotiators are scheduled to resume their talks Tuesday. Donovan said it was looking doubtful that a
compromise could be reached by Wednesday and voted on Thursday so legislators can have the issue
resolved before starting a monthlong hiatus.
“I don’t know I can say there’s been any movement, maybe a little ground on some little issues,” he said.
Resolution of the tax debate will help other legislators working on a compromise on the state’s $14 billion
budget for 2014. Donovan and Carlson said they hoped that disappointing revenue receipts for March aren’t a
trend that could further complicate tax and budget negotiations.
On Friday, the Kansas Department of Revenue Meanwhile said March tax collections were off by nearly $57
million, nearly wiping out a surplus the state had enjoyed in collections since July 1.
Revenue officials blamed the decline in collections on delays in federal tax deadlines forced by congressional
action on fiscal issues. Kansas collected almost $364 million in March when it had expected to take in more
than $420 million. Congress settled some tax issues in January, forcing the federal government to delay filing
deadlines and resulting in later tax collections in Kansas.
Kansas Dems: Gov's tax cuts not in state's best
interest
Posted: March 29, 2013 - 6:17pm
By The Associated Press
Democratic leaders in Kansas said Friday that their party’s legislators aren’t going to be pushed by potential
budget problems into voting for Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposal to cancel a scheduled decrease
in the state’s sales tax — and won’t support much else GOP leaders are pursuing on taxes.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka and House Minority Leader Paul Davis of Lawrence
criticized Brownback for trying to position Kansas to phase out personal income taxes. They argued such a
move will benefit wealthy taxpayers and undermine funding for education and other government programs.
Brownback wants to follow up on massive individual income tax cuts enacted last year by reducing rates
further over the next four years. But the state must stabilize its budget, and Brownback is proposing to keep
the sales tax at 6.3 percent, rather than letting it drop to 5.7 percent in July, as provided by law.
The governor told reporters Thursday that “budget reality” will push the Republican-dominated Legislature
toward keeping the sales tax at its current rate. Hensley said the reality is that last year’s tax cuts — which
Democrats criticized — created the budget problems Brownback is trying to remedy.
“I don’t feel like I’m in a box,” Hensley said during a Statehouse news conference. “My conscience is clear.”
House and Senate negotiators expected to meet Monday to continue work on a final version of tax legislation.
The Senate embraced Brownback’s proposals to keep the sales tax at its current rate and guarantee future cuts
in individual income tax rates. The House approved a bill allowing the sales tax to drop, coupled with less
aggressive income tax cuts.
Brownback spokeswoman Sherriene Jones-Sontag said the governor hopes legislators in both parties would
work to protect core services and try to decrease the state’s tax burden. Brownback and many Republicans
believe phasing out individual income taxes will spur economic growth and help all taxpayers by creating
good jobs.
“Kansas benefits most when all legislators are actively engaged in the policy discussion, instead of sitting on
the sidelines,” Jones-Sontag said in a statement.
Phasing out personal income taxes would force the state to rely most heavily on its sales tax to finance
government. Critics of the idea note that poor families tend to pay a higher percentage of their incomes to that
tax than do wealthy ones.
“I don’t think that a lot of the people, and me included, are interested in sort of putting a lot of lipstick on a
pig,” Davis said. “I’m not going to go out and vote for the income tax alternative that’s sort of the best of the
worst.”
Meanwhile, state officials were watching the state’s monthly tax collections and blamed a shortfall of nearly
$57 million in March on delays in federal tax deadlines forced by congressional wrangling on fiscal issues.
The Department of Revenue reported Friday that the state collected almost $364 million in taxes this month
when it had expected to take in more than $420 million. But the department noted that collections for the
fiscal year that started in July are slightly ahead of the state’s projection that it would collect $4.24 billion
through March.
Congress settled some tax issues in January, forcing the federal government to delay filing deadlines and
resulting in later tax collections in Kansas.
Senate GOP hoping for quick tax, budget deal
Democrats skeptical House, Senate gliding toward compromise
Posted: March 29, 2013 - 1:14pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce called next Friday the "drop-dead date" for reducing to printed bill form
all of the financial complexity and political wrangling of the 2013 legislative session.
At a magical moment on April 5, the Hutchinson Republican said, he wants to have in hand a compromise
between the House and Senate on state tax and budget issues that have eluded lawmakers for three months.
"Those are the two issues that control the session," Bruce said. "The Senate is going to have a deadline that
next Friday we're leaving town."
Bruce said he was eager for the House and Senate to resolve a stalemate on whether the three-year increase in
the statewide sales tax would be sustained indefinitely at 6.3 percent to accommodate personal income tax
reductions over the next four years hailed by Gov. Sam Brownback.
At the request of Brownback, the Senate's approach was buttressed by $260 million made available by
keeping on the books a 0.6 of a percent slice of Kansas sales tax due to expire in June. The governor said
"budget realities" would prevail at the Statehouse and lawmakers would warm to the sales tax as a solution
capable of carrying the state along until his brand of supply-side economics sparked broad prosperity.
The House, so far, has stiff-armed the Republican chief executive and refused to include the sales tax in its
package. House Speaker Ray Merrick, a conservative Stilwell Republican, and many Democrats oppose
legislation preventing the sales tax from dropping from 6.3 percent to 5.7 percent.
The budget bills approved by the House and Senate contain cuts of 2 percent to 4 percent to higher education.
These run counter to Brownback's proposal for flat spending on universities, community colleges and
technical colleges.
Separate conference committees — with three members each from the House and Senate — are at work on a
grand compromise. The standoff is compelling because both chambers are led by conservative GOP
legislators frequently aligned with Brownback.
House Minority Leader Paul Davis and Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, who oppose extension of
the higher sales tax rate, said they were skeptical an agreement would fall into place quickly.
"When the governor uses the term 'budget reality' I think that's just code words to say things are going to be
in real bad shape if the sales tax is not passed," said Hensley, a Topeka Democrat. "I think the Senate
Republican leadership is overly optimistic if they feel like we're going to be able to shore up the budget
and pass a tax plan next week."
Davis, a Lawrence Democrat, said the governor had been lobbying legislators on tax reform but there was no
evidence Brownback was close to securing 63 votes in the House to pass legislation tied to a 6.3 percent sales
tax.
The House and Senate might turn to reductions in spending on education, transportation and other programs
rather than moderate the Brownback administration's drive toward a zero state income tax, Davis said.
"A lot of things are on the table," Davis said. "I think you could see an across-the-board cut. You could see
cuts in some specific areas. It's hard to tell right now."
In 2010 as a candidate for governor, Brownback opposed passage of the bill raising the sales tax in Kansas.
He later embraced the sales tax as a means of paying for lower income tax rates.
Moderate Republicans and Democrats who formed the coalition that voted in the higher sales tax had already
reduced the state budget by $1 billion during the recession. Many legislators who voted for the sales tax
increase subsequently lost re-election campaigns to conservatives who ran on anti-tax platforms.
In the Senate, 16 GOP senators who cast votes against the sales tax in 2010 reversed course and supported the
governor's plan to continue leaning on the sales tax to run state government.
Brownback: Budget will require sales tax at
6.3%
Kansas House wants cut in sales tax, Senate would keep it as is
Posted: March 28, 2013 - 3:48pm
By John Hanna
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Gov. Sam Brownback said Thursday that Kansas’ “budget reality” will push lawmakers toward approving his
proposal to cancel a scheduled decrease in the state sales tax.
The Republican governor said he will consider “anybody’s proposal” as the GOP-dominated House and
Senate negotiate the final version of tax legislation. But Brownback also said legislators have limited options
for stabilizing the budget while seeking further cuts in individual income taxes.
Brownback and most Republican legislators want to follow up on massive income tax cuts enacted last year
with another round of reductions in personal income tax rates. Last year’s cuts created a budget shortfall, and
Brownback has promised to protect important programs, such as education funding and social services.
Meanwhile, the state’s 6.3 percent sales tax is scheduled by law to drop to 5.7 percent in July, the result of a
budget-balancing agreement in 2010 that temporarily boosted the tax to its current level. Legislators in both
parties don’t want to break the pledge, but some are willing to do it with the promise of future income tax
cuts.
“There’s just the budget reality,” Brownback said. “I think it’s coming across to people that you’ve got to get
your resource package somewhere. The budget doesn’t work without the tax piece of it.”
The Senate approved tax legislation embracing Brownback’s proposals to keep the sales tax at its current rate
while guaranteeing cuts in individual income tax rates over the next four years. The top rate would drop for
2017 to 3.5 percent from 4.9 percent.
The House passed a tax plan that allows the sales tax to drop and cuts income tax rates less aggressively. The
House plan would decrease personal income tax rates each year if overall state revenues grew more than 2
percent. The top rate for 2017 would be 4.88 percent, according to legislative researchers.
Three senators and three House members are negotiating tax issues. They planned to resume talks Monday,
when lawmakers return from a long weekend for a five-day push to finish most of the year’s business.
House GOP leaders contend a proposal to keep the sales tax at its current rate can’t pass their 125-member
chamber.
“The governor couldn’t convince me to do it, and I’ve been pretty good about voting with the governor on
stuff,” said Rep. Scott Schwab, an Olathe Republican and one of the tax negotiators. “I don’t know how you
get there. I’m not sure he’s got 20 votes.”
Critics of Brownback’s push toward phasing out personal income taxes note it would force the state to rely
most heavily on its sales tax to finance government. Poor families tend to pay a higher percentage of their
incomes to that tax than do wealthy ones.
The governor and many GOP lawmakers argue that phasing out personal income taxes will help all taxpayers
by boosting the economy and creating jobs. Schwab said Brownback should trust that last year’s cuts —
worth nearly $850 million during the fiscal year beginning in July — already will boost the economy enough
for the House plan to provide sufficient, future reductions in income tax rates.
Also, Schwab noted that the House and Senate are negotiating the final version of a proposed $14.5 billion
budget after making significant changes from Brownback’s spending proposals.
“The governor needs to understand that his budget has been altered by both chambers,” Schwab said. “I don’t
think we need to raise taxes to pay for his budget if we’re not going to pass his budget.”
A key difference between the governor and legislators concerns higher education spending. Brownback
proposed flat spending on universities, community colleges and technical colleges, while both chambers are
seeking cuts.
“We’re going to fight for our budget,” Brownback told reporters. “You’re going to need to collect revenue to
run the state somewhere.”
Senate leaders expect tax, budget plan next
week
Maintaining 6.3% sales tax remains main sticking point in
negotiations with House
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 10:59am
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
With House and Senate negotiators having just begun to tussle over whether the maintain the state's elevated
sales tax, Senate leaders said Wednesday they expect to have an agreement on tax and budget bills by the end
of next week.
April 5 is technically the "drop-dead day" to pass such legislation, though in recent years talks have often
bled into the "omnibus" session in May.
Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, R-Hutchinson, and other Senate leaders said that isn’t part of the plan
this year.
“Next Friday we’re leaving town," Bruce said. "At that point we want to have a tax plan and a budget agreed
to.”
While the two chambers are closer ideologically than last year, when the Senate leadership was made up of
moderate Republicans, there are still significant tax and budget differences to reconcile.
The Senate budget hews closely to Gov. Sam Brownback's, making modest spending cuts and keeping a sales
tax increase that is set to expire in July to help pay for income tax cuts passed last year and proposed this
year.
House members have been adamantly opposed to keeping the elevated sales tax and have instead proposed to
cut spending more deeply this year and tie future income tax cuts to revenue growth that Brownback has
projected will occur as a result of last year's cuts.
The tax talks mainly revolve around answering the question of the expiring sales tax increase, which is
estimated at $262 million in revenue, and Bruce said the budget talks can't conclude until there is a concrete
tax agreement.
“You've got to know whether the budget you’re going to pass balances,” Bruce said.
That adds up to one scenario, according to Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita.
“We’re going to have a very busy week next week,” Wagle said.
Editorial: Some bills are best left on the table
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 8:20pm
By The Capital-Journal
Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, R-Hutchinson, says legislators plan to leave town on April 5, by which
time they will have agreed to a tax plan and state budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.
That’s fine.
If legislators manage to keep to that schedule, however, several issues raised during the current session will
be left on the table for next year.
That’s fine, too, and it’s hoped that proves to be the case.
There’s nothing wrong with taking a little extra time with some issues and giving everyone time for further
review and assessment of the topic and their positions. Important or controversial issues shouldn’t be decided
in an environment of haste or uncertainty.
That’s not to say that every bill introduced but not advanced to final action during the current legislative
session is important and deserving of more deliberation. Every year, some bills are introduced that don’t
warrant a committee hearing or floor debate. Leaving them in limbo constitutes appropriate action.
Among issues that will be revisited next year are several that deal with public education. House Speaker Ray
Merrick, R-Stilwell, said recently the Legislature didn’t make as much progress as he would have wished on
education reform but the task would be taken up again during the 2014 legislative session.
Bills that stalled this year included those that would expand charter schools, limit the collective bargaining
rights of teachers and reject the “Common Core” curriculum in public schools that has gained the favor of
many educators across the country.
All three of those issues generated a lot of controversy as they were introduced and pushed into the legislative
machinery. That the House and Senate couldn’t pass identical measures and send them to Gov. Sam
Brownback shouldn’t be surprising. A cooling-off period for all involved isn’t a bad thing. Next year is soon
enough to re-engage on those issues, if they’re still deemed as pressing then.
Earlier in the week, a bill that proposed holding back third-graders who couldn’t read at that grade appeared
to be among the measures laid aside until next year. The Senate, however, worked the bill Tuesday night and
amended it to shift the retention policy to first-graders, on the theory students who can’t read well should be
identified and helped as soon as possible.
Whether the bill can be approved by both chambers and sent to the governor this session isn’t know at this
time, but the Senate action on the retention issue shows a lot could happen between now and April 5 with
issues that could or should be left for another time.
The big issues now are the budget and tax plans for the next fiscal year. The House and Senate differ sharply
on how and to what extent state government should be financed and settling their differences may take some
time.
While legislative leaders and the appropriate committees tackle those issues, a lot of legislators will have
time on their hands, and perhaps an itch to make another push on a favorite piece of legislation.
It is an itch that should be ignored. Action taken late, in haste, seldom results in good law.
Turnpike bill passes despite bipartisan worry
Hensley, Donovan decry merger of KDOT with 'well-run' KTA
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 12:36pm
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, and Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, found themselves
in the unusual position Wednesday of giving similar explanations of their votes on a bill.
Hensley and Donovan were both in the minority on a 26-14 Senate vote on a limited merger of the Kansas
Turnpike Authority and the Kansas Department of Transportation.
Both asked why the Legislature would meddle with a turnpike that is operating well on its own, with Hensley
questioning the cost savings Gov. Sam Brownback has suggested the merger will bring and Donovan saying
a “yes” vote would make little sense for his colleagues who consistently push for smaller government.
"It's a sad day for me to see this organization going down the road to what I see as a less-than-glorious
future,” Donovan said.
Donovan, known for occasionally dropping dry humor into Senate proceedings, cracked up his colleagues by
saying he didn't need his remarks added to the official journal because "nobody reads those anyway."
Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, suggested he change his mind.
“I encourage him to write those, because I think this is a historic vote,” McGinn said.
Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, joined McGinn and Donovan among the seven Republicans who voted
against House Bill 2234.
Seven of the chamber's eight Democrats also voted against it, with several joining Hensley's explanation of
vote.
“The Legislature would be wise to leave this well run, autonomous agency alone,” Hensley said of the KTA,
which is supported by tolls.
Hensley questioned Brownback's budget projections that show the merger saving $30 million over two years.
“None of these savings have been documented in any way,” Hensley said.
The bill was amended to ensure that KTA would maintain a degree of independence, but it still makes the
transportation secretary the CEO of the turnpike, and Donovan said that is where the rubber meets the road.
“Regardless of what the presenters have told us, it is a merger," Donovan said.
The Senate also passed HB 2303 — another bill related to Kansas roadways — by a 26-14 vote Wednesday.
Among other things, the bill would double the fees for reinstatement of a driver's license after convictions for
driving under the influence. The fees would go from $100 to $200 for a first offense, $200 to $400 for a
second, $300 to $600 for a third, and $400 to $800 for a fourth DUI and every subsequent DUI.
Rep. Tom Arpke, R-Salina, said that as someone who was seriously injured by a drunken driver he was
"incensed" that the bill doesn't go much farther.
“I have seen bar tabs larger than the penalties we’re recommending,” Arpke said.
Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, asked to join Arpke's explanation of his "no" vote and also added the
names of two of her relatives who were killed by a drunken driver in a head-on collision.
In one of the last days of the regular session, the Senate also passed 24 other bills Wednesday by wider
margins, including:
■ 30-10 on HB 2105, a bill to limit state unemployment benefits.
■ 30-10 on HB 2140, a bill to mandate retention of public school students who don’t score adequately on
reading tests. The bill passed after it was amended to hold back students in first grade rather than Gov. Sam
Brownback's recommendation of third grade.
■ 32-8 on HB 2083, a bill to change the fee structure of the Public Employee Relations Board, which
adjudicates impasses in contract negotiations between the public employers and unions.
■ 33-6 on HB 2024, a bill changing Kansas roofing contractor law.
■ 35-5 on Senate Substitute for HB 2052, a gun rights bill with several provisions, including expanding
concealed carry of handguns in public buildings.
■ 36-4 on HB 2201, a bill to deregulate AT&T and redistribute subsidies to other Kansas telecommunications
companies.
House approves bill to let Legislature control
court fees
Supporters cite transparency, opponents say shell game
Posted: March 25, 2013 - 11:31am
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The House approved by one vote Monday a bill to put revenue from court docket fees under the control of the
Legislature. With six House members not present, Monday's 60-59 vote on general orders sets up a key final
action vote on the measure Tuesday.
Rep. Mark Kahrs, R-Wichita, said the fee funds represent just a small chunk of the overall revenue of the 14
judicial groups that receive it, and giving the House Appropriations Committee jurisdiction over dispersing
the money would make it easier for the public to monitor the process.
“I think this bill provides more transparency, more accountability and more trust,” Kahrs said.
But Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said House Bill 2338 is a cynical attempt to allow the Legislature authority to
sweep the docket fees in order to fill future budget gaps. Ward said only those who "believe in Santa Claus
and the Easter Bunny" would think otherwise.
“The reason these organizations get money from the docket fees, is because they weren’t getting money from
the state general fund at a time when we had money in the state general fund and we weren’t giving tax
breaks to rich people that we had to pay for,” Ward said.
HB 2338 would go into effect in Fiscal Year 2015 and the docket fees affected go to such areas as dispute
resolution and domestic violence and sexual abuse support.
Rep. Jerry Henry, D-Atchison, said he and other members of the appropriations committee had "a lot of
reservations about the bill" — including the fact that it appeared in committee with no proponents publicly
vouching for its usefulness. Henry, the committee's top Democrat has made similar complaints about other
bills that have appeared in House Appropriations this year.
Rep. Pete DeGraaf, R-Mulvane, said that by incorporating the fee funds into the state general funds, the
judicial agencies that rely on them would have a more steady revenue source.
“By bringing those docket fees back to SGF and under the appropriations process, not only will the judicial
branch have more regular appropriations, so will all these agencies,” DeGraaf said.
DeGraaf also said the bill would encourage the judicial agencies that rely on the fee funds to come to the
committee and express their budgetary needs publicly, which could result in them receiving more money,
which he said happened when the sexual abuse funds were running short.
DeGraaf said the answer to Ward's concerns basically boils down to House members trusting the
appropriations committee to properly fund the judicial agencies though the general fund.
Rep. Steven Becker, R-Buhler, a former judge, said it was his understanding that Ward's assessment of the
fee funds starting because the agencies weren't receiving enough general funds from the Legislature is
correct. Becker said DeGraaf and other supporters of HB 2338 were promising a new type of reception when
such agencies request appropriations.
"They're implying they will be generous when they do," Becker said. "I certainly hope that's true."
Becker said he voted "no" on the bill Monday because the Office of Judicial Administration opposed it, but
he would be contacting the office before Tuesday's final vote to see if its stance had changed.
"I feel some allegiance to that building across the street," Becker said of the state judicial building. "I want to
talk to them personally."
The House also gave initial approval Monday to several other bills that proved less controversial.
Kan. Senate OKs gun-rights bill; another
expected
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 7:03pm
By John Hanna
AP POLITICAL WRITER
Kansas’ public schools and colleges could allow employees to carry concealed guns under legislation that
cleared the state Senate on Wednesday, and gun-rights supporters expected senators to consider another
proposal next week challenging federal regulation of some firearms.
The Senate voted 35-5 to approve a bill that expands the number of public buildings into which people with
concealed-carry permits can bring their weapons. The measure includes a provision allowing local school
boards, community and technical college boards and state university administrators to designate employees
who could carry concealed weapons, even if such firearms are banned from campus buildings.
The provision allowing hidden weapons on school employees is a response from the GOP-controlled
Legislature — where gun-rights supporters have solid majorities — to the elementary school shooting in
Newtown, Conn., in December. The bill’s few legislative critics question whether the move will make
students safer and say educators aren’t clamoring for it.
The House has already approved a similar measure, and a final version is likely to emerge from negotiations
between the two chambers next week.
Earlier this month, House members also approved a separate bill declaring that the federal government has no
power to regulate firearms, ammunition and accessories, such as holsters, that are manufactured, sold and
kept in Kansas. The measure also makes it a felony for any employee or agent of the U.S. government to
attempt to enforce any law, regulation, order or treaty affecting such items.
A Senate committee endorsed the bill Tuesday, and Majority Leader Terry Bruce, a Hutchinson Republican,
said he expects senators to consider it next week, as lawmakers attempt to wrap up most of their business for
the year. The measure is a response to discussions among federal officials about gun-control measures — and
concerns among some firearms owners that the federal government will attempt to ban and even confiscate
some military-style weapons.
“What I think’s going to happen is you’re going to see, on this level and others, states rising up against
federal overreach,” said Sen. Forrest Knox, an Altoona Republican and his chamber’s most vocal supporter
of gun-rights legislation.
Critics of the bill worry it would lead to unnecessary conflicts with federal officials and perhaps even an
expensive lawsuit.
“The federal government has probably regulated firearms for as long as there’s been a federal government,
and I don’t know how Kansas is going to somehow exempt itself from at least a piece of that regulation,” said
House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat and an attorney. “I think we’re just inviting
problems.”
The concealed carry legislation is a response to some state and local officials banning permit holders from
carrying their weapons into public buildings by merely posting notices at entrances. Some gun-rights
advocates have argued that college and local officials are too quick to ban weapons.
Under the bill, state and local officials couldn’t prohibit concealed weapons unless they had electronic
equipment and officers to check for weapons. Their governing commissions and administrators would have
until January to develop security plans, then an additional four years to put them into effect.
The Legislature’s action on gun legislation comes amid unusually high interest among Kansans in obtaining
concealed-carry permits.
More than 53,000 people have obtained concealed-carry permits since the state began issuing them in 2006.
Attorney General Derek Schmidt’s office reported that 3,573 people applied for permits in February, up from
the previous record of 3,167 in January. Before this year, the previous record was 1,651 applications in
March 2012.
State House, Senate begin budget negotiations
Spending plan negotiations could last weeks
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 10:49am
By John Milburn
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Kansas House and Senate negotiators held their first meetings Tuesday to settle differences over the 2014 and
2015 state budgets, a process expected to take at least the next couple of weeks.
The House and Senate have both approved $14 billion spending plans for each of the next two fiscal years
that closely resemble a proposal offered by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. Two Republicans and one
Democrat from each chamber met for about 30 minutes to hear an initial offer from the House on resolving
several hundred items. Senators countered with suggestions of their own at an afternoon gathering.
Republican legislative leaders have said the negotiations could last several weeks, in part because the work is
tied to progress on tax measures pending in both chambers.
House Appropriations Committee Chairman Marc Rhoades, a Newton Republican, and House Speaker Ray
Merrick a Stilwell Republican, say it is better to know the results of the tax debate before pursuing budget
resolutions in case legislators have to make spending changes.
In addition, a group of economists, researchers and government staff will meet in mid-April to calculate how
much revenue Kansas can expect to collect during the next 18 months, based on economic conditions, last
year’s changes in tax codes and other demands on state resources. Rhoades said state revenues were running
$65 million above estimates through February and were anticipated to be another $30 million more in March.
The additional revenue would help relieve concerns about keeping healthy reserve funds to help the state
maintain cash flow.
However, Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Ty Masterson said he would prefer legislators
complete work on the bulk of spending items before taking their monthlong recess in April. Legislators are
scheduled to work until April 5 then return to the Statehouse on May 8 to complete remaining business for
this session.
“That way we’re just looking at making adjustments and not the entire budget,” said Masterson, an Andover
Republican. “Otherwise, you open the door to a lot of changes.”
The House and Senate’s budgets each would spend about $6 billion in state revenue and $8 billion from other
sources for fiscal year 2014, beginning July 1, 2013 and fiscal year 2015, beginning July 1, 2014. Brownback
proposed the two-year budget process in an effort to give state agencies more stability in planning ongoing
programs.
Medicaid expansion will be up to Kansas
Legislature
Expansion uncertain as Republican lawmakers hesitate
Posted: March 30, 2013 - 3:35pm
By John Hanna
THE ASSOCIATED PRESS
Criticism of the federal overhaul of health care flows freely inside the Republican-dominated Kansas
Statehouse, but Gov. Sam Brownback and legislators haven’t formally rejected an expansion of the state’s
Medicaid program under the law championed by President Barack Obama.
Republican officials question whether the federal government will keep its promise to finance most of the
cost if Kansas opts in. A Brownback administration study suggested that the state’s Medicaid costs would
balloon by nearly $600 million over the next decade if the state expanded the program in line with the
Democratic president’s policies.
Still, Brownback says he is leaving a decision on an expansion to legislators, and they haven’t said no
definitively. A House committee approved a resolution declaring opposition to an expansion, but the chamber
has yet to debate it. Senators added a provision to a budget bill saying no money could be spent on an
expansion without lawmakers’ approval first — but that’s already seen as a given because of legislative
oversight of spending.
Lawmakers’ hesitation gives advocates of an expansion hope that they eventually can change enough minds
to bring tens of thousands of uninsured Kansans into Medicaid.
“We’re very optimistic that members of the Legislature aren’t closing the door to expanding access to help
cover more people,” said Anna Lambertson, coordinator of the Kansas Medicaid Access Coalition, an
alliance of 40 advocacy groups favoring an expansion.
The state’s $3 billion-a-year Medicaid program covers health care for about 343,000 needy and disabled
Kansans, with the federal government providing a majority of the funds. The 2010 federal health care law
encourages states to expand their programs in an effort to decrease the number of Americans without health
insurance, promising to pay all of the cost through 2016. While the federal government’s share would
decline, it would remain at 90 percent for 2020 and beyond.
A study commissioned by the state Department of Health and Environment said an expansion would pull
226,000 additional people into Medicaid by 2016 — and result in government health coverage for about 20
percent of the state’s population.
“We’ve got to be able to afford it — that’s the bottom line on it,” Brownback told reporters last week.
Some Republican legislators oppose expanding government coverage because they fear it will lead thousands
of Kansans out of the private health insurance market. The House resolution expresses concern about that
possibility.
“We’ve got a good program at the present time that provides an important safety net,” said Rep. David Crum,
an Andover Republican and chairman of the House Health and Human Services Committee. “Do we want to
potentially undermine that by over-expanding to the point that we can’t support the bureaucracy and the
cost?”
Also, with GOP supermajorities in both chambers, many legislators expect the overhaul will expand
government’s reach while failing to control insurance or health care costs.
“There are people who hope that the sheer weight of it and the cost bring it down,” said Senate President
Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican.
Yet Brownback said this week that his administration is studying an alternative developed by Arkansas,
where Democratic Gov. Mike Beebe announced recently that his state had received permission from the
Obama administration to use funds for a Medicaid expansion to subsidize private insurance for poor
residents. In Missouri, Democratic Gov. Jay Nixon has said he’s open to the idea.
Advocates like Lambertson believe that a Medicaid expansion will bring meaningful health coverage to
thousands of families now struggling with access to medical care and its costs. And the Kansas Hospital
Association produced its own study showing that a Medicaid expansion would be a small net gain for the
state — and boost employment at health care facilities, helping the economy.
“People who are uninsured just, frankly, have worse health,” Lambertson said. “We want to cover more
people who are simply not getting the health care that they need, so they can lead healthier and more
productive lives.”
Wagle has been critical of the federal health care overhaul but said she’s “absolutely” skeptical of the House
resolution declaring opposition to a Medicaid expansion. She noted that Obama will remain in the White
House through 2016.
“We need to remain flexible as a Legislature to continue to try to find ways to provide quality health care for
Kansans and yet fit within this federal system and try and make it work,” Wagle said.
And so, despite the strong criticism of the federal law from GOP officials, Lambertson said their lack of
action to block an expansion so far represents “a positive sign in our favor.”
Medicaid holes: Topeka family lives amid
insurance crisis
Son who lost service dog one of several in family who need medical
care
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 4:16pm
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Mari White wasn’t looking for a handout when she came to the Statehouse on Wednesday to join thousands
of others in calling for Medicaid expansion.
White was looking for a life raft as her family's finances and psyche sink in a sea of medical costs.
Topeka was introduced to White's 10-year-old son Alex last week, when one of his schoolmates at Shawnee
Heights Elementary School started a fundraising drive to replace Alex's beloved service dog, Hope. Hope
was struck and killed by a car after spending the past year and a half at Alex's side, helping him live normally
despite a progressive neurological condition.
But White revealed Wednesday that Hope's death was just the latest blow to her family.
White's husband has the same condition as Alex, Hereditary Spastic Paraplegia. His legs are weakening, his
balance is becoming shakier, and other frightening symptoms are beginning to appear.
"It's also affecting his vision, slowly," White said. "His optic nerve is dying."
At 51, White's husband recently lost his job as an ultrasound technician, and with it went the family's health
insurance. White herself has a chronic ailment that requires regular treatments to prevent iron build-up that
could damage her liver and heart. Her 21-year-old son, who has autism, also is without health insurance.
Alex qualified for Medicaid days ago because he is a minor, but it won’t pay to replace his service dog.
Meanwhile, White's quest to restore medical coverage to the rest of her family has been beset with one
roadblock after another.
White says her family receives no food stamps, no cash assistance and no disability benefits — no public
assistance whatsoever except for Alex's new KanCare Medicaid coverage and his free lunch at school. Public
medical coverage is all she is seeking, and it remains beyond her grasp.
White is a registered nurse, working part time as she finishes her master's degree. She says she was told her
$500 a month salary is too high for the family to qualify for Medicaid in Kansas, which has one of the
nation's most restrictive income thresholds.
She says she was told her family should spend down its reserves, including her husband's retirement fund and
Alex's college fund, which currently holds $6,000. She says she was told she should be looking for 20
master's-level jobs a week. She says she was told her husband should try to go on disability, but she isn’t
certain he would qualify and besides, he wants to work.
"They also asked me to get rid of one of our cars," White said. "At one point it was suggested that I get
pregnant. I am 52-years-old, and that is not going to happen. What is wrong with the system where a person
who is educated and wants to work is penalized because he was unlucky enough to be born with a disability?"
The Whites are trying to avoid going broke while managing their medical conditions and paying for their
older son's college and Mari's continuing education.
"We're not that far from losing our house," Mari White said.
White also is trying to hold her family together emotionally. Her husband, who grew up on a farm and values
a hard day's work, is sinking into depression. And she said Alex still has moments of guilt, blaming himself
for Hope's death despite a trainer assuring the family that even the most well-behaved service dogs
sometimes bolt into the street.
"She just had a 'dog moment,' " said White, who held Hope as she died.
So White came to the Capitol on Wednesday and spoke at an event hosted by the Kansas Medicaid Access
Coalition, a group urging legislators and Gov. Sam Brownback to accept a plan to expand Medicaid as part of
the federal health care reforms signed by President Barack Obama in 2010. The plan would extend coverage
to those who make 138 percent of the federal poverty level — thousands of Kansas families, including
White's.
White was there as the coalition delivered a stack of petitions signed by more than 2,700 Kansans.
She said she has drawn inspiration lately from the outpouring of support for Alex and Hope — support that
began with Saige Halseth, who rides the bus with Alex, and her parents contacting the media about the
"Always Have Hope" bracelets they are selling for $2 and the fund set up at Alliance Bank.
"It's really making my son feel better," White said, "to see the support coming in."
Senate shifts retention focus to first-graders
Previous version of bill targeted weak readers in third grade
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 8:50pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The Senate moved Tuesday night to salvage legislation embracing Gov. Sam Brownback's goal of raising
fourth-grade reading scores by emphasizing a policy of holding back students with insufficient skills.
Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, chairman of the Senate Education Committee, accepted amendments to
House Bill 2140 that shifted new retention policy over to first-graders struggling with reading. The original
bill set up mandatory retention of third-graders unable to read adequately for their grade level.
"This bill has been worked hard in committee," Abrams said. "It's been worked diligently on the floor."
Transfer of the policy on retaining students to first grade was an amendment submitted by Sen. Laura Kelly,
D-Topeka.
"If we're going to retain kids," she said, "we certainly need to do it at an earlier age. It's the earliest we can
get to our kids."
Abrams' effort to keep the reading reform bill in play meant the retention program would be installed only in
school districts with student performance in reading lower than the statewide average.
Instead of a single reading test for students, the measure was modified to mandate pupils be given two tests
before a decision was made on retention. Exemptions were carved out for special-education and bilingual
students.
In addition to shining the retention light on first-graders, an amendment brought forward by Sen. Pat Pettey,
D-Kansas City, granted school districts and nonprofit organizations access to $5 million in state aid for
remedial instruction in reading. The bill had dictated school districts couldn’t directly receive funding for the
reading adjustment programs targeting students in the primary grades.
Another amendment placed in the bill sponsored by Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, extends to school
principals’ authority to promote a student struggling with standardized tests for reading. The decision can be
made on a body of academic portfolio rather than testing, based on another amendment from Schmidt.
The version of the bill prepared for final action Wednesday by the Senate left intact $1 million in state
funding to reward 100 elementary schools with statistically the highest-achieving elementary readers.
In 2010, Brownback made improving fourth-grade reading proficiency one of his top priorities when he ran
for governor. Blocking advancement of Kansas third-graders with inadequate reading skills eventually could
raise the proficiency of fourth-graders.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said $6 million earmarked for the reading initiative
should be dedicated to early-childhood education.
"I don't believe this bill is needed," he said. "I don't believe it's good education public policy."
Senate to decide bid against 'prevailing wage'
contracts
Rival construction firms at heart of legislative battle
Posted: March 30, 2013 - 7:32pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Senators may need steel-toe boots and hard hats Monday upon resumption of debate in the Statehouse over
an obscure piece of legislation infiltrated by economic philosophy, construction company rivalry and a bit of
family dynamics.
The fuss centers on House Bill 2069, overhauled by a Senate committee, banning cities, counties and local
units of government from layering contracts with a "prevailing wage" clause, which typically translates into
union-scale wages and benefits for workers. The bill specifically applies the compensation restriction to
private construction contractors and subcontractors.
The bill would allow economic development agencies to fashion financial incentives in exchange for pledges
from companies to create jobs above a specific wage rate.
Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, said prevailing wage standards — first adopted in Kansas in 1891
to secure railroad construction jobs for Kansans — were damaging to commerce.
"I do not support prevailing wage because it prohibits free-market competition and inflates the cost of
taxpayer-funded projects," she said.
The current version of the bill would target the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City,
Kan., which is among local governments using its autonomy to apply prevailing wage benchmarks to
publicly funded projects as a mechanism of churning more money through the economy.
Joe Reardon, mayor of the county's unified government, said the prevailing wage rule was part of advancing
$600 million in commercial development in Kansas City, Kan., from 2010 to 2012. Wyandotte County's
Village West, Kansas Speedway and Hollywood Casino had blended into a regional tourism hub, and the
county ranked first in the metropolitan area in job growth the past year, he said.
"They have encouraged economic success, not hurt it," Reardon said.
Prevailing wage legislation was rolling along the track to Senate passage last week when Senate Minority
Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, stepped forward with an amendment to strike what he viewed as an
assault on union workers. Wagle avoided a protracted late-night debate by using her authority to place the bill
on ice.
The maneuver opened the door for business executives, politicians and lobbyists to intensify campaigns to
influence consideration of the bill. Central to the exchange are executives of J.E. Dunn Construction, which
employs union labor and opposes the bill, and Crossland Construction, which endorsed the bill and typically
doesn't use unionized labor.
Ivan Crossland, chief executive officer of Crossland Construction and chairman of the Kansas Chamber, said
a ban on local governments stipulating a prevailing wage would restore integrity to contract bidding. The
company's lobbyist in the Capitol, Riley Scott, is the Senate president's son-in-law.
"Crossland has long supported public policy based on individual liberty and free-market principles, which
encourage competition and economic development," he said.
Thomas Whittaker, chief legal officer at J.E. Dunn, issued a letter to senators urging them to reject the
prevailing wage provision.
"This issue is potentially so detrimental to large portions of the construction industry that we urge the Senate
to not take action," Whittaker said.
He said the GOP-led Senate Commerce Committee inserted the prohibition into the House bill without
gathering testimony from proponents or opponents of reform. The original House version was opposed by the
city of Topeka, League of Kansas Municipalities and AFL-CIO.
Sen. Julia Lynn, an Olathe Republican and chairwoman of the Senate committee, said the state should move
to a unified approach forbidding local governments from enacting artificially adjusted wages and benefits on
construction projects.
She said the Kansas Department of Commerce and the Kansas Chamber endorsed the Senate adaptation of
the bill because it gave rise to a "true free market" and "tax-friendly" bidding.
"I would beg to disagree strongly," said Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City. "Prevailing wage fits the nature of
our community and is supported by our citizens."
House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, said the Senate version of the bill was an overreach by
lawmakers into local affairs.
"To me," he said, "it's yet another example of where the Legislature is trying to dictate policies to cities and
counties where I don't believe we have business doing so."
Governor signs anti-union legislation
Law bars public employee unions from paycheck deductions
Posted: April 1, 2013 - 7:27pm
By The Associated Press
Gov. Sam Brownback has signed legislation barring public employee unions in Kansas from deducting
money from members’ paychecks to help finance political activities.
The measure was among five signed into law by Brownback on Monday.
Proponents of the legislation argued state and local government agencies that process payrolls should not be
involved in transactions to divert money from paychecks to political action committees.
Opponents pointed out during legislative debate that union members in Kansas generally have to agree
beforehand to any paycheck deductions.
They also noted that Kansas is a so-called right-to-work state, meaning workers cannot be forced to join
unions or to pay union dues as a condition of employment.
Kansas lawmakers failed to approve similar legislation last year.
Higher ed budget cuts hanging in balance
Rival Senate, House bills curtail state aid $21M to $59M
Posted: April 1, 2013 - 5:22pm
By Tim Carpenter
tim.carpenter@cjonline.com
The House bill making state appropriations to higher education in Kansas clips $59 million that would be
allocated to universities and community colleges — nearly three times savings sought by the Senate.
Differences narrow in the second year of budget bills pending in the 2013 Legislature, according to a report
by the Kansas Board of Regents, with the House removing $15.5 million and the Senate chopping $13.1
million from higher education allocations.
"If that's my choice," Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, said Monday. "I like the Senate position on higher
education. We know higher education is one of the engines of the economy."
The chairman of the House Appropriations Committee said Board of Regents universities, including Kansas
State University and The University of Kansas, need to embrace financial discipline.
"The regents budgets keep going up, not just with money from the state general fund, but also from other
areas, such as tuition increases," said Rep. Marc Rhoades, a Newton Republican and budget chairman.
Budgets for higher education approved by the Republican-led Senate and House make different across-theboard reductions in the fiscal year starting July 1. The Senate voted to apply a 2 percent, or $15.2 million
rollback. The House's 4 percent erosion in state spending would save the treasury $29.2 million.
In addition, the House adopted a series of adjustments related to compensation paid faculty and staff.
Representatives voted to withhold $29 million linked to salary caps, longevity pay and job vacancies.
In January, Gov. Sam Brownback proposed funding for higher education remain flat but suggested $10
million to be allocated for construction planning of a building at KU Medical Center in Kansas City,
Kan. The funding was cut by House and Senate committees, but there may be a deal to replace that cash.
Senate and House negotiators are deadlocked on a series of budget conflicts, including the higher education
provisions.
"We're sticking to the House position," Rhoades said. "They're sticking to their position."
House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, said he wasn't enthusiastic about proposals to delete
millions of dollars in state aid to KU, Kansas State and other institutions.
"I see the dollars that the state puts into our universities and community colleges as an investment in the
future of our state's economy," Davis said. "A lot of these funding cuts are going to have a direct correlation
on our ability to grow in targeted areas."
Rhoades said he appreciated the contribution universities could make to advancing the state's economic
interests.
"But," he said, "there needs to be accountability. I want a return on investment. It's great to conduct research,
but I want to see that translate to jobs and a better economy for Kansas."
Tightening expenditures has been a priority of House and Senate leaders because tax dollars must be found
to balance a budget losing significant revenue through income tax cuts signed into law by Brownback.
Under the House bill, Washburn University in Topeka would escape cuts in the upcoming fiscal year and
receive $600,000 to begin preparation for construction of a KBI crime laboratory.
However, the House measure calls for reductions of $11.4 million at KU Medical Center, as well as $8.9
million at KU's main campus in Lawrence.
"if the proposed House budget cuts were enacted, it would cut higher education funding more than a decade,"
said Kathy Damron, a Statehouse lobbyist for KU. "Every student attending a public higher education
institution in Kansas would feel consequences of that."
Many Kansas lawmakers rebuff C-J's
education survey
Participation rate higher in the House than Senate and higher among
Democrats than Republicans
Posted: April 1, 2013 - 4:26pm
By Celia Llopis-Jepsen
celia.llopisjepsen@cjonline.com
Just one-third of the Kansas Legislature has answered questions from The Topeka Capital-Journal concerning
their and their children’s educational backgrounds, and only six Republicans responded in the Senate, where
Majority Leader Terry Bruce urged lawmakers to keep mum.
A day after The Capital-Journal sent out the questions, Bruce, R-Hutchinson, responded with an email
advising his Republican colleagues against answering.
Bruce said he had attended public school but his children’s education was “not of public concern” and asking
about it was “in bad taste.”
“I advise all senators to disregard this survey,” he wrote in an email to the entire Senate Republican caucus.
His email can be read in full in The Capital-Journal’s online database of responses.
On March 18, The Capital-Journal sent questions to all 165 lawmakers by mail and email, asking about their
K-12 schooling. Lawmakers were asked what kind of schools they had attended while growing up (public,
private, charter or home school) and, if they have school-age or adult children, what schooling they had
placed their children in.
House and Senate committees debated numerous education bills this legislative session, and The CapitalJournal sought to explore lawmakers’ experience with various schooling backgrounds, including engaging
with schools as parents.
By the survey’s deadline a week later, The Capital-Journal had received the answers of 50 lawmakers. After
two weeks, 57 responses are in. Readers can find the responses of their lawmakers in a database online.
Of 11 Shawnee County legislators, nine responded and two didn’t: Reps. Annie Kuether, D-Topeka, and
Joshua Powell, R-Topeka.
Participation in the survey was higher among members of the House than the Senate, higher among
Democrats than Republicans, and higher among freshman lawmakers than those who aren’t new this session.
Patrick Woods, president of the Topeka Unified School District 501 school board, said Bruce’s call for his
colleagues not to reveal their schooling was troubling.
“I’m disappointed to hear that one of our elected public officials who works for us as Kansans would
discourage other lawmakers from being transparent,” Woods said.
“It’s possible for those who didn’t have a traditional public school experience to make good decisions for our
public schools,” he said. “I do think the public has the right to know the extent of the stake our legislators
hold in the public schools.”
Doug Anstaett, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, said he had seen a chilling effect under
the current administration.
“The trend I see is to control the message,” Anstaett said.
Lawmakers aren’t required by law to answer the survey, he said, “but the other way to look at it is the public
is a participant in the political process.”
“For the public to feel confident that every side of an issue has been looked at in a comprehensive way, this
information would be helpful,” Anstaett said.
Three Republican senators had already answered the questions at the time of Bruce’s admonition. A fourth,
Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, replied after Bruce’s email. However, when contacted by The Capital-Journal,
Donovan said he hadn’t been aware of the survey and his response may have been sent by a staffer. Two
more Senate Republicans gave their responses after the survey deadline when reached by phone.
Olathe Sen. Rob Olson’s office sent an email to The Capital-Journal saying Olson wouldn’t respond to
information requests that “reference his family or the education of his family.”
Of the 34 lawmakers who sit on one or more of the three House and Senate standing education and education
budget committees, 12 answered the questions.
Arkansas City Republicans Sen. Steve Abrams, chairman of the Senate Education Committee and a former
member of the Kansas State Board of Education, and Rep. Kasha Kelley, chairwoman of the House
Education Committee, didn’t respond. Rep. Ward Cassidy, R-St. Francis, chairman of the House Education
Budget Committee, did.
Of the 57 responses, 95 percent had experience attending public schools. Private schools were less
represented, with 23 percent of respondents having experience attending private schools. Of the lawmakers
who answered the survey and have children in or finished with school, 98 percent had educated their children
in public schools and 30 percent in private schools. The overlap in percentages is because a mixture of
schooling was common.
None of the respondents reported any experience with charter schools in their families, which isn’t surprising
given the low number of charter schools in Kansas and the relative newness of the charter school movement
nationwide.
Only one respondent reported any experience with home schooling — Rep. Joe Edwards, R-Haysville, who
mostly attended public school and was home-schooled for two years.
Other representatives and senators who reportedly have experience with home schooling didn’t respond to the
survey.
Kent Vincent, a Topeka lawyer who serves as a legislative liaison for the Christian Home Educators
Confederation of Kansas, said some legislators who were home-schooled or home-school their children may
be concerned that critics will argue they aren’t qualified to legislate public education.
“Nobody wants to be cast in that light,” Vincent said. “To say someone doesn’t have a role in government
because of their choices for education — do we want a country like that?”
Auburn-Washburn USD 437 superintendent Brenda Dietrich said “everybody brings something to the table”
in the Legislature but said voters may find lawmakers’ experiences engaging with schools relevant in the
same way that their career expertise might be relevant.
Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, provided her responses when reached by phone. Schmidt cited Bruce as the
reason she hadn’t initially responded.
“I thought the majority leader told us not to fill it out,” Schmidt said, adding that she wasn’t against the
public knowing her educational background.
Schmidt said Bruce also had asked Republican senators in person not to participate in the survey.
Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, R-Leavenworth, also provided answers when reached by phone but said he agreed with
Bruce’s email that asking about family members was in poor taste.
“I don’t think that’s any of your business,” Fitzgerald said.
Fitzgerald questioned The Capital-Journal’s motives for conducting the survey.
“Why are you asking?” he said. “You’re running a survey in order to find a certain conclusion.”
“I have no idea where you’re going with it or why anyone would find it interesting,” he said, adding that his
legislative positions were what mattered.
Legislators join in April Fools' Day hoopla
Peck, O'Donnell offer shocking tributes to WSU
Posted: April 1, 2013 - 2:59pm
By Tim Carpenter
tim.carpenter@cjonline.com
Rep. Virgil Peck delivered an April Fools’ Day joke by seeking introduction of a House resolution
prohibiting use of state tax dollars in support of the Wichita State University basketball team's trip to the
Final Four.
Peck, a Tyro Republican with a pronounced dry wit, said House Resolution 6029 commended the No. 9seeded WSU Shockers for winning enough games in the NCAA Tournament to earn a match against topseeded Louisville in Atlanta. WSU continues in the men's tournament following losses by higher ranked
teams from Kansas State University and The University of Kansas.
However, the resolution also paid respect to the state's budget woes by urging Wichita State officials to resist
the temptation to expend money appropriated by the state for travel and accommodations for the basketball
team. The idea is to finance the Atlanta trip completely by private donations.
"We all have probably been following WSU in their run to the Final Four," Peck said. "There will be
significant expenses for the coaches, the players, the personnel, as well as those who make the travel
arrangements. It's time we step up to the plate and start making tough decisions."
After Peck explained his resolution on the House floor, Rep. Blaine Finch, R-Ottawa, rose to pose a question.
"What is today's date?" Finch said.
"April 1st," Peck said.
"Also known as?" Finch said.
"April Fools’ Day," they said jointly.
"Go Shockers!" Finch concluded.
In the Senate, Wichita Sen. Michael O'Donnell got into the action by withdrawing from consideration his
proposed bill requiring Wichita State to play KU and K-State each year in basketball.
"I took a lot of heat from my colleagues over this bill," said O'Donnell, a Republican. "I have spoken to the
powers at be at Wichita State University, and they have requested that I formally withdraw that because we
are going to be looking for a tougher nonconference schedule than K-State and KU are prepared to offer us."
After acknowledging the obvious — April Fools’ Day, the senator said he would nevertheless welcome
annual hardwood showdowns involving teams from the three Kansas universities.
Legislature doesn't bite on dental bills to
create midlevel provider
Advocates say creating midlevel provider would ease rural shortages
Posted: March 31, 2013 - 3:35pm
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
With the session drawing to a close, legislators have taken little action on bills to create a midlevel dental
provider in between dentists and hygienists — a move advocates say would provide much-needed care to
underserved Kansans.
Senate Bill 197 has languished in the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee without a hearing since
Feb. 14. House Bill 2157 was introduced into the House's health committee at the end of January and also
hasn’t had a hearing.
Still, Suzanne Wikle, of the Kansas Dental Project, said she believes support for the measure is quietly
building.
“Any time you have a policy proposal that is relatively significant, it takes multiple years,” Wikle said,
adding that the same was true of establishing midlevel medical providers like physicians' assistants.
The Kansas Dental Project, a collaboration of several nonprofits, has been lobbying for the midlevel dental
provider for about three years. Under the proposed bills, the providers would be licensed dental hygienists
who pass a clinical exam, have practiced for 500 hours under the direct supervision of a dentist and purchase
liability insurance.
They would be licensed to do about 30 basic dental procedures, including "nonsurgical extraction" of
diseased permanent teeth that already are loose.
Wikle said the shortage of those services — especially in rural counties — only has become more
pronounced since the state began the switch to KanCare this year.
Under KanCare, three managed care organizations took administrative control of most of the state's Medicaid
services. All three offer basic dental care to adults that wasn’t previously part of Medicaid. But a Kansas
Dental Project analysis of state data compiled in February found that 28,000 KanCare patients live in 37
counties that have no dentist who has joined the managed care companies' networks.
Kevin Robertson is executive director of the Kansas Dental Association, which opposes the midlevel
provider bills. Robertson said the most recent KanCare data, compiled in March, showed dental coverage in
rural areas at 93.4 percent to 99.4 percent.
Those coverage numbers are based on having an address within 20 or 30 miles of a provider, regardless of
county lines. The newest KanCare provider maps show no in-network providers in Wabaunsee or Osage
counties, but many residents of those counties are still considered covered based on proximity to Shawnee
County and its many in-network providers.
Wikle said there is another important consideration even for residents who have in-network dentists nearby.
“A lot of them are not accepting new patients,” Wikle said.
Dental care shortages were a reality before KanCare, as shown by a 2010 Kansas Health Institute study that
found only one in four Kansas dentists accepted Medicaid patients, due largely to low reimbursement rates.
Robertson's group has worked to expand both the number of dentists in rural areas and the number that accept
Medicaid as alternatives to creating a new type of provider.
"The KDA does not support the creation of a midlevel that can perform surgical dental procedures,"
Robertson said. "We believe the best solution is to provide loan forgiveness and other incentives to locate
dentists where they are needed most."
The state has provided some of those incentives through the Rural Opportunity Zones program.
Wikle said initiatives like that, whether they come from the KDA, the state or elsewhere, are "all great parts
of the solution" but haven’t solved the long-term problem of lack of access to dental care and all the ancillary
problems it causes.
Studies have shown, for example, that cavities and toothaches correlate to lower student achievement.
Wikle said there are also economic opportunities for dentists who would like to include midlevel providers on
their staffs.
“That’s how they want to run their business," Wikle said. "I believe they should have the ability to run their
business how they want to.”
Editorial: Political cash may flow more freely
Posted: March 30, 2013 - 5:29pm
By The Capital-Journal
The talk over in the Statehouse about how and when to raise money is somewhat unsettling. And we’re not
talking about Gov. Sam Brownback’s budgeting and taxing proposals.
Today, the subjects are PACs, campaign finance and when it’s OK to solicit contributions.
A Senate bill that addresses the Kansas secretary of state’s authority to maintain a PAC and distribute its
largesse among political candidates was assigned to a conference committee after the House and Senate
couldn’t agree on the issue. The Senate voted to prohibit such behavior, but the House voted to allow
Secretary of State Kris Kobach to continue putting his money where his heart is.
Kobach formed Prairie Fire PAC and during the past election cycle contributed funds to conservative
Republican allies. That behavior raised the hackles of some who thought the secretary of state, Kansas’ chief
election officer and the arbiter of some disputes concerning elections, should maintain an appearance of
nonpartisanship.
Frankly, we think Kobach probably runs his office in accordance with the Kansas Constitution and state
statutes and would settle election disputes in the same manner. Where there is wiggle room, however, we’d
expect Kobach to wiggle hard to the right. That’s politics, and the game is played the same way with or
without a PAC lurking in the background.
It is the appearance of partisanship that is unseemly in this case and we think most voters would prefer the
secretary of state didn’t have a personal, financial interest in the election of specific candidates.
On another front, the House passed a bill that would dismantle PACs established by Republican and
Democrat leaders in the Legislature. House and Senate Democrats have such PACs, as do Senate
Republicans. House Republicans had one, but it was closed and state law won’t allow formation of another
one.
The essence of the House bill is to level that playing field by dismantling all leadership PACs. That sounds
like a reasonable move, especially as Republican and Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate have
fundraising committees liked to their state political parties.
The most distressing change proposed on the political fundraising front would allow the party committees to
solicit and accept donations from lobbyists during the legislative session. Individual legislators wouldn’t be
able to raise money for their own campaigns during the session but could issue “general” solicitations for
money.
Lobbyists have been contributing money to legislators’ campaigns for a long time and no one expects that to
change. But the thought of lobbyists handing over the money while legislators are working bills and voting
on them fails the smell test is a big way.
Allowing campaign cash to change hands during the session would be a clear signal that legislators no longer
care about the propriety of their actions or the appearance of propriety.
'Celebrate Freedom Week' has evangelical
roots
Prayer breakfast linked to Texas figure behind the legislation
Posted: March 28, 2013 - 5:34pm
By Celia Llopis-Jepsen
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The evangelical author who spoke at Wednesday’s Kansas Prayer Breakfast has links to the Texas figure
behind “Celebrate Freedom Week.” A bill to establish Celebrate Freedom Week in Kansas schools passed the
House this session and could still pass the Senate.
Writer David Barton, whose historical views about the Bible and the U.S. Constitution have drawn fire from
critics, is the founder of WallBuilders, a group seeking to educate citizens about the “Godly foundation” of
the country and give information to officials developing public policies with biblical values.
As part of that group, Barton and Rick Green, a two-term former Texas legislator, give speeches and produce
materials to teach about American history. According to Green’s Web page, he and Barton coproduced a
television series called “Building on the American Heritage” that examines modern issues from historical and
biblical perspectives.
Green also promotes model legislation to establish Celebrate Freedom Week in public schools around the
country. The legislation says schools should teach the “original intent” of the Constitution and other texts
during a week in September, and that “the religious references in the writings of the founding fathers shall
not be censored.”
The model legislation requires students in third through 12th grade to recite the second sentence of the
Declaration of Independence each year during Celebrate Freedom Week: “We hold these Truths to be self
evident, that all Men are created equal, that they are endowed by their Creator with certain unalienable
Rights, that among these are Life, Liberty and the Pursuit of Happiness — That to secure these Rights,
Governments are instituted among Men, deriving their just Powers from the Consent of the Governed.”
Versions of the legislation have passed in Texas, Florida, Oklahoma and Arkansas.
In Kansas, the bill was introduced by Rep. Kelly Meigs and cosponsored by 29 other representatives. The
recitation requirement isn’t in the Kansas version, but the provision concerning censorship of religious
references is.
The bill, House Bill 2280, breezed through the House 95 to 25.
It has prompted some concern from the Kansas State Board of Education — and sparked criticism from the
MainStream Coalition, which calls the bill unconstitutional.
Earlier this month, members of the Kansas State Board of Education expressed concern that some bills this
legislative session seek to regulate content taught in schools. The board sent a letter to all 165 lawmakers
urging them to respect its authority to supervise schools. Though the main bill that prompted that letter was
H.B. 2289, which would have scuttled Kansas’ mathematics and English standards, H.B. 2280 and a bill that
would have required science classes to include evidence against climate change also came up in the board’s
discussion.
During hearings on the bill, Meigs testified in favor of it. Micheline Burger, of the MainStream Coalition,
which promotes the separation of church and state, testified against it.
Burger said the bill seemed innocuous but that its intent was to promote the Bible in schools and spread
Green’s “historically incorrect belief that ‘America (was founded) as a Christian nation.’ ”
She said the bill wrongly suggested schools were censoring teachers and facts, and added that the Legislature
shouldn’t decide instructional content for schools.
In Kansas, local school boards choose curriculums for their districts, and the state board sets general
standards for those curriculums.
Meigs, Green and Barton didn’t immediately respond to requests for interviews.
Rep. Nancy Lusk sought an amendment to the bill to make pursuing Celebrate Freedom Week optional for
the state board, but the amendment was defeated. As it stands, the bill requires the state board to promote
Celebrate Freedom Week.
State employee compensation rank questioned
Hensley's Senate statement causes data examination
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, is standing by an assertion that Kansas state employees
are among the nation's most poorly compensated, despite federal data that slots Kansas in the middle range.
During a recent floor debate on the state budget, Hensley lamented that the Senate's proposal didn’t fund the
final year of five promised raises for underpaid state workers, adding that Kansas state employees rank 49th
in the nation in average total compensation.
Hensley later said he got that figure from a USA Today article about Wisconsin's attempt to curtail
collective-bargaining rights for public employee unions. The article included a table on compensation of such
employees from state-to-state and how it compares to the private sector.
The article was released in 2011, but it used data from 2009 and that data included not only state workers, but
all public-sector employees, including those in local governments and public schools.
An analysis of only state employees by the Kansas Department of Labor using the most recent federal data
available, from 2011, places Kansas' average compensation per employee at 22nd nationally.
Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said that is an
important distinction.
“With all legislation, but particularly on major issues such as the budget, we need to ensure votes are based
on the facts," Masterson said in a prepared statement. "During Senate floor debate on the budget, there was a
misunderstanding regarding how our state ranks for public employee compensation within the nation. In fact,
Kansas ranks second just behind Colorado compared to other states in our region. The facts clearly illustrate
that we rank high in state employee pay, and that our members appreciate the hard work public employees
provide to Kansas.”
Hensley said he was referred to the USA Today article by the Kansas Organization of State Employees.
"If I was representing this as just state employees, then I misspoke," Hensley said. "It's all public workers."
But Hensley said the analysis provided by the labor department that shows Kansas state workers making an
average of $68,546 per year also is imperfect.
That analysis is based on the salary and benefits of 41,251 state employees, almost half of whom are under
the Kansas Board of Regents.
"The college professors skew the numbers because they're paid big salaries," Hensley said, adding that the
same could be said for some employees of The University of Kansas Medical Center.
The USA Today table Hensley used showed all Kansas public-sector workers in 2009 making an average of
$44,803 in salary and benefits — or about $3,000 a year less than their private-sector counterparts. Hensley
said that is more indicative of the employees included in the Undermarket Pay Program.
"I think it's safe to say that rank-and-file state employees are underpaid," Hensley said. "Certainly underpaid
as compared to private-sector employees."
PACs on block in House, Senate clash
Kobach's Prairie Fire PAC may be doused
Posted: March 28, 2013 - 5:11pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Political fundraising duels between the House and Senate remained unresolved Thursday as lawmakers
angled to recalibrate financial machinery controlled by legislative leaders and Secretary of State Kris
Kobach.
Kobach, the state's chief election officer and an arbitrator of campaign disputes, generated controversy by
forming Prairie Fire PAC and spreading $30,000 among conservative Republican allies during the 2012
election cycle. He is the first secretary of state to take the PAC plunge, a move narrowly endorsed by a
Republican majority in the House but rejected by a bipartisan coalition in the Senate.
"There is a case to be made for the person who administers elections not having their own political action
committee," said House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence.
Clashing versions of Senate Bill 63, which grants Kobach authority to prosecute election fraud in district
courts and controls the fate of his PAC, were placed in the hands of a six-person, House-Senate conference
committee to search for a compromise. The Senate voted 31-9 to prohibit a secretary of state from operating a
PAC, while the House voted 69-53 to allow Kobach freedom to continue investing in races.
“If he wants to get involved in election crimes, then we need to make sure that people aren't going to be
skeptical of what the secretary of state's motive may be," said Sen. Michael O'Donnell, a Wichita Republican.
Democrat Kathleen Sebelius formed a PAC as the state's insurance commissioner and retained it while
serving as Kansas governor. Republican Gov. Sam Brownback created Road Map PAC to leave an imprint on
Kansas politics.
The House overwhelmingly approved House Bill 2381, which attempts to bring a measure of equity to the
cluster of fundraising entities attached to the Legislature.
The GOP and Democratic caucuses in the House and Senate have fundraising committees that are linked to
their state political parties.
However, only Democrats in both chambers and Senate Republicans have their own leadership PACs. They
were formed before a 2000 state law banned formation of new PACs by lawmakers. The House Republican's
leadership PAC was closed by a retiring House speaker, and state law blocked it from being reconstituted.
House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, said unfairness in the law as it related to House Republicans should
be corrected.
Under the House bill forwarded to the Senate Ways and Means Committee, party committees would be
permitted to exist in each chamber for the benefit of Republicans and Democrats. Existing leadership PACs
would be dismantled.
Another change would open the door to party committee solicitation and acceptance of donations from
lobbyists during the annual legislative session. Legislators still would be unable to raise money for
themselves during the session, but could start issuing general solicitations for money.
Carol Williams, executive director of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, said in-session
solicitation by legislators for re-election bids could lead to uncomfortable interactions with lobbyists.
"You have an absolutely captive audience," she said. "The ban keeps everybody cleansed during the session."
Brownback not thrilled by rewrite of reading
reform
Governor seeks mandate to retain third-grade students
Posted: March 27, 2013 - 5:08pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
Gov. Sam Brownback issued a low grade Wednesday on amendments passed by the Senate overhauling his
plan to mandate third-grade students who flounder on a standardized reading test to be held back.
The version endorsed 30-10 in the Senate would establish new rules for retaining first-graders who lacked
reading proficiency. The adjustment didn't mesh with a 2010 goal established at the outset of the Brownback
administration to upgrade the reading test scores of fourth-graders across Kansas.
"We'll look at it," the governor said when asked about the Senate's work. "I think we've got a good design.
I'm glad to see the discussion."
Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, authored the amendment placing emphasis on first-grade reading. She said
waiting to implement remedial instruction until third grade would be insufficient because research suggested
better outcomes with earlier intervention for students.
"We need to let facts get in our way here," Kelly said. "The earlier you start developing a child's reading
skills, the more likely they'll be proficient when they enter fourth grade."
Kelly was the lone Democratic senator to vote for the bill. Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, also endorsed the
measure, while Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, didn’t.
Brownback said the most significant objection offered to his plan for retaining third-grade students was
pupils might face ridicule from peers if they had to redo an elementary grade.
"There is a far greater stigmatization if you can't read," Brownback said.
The original version of Brownback's reading reform bill failed to gain enough votes to pass out
of Republican-dominated House and Senate education committees. His bill surfaced after maneuvering by
Sen. Steve Abrams, an Arkansas City Republican who agreed to changes to keep a reform bill on the table.
The Senate placed in the rewritten House Bill 2140 a stipulation that more than one test of student skills
would guide retention decisions. The Senate bill expands the role of parents, principals and teachers in
evaluation of whether a student with modest reading skills must be held back.
The legislation would target elementary schools with reading scores below the statewide average. Nonprofit
organizations and school districts would be eligible for $5 million in grants for remedial instruction.
Kansas House pressing White House to
approve Keystone XL pipeline
Opponents stall project over ecological concerns
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 10:53am
By The Associated Press
Kansas House members are pressing the White House and the U.S. State Department to approve a permit for
construction of the Keystone XL pipeline from Canada to Texas.
The House of Representatives voted 108-11 on Tuesday to adopt a nonbinding resolution urging President
Barack Obama and the State Department to approve permits to allow construction to begin. Federal approval
is required because the pipeline crosses international boundaries.
Opponents have delayed the project for four years over concerns that extracting oil from Alberta tar sands
would increase global warming. The project was further delayed when Nebraska officials objected to the
proposed route through the state.
A recent State Department report raised no major objections to the project, which has already been
constructed through Kansas.
The House resolution goes to the Senate.
Concealed-carry bill alive in Senate chamber
Measure opens most public buildings lacking security equipment, staff
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 11:04pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The Senate maneuvered through lengthy debate Tuesday night on legislation designed to open city, county
and state public buildings in Kansas without sophisticated security precautions to concealed-carry permit
holders.
A majority of senators were expected to vote for the bill Friday on final action based on failure of a
Democratic amendment to remove K-12 public schools and higher education institutions from the measure.
The legislation mandates, with exceptions, access by concealed-carry permit holders to public facilities
without metal detectors or security guards at entrances.
"Guns in the hands of licensed citizens is a good thing," said Sen. Forrest Knox, an Altoona Republican who
has championed rights of concealed gun licensees for years. "Guns are not bad. We've got to get our heads
out of the sand."
Under the Senate bill, operators of public buildings could exempt themselves from the requirements for four
years. The House version of the legislation doesn't contain that type of "global" waiver, which more
significantly exempts higher education institutions.
Jails, prisons and law enforcement agencies could ban possession of concealed guns in their buildings.
Private buildings would be allowed to continue to set policy for employees and customers regarding access
on conceal-carry.
Kansas law now allows concealed firearms to be banned from most government buildings. Simply posting a
sign on the door of a library or courthouse is enough to stop a permit holder.
"So-called gun-free zones are a fantasy," Knox said. "The mass shootings have occurred at places we call
gun-free zones."
Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City, proposed an amendment stripping school districts, technical schools and
universities from the bill. The cost of implementing additional security and the threat posed by more weapons
in educational environments are sufficient reasons to warrant passage of the amendment, she said.
"Our schools have been working hard to make buildings secure," she said. "They don't want conceal-andcarry."
Her amendment flamed out 6-27, suggesting forces supporting the bill can muster 21 votes necessary for
approval.
Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said during floor debate the University of Kansas operated more than 200
buildings. She said armed police officers on the campus provided sufficient security.
However, Knox said he was convinced the frequency of crime on university campuses -- specifically rape -would decline once concealed-carry licensees were allowed to enter campus buildings.
Imposition of a law broadening access to public venues presents a problem for law enforcement showing up
to a crime scene where criminals and law-abiding permit holders have drawn weapons, said Sen. Carolyn
McGinn, R-Sedgwick.
"How do we know who the good guys and the bad guys are?" she said.
Knox said the crisis often dissolved before police officers arrived or upon their entrance at the scene because
people engaging in violent crime most often surrendered or shot themselves to avoid arrest. That reality
makes it essential for trained, thoughtful people with concealed handguns to be in public spaces, he said.
"We are responsible for our own safety," Knox said. "Law enforcement isn't responsible for my own
security."
House passes Kansas RICO Act
Bill to give Legislature control over court fees also advances
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 12:51pm
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The House passed a passel of bills Tuesday, including a Kansas racketeering law similar to the federal statute
used to punish organized crime.
Kansas' version of the "racketeer influenced and corrupt organization," or RICO act, passed 74-45, but not
before bringing together an unusual coalition of liberal Democrats and libertarian-leaning Republicans in
opposition.
Both sides of the opposition believed the legislation was written too broadly, with the Republicans fearing it
would lead to guilt-by-association prosecutions that amount to "surrendering a well-apportioned rule of law
for the wisdom of the state" and the Democrats fearing such prosecutions will fall disproportionately on
minorities.
"With the current climate of excessive racial profiling in Kansas and the bill’s broad interpretation and
prosecutorial latitude, this bill will have many unintended consequences,” Rep. Gail Finney, D-Wichita, said
in an explanation of vote that was joined by several colleagues.
Senate Bill 16 was approved on general orders Monday despite some concerns that almost anyone who grew
up in a neighborhood where gangs proliferate could be caught up in RICO prosecutions under the law.
As a number of House members began changing their votes to "no" Tuesday and the tide seemed to be
turning on the bill, Rep. John Rubin, R-Shawnee, a former judge, stepped up to speak for it.
“A 'no' vote on this bill will make life a whole lot easier for drug distributors, drug kingpins, human
traffickers and criminal street gang leaders," Rubin said. "And it will make life a whole lot tougher for
Kansas law enforcement and for the safety of Kansas citizens.”
The House also passed 67-52 a bill to put revenue from court docket fees for 14 judicial agencies under the
authority of the Legislature. Proponents of House Bill 2338 said it would provide more transparency in the
fee funds, while opponents said it was merely an attempt to sweep the funds to help close future budget gaps.
It had passed 60-59 a day earlier on general orders.
On final action Tuesday, the House also passed:
■ 87-32, SB 74, a bill restricting prison programs in which inmates build modular homes. Proponents said
such enterprises compete unfairly with private business. An amendment offered by Rep. Jan Pauls, DHutchinson, that would have exempted prison-made homes donated to nonprofits was rejected.
“Kansas prisons have never been in competition with that industry, and corrections has no interest in being in
competition," Pauls said Tuesday. "If you vote 'yes,' you’re preventing the good that occurs.”
■ 117-2, HB 2387, a capital punishment bill that would specify that first-degree murder while committing or
fleeing from another dangerous felony would be treated similarly to premeditated first-degree murder.
■ 118-1, HB 2389, a bill that extends to the Kansas attorney general the authority to file a notice of intent to
seek the death penalty in cases in which the local prosecutor has a conflict.
■ 108-11, HCR 5014, a resolution urging President Barack Obama to move forward on the Keystone XL
Pipeline that would transport oil from Canada through the United States.
■ 116-2, SB 124, the Kansas Restraint of Trade Act, a bill that seeks to clarify Kansas anti-trust law.
■ 114-5, SB 135, a bill that transfers responsibility for boiler inspections from the Department of Labor to the
state fire marshal.
House tentatively approves $1.5B in KPERS
bonds
Also advances KU Medical Center stem cell facility for final vote
Wednesday
Posted: March 26, 2013 - 1:23pm
By Andy Marso
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
House members advanced a proposal to sell $1.5 billion in bonds to invest in the public employee pension
system Tuesday, despite concerns over the risk of financial loss.
For several years lawmakers have looked for ways to address the estimated $9 billion shortfall between what
the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System has promised members and what it is projected to pay out.
By taking advantage of historically low interest rates in selling the bonds and then investing the money in
ways projected to earn more than the interest paid, Rep. Steve Johnson, R-Assaria, said the Legislature can
pay down a portion of the projected shortfall, or "unfunded actuarial liability."
“This is one of the few and perhaps the only way we can address, in part, the unfunded liability without tax
dollars," said Johnson, chairman of the House Pensions and Benefits Committee. "Tax dollars in
contributions are and continue to be the most important way to address that unfunded liability.”
Still, Johnson said he wanted the House members to vote knowing that there is always some risk to the
principle in market investments. The key, he said, was weighing that risk against the potential benefits.
Rep. James Todd, R-Overland Park, said that if the investment returns pan out, the state would save almost
$2 billion over 20 years by issuing the bonds, which are capped at 5 percent interest.
But another member of Johnson's committee, Rep. John Rubin, R-Shawnee, noted that part of the state's
statutory KPERS contribution goes to paying down the bonded interest in the early years and there would be
no way to keep the Legislature from continuing to do that, thereby not addressing the unfunded liability.
Rep. Ed Trimmer, D-Winfield, agreed, and noted that under a cash balance KPERS compromise approved
last year, the unfunded liability is scheduled to be paid by 2033.
Rep. Pete DeGraaf, R-Mulvane, said it would be folly to exchange the possible future debt in KPERS for a
certain present debt in the form of the bonds. DeGraaf said he was reminded of the people he counsels with
financial struggles in his professional life.
“This is what the road to bankruptcy looks like,” DeGraaf said.
Still, House Bill 2403, advanced in the House, along with Senate Bill 199, also approved Tuesday, that would
establish a stem cell research facility at The University of Kansas Medical Center.
Opponents of that bill noted that the center, which would explicitly exclude research on embryonic stem
cells, was requested by Sen. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee, not the university.
With the legislative session ebbing, the House also advanced several other high-profile bills Tuesday,
including:
■ Senate Bill 149, which would require drug testing for certain welfare recipients who are flagged for
possible drug abuse based on their responses to a standard assessment.
■ SB 142, an anti-abortion bill that would outlaw the filing of "wrongful birth" lawsuits in which parents seek
damages for costs related to children that result from pregnancies the parents believe should have been
terminated.
■ SB 187, a bill that would change the makeup of the workers' compensation board nominating committee.
Opponents said it would tilt the balance of power toward employers and against workers.
■ SB 63, a bill that strengthens penalties for certain election crimes and gives the secretary of state authority
to prosecute such crimes. Secretary of State Kris Kobach is the bill's chief proponent. An amendment by Rep.
John Alcala, D-Topeka, to bar secretaries of state from having a political action committee to support
candidates other than themselves failed.
■ HB 2244, a bill to drop the property tax rate on boats from 30 percent to 11.5 percent in 2014 and 5 percent
for 2015 and every year after. There is an exemption for boats valued at $1,000 or less, which would be taxed
a flat rate of $12 per year. Voters approved a constitutional amendment last fall allowing boats to be taxed at
different rates than other property amid concerns about the competitiveness of Kansas' rates versus
neighboring states.
GOP leaves tracks in KCK Democratic runoff
Will authentic 'mainstream' group please stand up?
Posted: March 30, 2013 - 6:36pm
By Tim Carpenter
THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL
The mayoral campaign between Ann Murguia and Mark Holland — both Democrats — in Kansas City, Kan.,
could have been quietly decided by voters in the left-leaning municipality.
Tuesday’s runoff between these commission members on the Unified Government of Wyandotte County took
on added flavor when some of the state’s most enterprising Republicans stepped into the ring.
Mailers attacking Holland for cutting services and raising taxes were dropped into residential mailboxes.
Likewise, a postcard sponsored by WyCo Jobs PAC denouncing Murguia was distributed to portray her as a
confidante of Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican.
“If Brownback is your guy, Murguia is your gal,” the flier proclaimed.
Of interest on the anti-Holland piece was the return address, which was curiously labeled The Mainstream
Coalition Inc., of Kansas City, Kan.
It wasn’t, however, the work of the Johnson County politically moderate MainStream Coalition formed 20
years ago to promote separation of church and state with an emphasis on public education and religious
freedom.
Brandi Fisher, executive director of MainStream Coalition, said the organization’s political action committee
endorsed Holland and had nothing to do with the mailer attached to The Mainstream Coalition. She said a
complaint alleging deception was filed with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission.
“As soon as MainStream learned about the mailer, it lodged an official complaint,” Fisher said.
The flier attacking Holland appears to involve Kris Van Meteren, who runs the Singularis Group marketing
company relied upon by GOP conservatives in Kansas. Van Meteren filed articles of incorporation March 21
with Secretary of State Kris Kobach in Topeka to prepare for use of The Mainstream Coalition moniker.
Two photographs used to illustrate the anti-Holland mailer were nearly identical to art printed on postcards
sent out by the Kansas Republican Party in 2012 in an attempt to damage the re-election bid of Rep. Annie
Tietze, a Topeka Democrat. Taxation was the theme of both the Holland and Tietze mailers.
Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas GOP, said the state party wasn’t involved in the KCK mayoral
race.
“The Republican Party has nothing to do with Wyandotte,” he said.
Meanwhile, the Kansas chapter of Americans for Prosperity, which advocates for public policy emphasizing
limited government, sent out a flier indicating Holland was a booster of high property taxes. AFP-Kansas is
aligned with Brownback and the Kansas Chamber, and all worked to elect conservative GOP members to the
House and Senate.
Murguia was endorsed by Democratic and Republican politicians with ties to Wyandotte County, while
Holland earned endorsements of the two previous mayors of Kansas City, Kan.
Her campaign finance report includes a contribution from Sen. Steve Fitzgerald, a Leavenworth Republican,
who gave $100 to the Democrat.
David Kensinger, Brownback’s former chief of staff, gave $500 to Murguia via his consulting firm Kensinger
& Associates. He didn’t offer an expansive explanation of his decision to embrace a Democrat, suggesting by
use of a Latin phrase the investment could speak for itself.
“Great lady,” he said. “Res ipsa loquitur.”
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said intervention by Republicans in a KCK showdown
between Democrats suggested the GOP apparatus led by Brownback was seeking greater influence in
municipal affairs.
“It’s very inappropriate for the governor of Kansas to get involved in local elections,” Hensley said.
The Wichita Eagle
Survey suggests Midwest economy improving
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The Associated Press
Published Monday, April 1, 2013, at 5:19 a.m.
Updated Monday, April 1, 2013, at 11:14 a.m.
OMAHA, Neb. — A big jump in new orders suggests the economy is improving in nine Midwest and
Plains states, but it's too soon to say whether that trend will continue, according to a monthly survey
released Monday.
The overall economic index for the region increased to 58.2 in March from February's 53.1.
Creighton University economist Ernie Goss said the increase is encouraging because any score
above 50 suggests growth.
"This is the largest one-month jump that we have recorded since January 2012. However, we will
have to record several consecutive months of readings like this to be confident that the regional
economy is picking up steam," said Goss, who oversees the survey.
New orders were the biggest factor in the overall index's improvement, soaring to 65.4 in March from
February's 55, Goss said.
The survey of business leaders and supply managers uses a collection of indexes ranging from zero
to 100. Organizers say any score above 50 suggests growth while a score below 50 suggests
decline for that factor.
The survey covers Arkansas, Iowa, Kansas, Minnesota, Missouri, Nebraska, North Dakota,
Oklahoma and South Dakota.
The employment index for the region grew to 56.3 in March from February's 51.6, suggesting that
hiring was picking up. But Goss said the rate of hiring varies greatly across the region, with North
Dakota leading the way with 5 percent job growth thanks to its oil boom. Arkansas had the slowest
hiring with a growth rate of 0.2 percent.
Inflation pressure eased in March. The prices-paid index, which tracks raw materials and supply
costs, declined to 64.1 in March from February's 72.6.
The business leaders surveyed are feeling better about their prospects in the next six months, the
report said. The confidence index improved to 58.2 in March from February's 50.6.
Businesses have been adding to their inventory levels in anticipation of stronger sales. The inventory
index grew to 58.1 in March from February's 52.2.
"This is another indicator of improving business confidence," Goss said.
The other components of the overall March index were:
- Export orders at 50.9, up from February's 49.2.
- Import orders at 55, up from 53.7 in February.
- Production or sales at 62.4, up from February's 55.5.
- And delivery lead time at 49, down from 51.1.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/04/01/2741515/survey-says-midwest-economicsurvey.html#storylink=cpy
Senate advances bill shifting funds from earnedincome tax credit to property tax rebate
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Monday, April 1, 2013, at 9:03 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, April 3, 2013, at 9:45 a.m.
TOPEKA — The state would shift money from the working poor to elderly or disabled homeowners
under a bill approved by the Senate on Monday.
Republicans said the shift would give more people more money to help them with the most hated tax
in the state – property tax. And they say that Kansas would still be above the national average for
how much it provides to the working poor through its earned-income tax credit.
“It will help more people… that is a big thing for somebody that’s on a fixed income and not able to
work,” said Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita.
Democrats call it an attack on the working poor triggered by tax cuts approved last year that benefit
the wealthy and business owners, and they said many of the poorest Kansans don’t own property to
take full advantage of the tax rebate.
Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, said most people use the credit — which averages $380 —
to buy groceries, shoes for their kids and other essentials.
“This little bit of money means a lot to those individuals who are the working poor and our Bible says
that we must care for them,” she said.
House Bill 2060 cuts the value of the state earned-income tax credit from 17 percent of the federal
credit to 9 percent in the 2013 tax year. Kansas is one of about 25 states that offer the program on a
state level in addition to the federal credit, and it’s about in the middle of the pack in terms of value.
It would shift that $42.2 million from the working poor who qualify for the EITC to a property tax
rebate claimed by homeowners who are born before 1957 or are permanently disabled or have a
dependent child. It increases the maximum income to qualify for the rebate from $32,400 to $34,400
to include more people.
To qualify for the EITC in 2012, an individual filing alone had to have made less than $13,980. A
married couple that filed jointly and had two qualifying children had to have made less than $47,162.
The bill would leave the federal share of the EITC untouched, and it would use some of the shifted
state EITC money to increase the maximum property tax rebate from $700 to $1,200.
While the bill is a dollar-for-dollar shift in its first year, it would ultimately leave the state with about
$4.5 million more over five years.
Senators approved the bill on a voice vote after about two hours of debate. They plan to conduct a
final vote Tuesday.
The debate came as lawmakers grapple with how to bring in more revenue to make up for
impending deficits caused by income tax cuts for individuals and elimination of nonwage income
taxes for about 191,000 businesses and farms signed into law by Gov. Sam Brownback last year.
Competing House and Senate tax cut plans would reduce the value of tax deductions. The Senate
plan, which is most similar to a proposal pitched by Brownback earlier this year, would also
indefinitely extend a six-tenths of a cent sales tax due to expire in July.
Brownback had proposed reducing the state’s EITC, but it was one of the parts of his tax-cut plan
that drew the most criticism. Lawmakers rejected that aspect of his plan before drastically altering
more of it.
Senate Vice President Jeff King, R-Independence, said shifting money from the EITC to the property
tax rebate would not hurt the working poor. He said expanding the homestead property tax relief
program would help the most-vulnerable and poor.
Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said the state took away the food sales tax rebate, taking about
$154 per household from about 300,000 qualifying Kansans.
Those people don’t make enough money to pay income tax, he said, but will suffer from losing the
food rebate and from a lesser amount of earned-income tax credit.
“I just can’t imagine the shock that will go through those people’s minds and they’re figuring out how
to cope going forward,” he said.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/04/01/2742541/senate-advances-billshifting.html#storylink=cpy
Senate approves plan to fold Kansas Turnpike into
KDOT
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 5:09 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 8:46 p.m.
TOPEKA — A plan to partially fold the independent Kansas Turnpike Authority into the Kansas
Department of Transportation with more accountability to the governor has been pushed forward by
the Senate.
Lawmakers softened Gov. Sam Brownback’s initial proposal by ensuring that no turnpike toll money
could be used elsewhere, which opponents feared under the original plan.
But the Senate’s 26-14 vote Thursday would require the two transportation groups to avoid
redundancies and it makes KDOT Sec. Mike King CEO of the turnpike with authority to shift
personnel and equipment between the separate entities.
Some lawmakers say that will save money and make both entities more efficient. Others say it’s an
unnecessary power grab that the state will regret.
The Turnpike Authority is one of the best-run organizations in the state and provides great value by
collecting in- and out-of-state money and using it to maintain one of the best roads in the country,
said Wichita Republican Sen. Les Donovan.
“We’re going to take a well-run entity and merge it into a government entity that may or may not be
well run,” he said. “For all the folks in here that tout themselves and hold themselves up to be smallgovernment individuals, moving a non-governmental, so to speak, entity into a government entity,
flies in the face of that claim. This is a sad day in the state of Kansas.”
Brownback’s administration projected the merger, in its initial form, could save $15 million a year by
eliminating redundancies and sharing in more contracts. Brownback included the projected savings
in his proposed budget.
But details of where, specifically, that savings would come from never surfaced.
The bill has been approved by the House but the House would have to concur with changes made in
the Senate before it goes to the governor.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2735885/senate-approves-plan-to-foldkansas.html#storylink=cpy
Court-fee bill looks like another money
grab
Rep. Mark Kahrs, R-Wichita, said that a House-passed bill that puts revenue from
court docket fees under the control of the Legislature would provide “more transparency, more
accountability and more trust,” the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. But others see it as yet another
attempt by the Legislature to sweep up designated fees and use them for other purposes. Rep. Jim Ward,
D-Wichita, noted that the docket fees were instituted because the Legislature was inadequately funding
the courts. The only people who think the state won’t use this money to cover its budget shortfalls, Ward
said, also “believe in Santa Claus and the Easter Bunny.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/court-fee-bill-looks-like-another-moneygrab/#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Senate passes bill giving phone companies more
freedom from oversight in Kansas
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By Dion Lefler and Trevor Graff
The Wichita Eagle
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 9:02 p.m.
A bill freeing AT&T and other Kansas phone companies from having to provide service to rural and
poor customers easily passed the state Senate on Wednesday, virtually assuring that it will become
Kansas law.
Supporters say House Bill 2201 is a necessary step on the road to changing AT&T from a regulated
phone company to an unregulated provider of a variety of services, such as television and Internet
access, and that competition in the telecommunications marketplace will protect consumers.
“I think we’re at the point where we can take one of our largest carriers (AT&T) and treat them as if
they’re a wireless carrier or cable carrier,” said Sen. Pat Apple, R-Louisburg and chairman of the
Senate Utilities Committee. “This legislation is trying to keep pace with changes in technology and
changes in the marketplace.”
Opponents say the bill will allow AT&T and other companies to abandon less profitable rural
customers and poor people on subsidized Lifeline service. In addition, the opponents are concerned
that the bill guts the traditional consumer-protection function of the Kansas Corporation Commission.
“The current public policy of the state … is to ensure that every Kansan will have access to a firstclass telecommunications infrastructure,” said Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, who voted against
the bill. She said HB 2201 is “starkly in contrast with some of that stated policy.”
The bill passed the Senate 36-4, following 118-1 approval by the House.
Because the Senate amended the bill, it now returns to the House, where representatives can either
accept the Senate’s changes or request a House-Senate conference committee to meet and craft a
final bill.
The bill was originally written by AT&T in consultation with other telecommunications providers
around the state, who presented a unified front at the Legislature.
AT&T executives testified that they don’t plan to dump rural customers, although the company has
acknowledged that some who live in areas that are difficult to serve with land lines could be
“migrated” to wireless services.
“Just because the obligation (to provide service) is gone doesn’t mean if a customer called in and it
made sense to deliver the service via plain old telephone service, we certainly would,” AT&T Kansas
President Steve Hahn said in Senate committee testimony.
At the committee level, a few senators sought to preserve some of the consumer protections in
current law, but it’s unclear whether they succeeded.
The Utilities Committee accepted AT&T’s rewrite of the proposed consumer-protection amendment
to the bill.
The bill, as it stands, authorizes the KCC to “administer” consumer complaints and “investigate”
potential fraud by phone companies.
It’s not clear whether the KCC could still order a company to cease an abusive practice or would
have to refer the customer to the Attorney General’s Office or the Federal Communications
Commission in Washington, said David Springe, chief consumer counsel for the Citizens’ Utility
Ratepayer Board, the small state agency that represents residential and small-business consumers.
“On one hand, they gave the KCC back some authority, then they changed it from ‘prevent fraud’ to
‘investigate fraud,’ ” Springe said. “What if you investigate it and you find it? It seems to me with the
words ‘administer’ and ‘investigate,’ it’s not clear they could tell AT&T to stop.”
He added that the FCC, a sprawling federal agency, is ineffective at handling individual consumer
complaints.
“If the FCC is really the only option, then there’s no consumer protection in this bill,” Springe said.
Provisions in the bill affect different companies in different ways. But exemption from quality of
service and Lifeline standards applies to AT&T, Cox, Sprint, Verizon, SKT, United, Wheat State and
about 375 other companies.
“If given a choice whether we have a government-regulated industry or free markets that will work, I
would choose free markets,” Apple said.
In addition to freeing the providers from state regulation, the bill also shrinks the Kansas Universal
Service Fund, which helps offset phone companies’ costs of providing telecommunications to
customers in hard-to-reach places. Shrinking the fund could ease the cost of monthly surcharges for
Kansas consumers.
First-year reduction to the service fund would total about $9.4 million.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2736193/senate-passes-bill-givingphone.html#storylink=cpy
State budget proposal cuts $2 million from National
Center for Aviation Training
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 8:45 p.m.
TOPEKA — Where some see the future of Wichita’s aviation industry, some lawmakers see leftover
money that could help accommodate tax cuts.
Wichita’s National Center for Aviation Training, which helps provide the aviation sector with workready applicants, is poised to lose $2 million of the $5 million it typically gets from the state under a
plan House and Senate budget negotiators have tentatively agreed upon.
The proposed cut comes in part from pressure to reduce spending after income tax cuts and in part
because NCAT still has $2.9 million left to spend from this year’s state funding.
NCAT officials say they plan to use the remaining money by July to buy equipment, such as 3D
printers and robotic simulators, to help train the next generation of aviation manufacturing workers.
“We have to prepare educated trained workforce for the Wichita area or basically the manufacturing
and aviation jobs won’t be here anymore,” said Kent Irick, dean of aviation at NCAT. “It’s just that
plain and simple.”
Republican budget leaders say they agree NCAT is important, but they’ve been targeting unspent
money in programs throughout the state.
“We understood them to have some carryover, so we thought they could handle a $2 million haircut
for one year,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover.
Gov. Sam Brownback said he stands ready to defend money for technical education, which is
growing rapidly at tech schools statewide after he signed into law new incentive programs last year.
“I was just recruiting a company the other day,” he said Wednesday. “A good portion of why they’re
looking at coming to Kansas is the number of tech trained people in the aviation industry that we
have that a lot of places don’t. These are high skill spots. You just don’t hire somebody and say ‘We
can teach you everything to know on in the first few weeks on the job.’ You need to know what
you’re doing with this.”
Sen. Michael O’Donnell, R-Wichita, helped prevent cuts to another Wichita aviation center, the
National Institute for Aviation Research, during earlier budget debates. NCAT’s unspent money may
justify the reduction, he said, but lawmakers should keep funding the program.
“If we take it completely out of the budget this year, the odds of it getting reinstalled next year would
be very difficult,” he said.
Democrats, meanwhile, say NCAT is an example of cuts that are affecting many programs after the
Legislature eliminated income taxes for businesses and reducing income taxes for individuals.
Many of the Legislature’s newer members are questioning programs they aren’t very familiar with,
said Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka.
“I think the approach that they take is, ‘Well, let’s cut them, and they’ll respond and tell us what we
want to know,’” she said.
“What we’re seeing is not only cutting budgets, but we’re seeing a huge transfer of fund balances,”
Kelly said, noting about $103 million worth of shifts across the state’s budget. Lawmakers haven’t
taken enough time to investigate what the consequences of those shifts may be, she added.
In recent years, NCAT has spent all but about $200,000 of its annual $5 million on equipment for
students to practice on and instructors, according to figures provided by Tony Kinkel, president of
Wichita Area Technical College, which houses NCAT.
The leftover money provides a buffer in case the new equipment approved by NCAT’s board and
bought under state purchasing rules costs more than expected, Kinkel said.
The program has about $2.9 million left to spend this budget year. It plans to spend the money on
equipment including a heavy-duty sheet metal shear, an airplane tug to train workers how to move
planes around in a factory, specialized painting booths and a GPS simulator.
Mike Edwards, the dean of manufacturing at NCAT, said students have access to one 3D printer that
converts computer-designed images into products.
NCAT plans to buy a more advanced printer, similar to those used at local aviation companies, that
can print out hard plastics and rubber to create a variety of products, such as the plastic and rubber
cases many people use to protect their smart phones.
Kinkel praised lawmakers for prior funding commitments and for approving incentives to get more
high school students and residents into tech training programs.
“They’ve done a yeoman’s work in moving colleges forward,” he said.
The proposed $2 million cut wouldn’t sink NCAT, he said.
“We’re going to live with whatever they give us,” he said.
But he said the cuts could start eroding the center’s ability to be a premier aviation training program.
Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, who headed the Senate budget panel last year, said NCAT is
key to the state and to Wichita.
“We have a star facility. It has a 98 percent (job) placement rating on the students that go there,” she
said. “I don’t know why you would cut something that has so much success.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2736181/state-budget-proposal-cuts-2million.html#storylink=cpy
Sales tax continuation major issue in House, Senate
negotiations
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 9:26 a.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 8:36 p.m.
TOPEKA — House and Senate negotiators focused Wednesday on the Republican-driven push to
dial down income tax rates and fix impending budget problems created by last year’s tax cuts.
Wichita Republican Sen. Les Donovan tried to set the tone by advocating for the continuation of a
temporary six-tenths of a cent sales tax hike slated to expire this summer. That’s the primary
difference between the plans — dubbed tax hikes by Democrats because both plans phase down
the value of popular tax deductions — that the House and Senate approved in recent weeks.
The sales tax extension that would raise an estimated $262 million next year is a critical part of the
plan, Donovan said.
“That is the bottom line, the linchpin if you will, of whether this works or not,” he said.
Gov. Sam Brownback, who has made tax cuts the most prominent issue in the state for the past two
years, recommended continuing that sales tax in his proposal.
But it has proven politically unpopular with some lawmakers who promised to let the sales tax expire
on time when they approved the increase in 2010. Others view it as a tax increase.
Rep. Richard Carlson, R-St.Marys, said many House Republican leaders don’t believe they can get
their chamber to approve continuation of the sales tax.
“We’re looking forward to finding solutions to the problem in the long run,” Carlson said.
The plan approved by the Senate cuts rates over the next few years, as proposed by Brownback,
and would channel any growth in state revenues beyond 4 percent to more income tax reductions. It
continues the sales tax rate at 6.3 percent and trims the value of tax deductions, except the
charitable tax deduction, in coming years as rates decline.
The House approved a plan that doesn’t provide automatic rate cuts. But it triggers income tax
reductions whenever state revenues grow beyond 2 percent. It allows the sales tax to drop on
schedule and trims tax deduction values.
Democrats have blasted both plans as tax hikes designed to make up for big budget problems
created by the hastily approved income tax cuts Brownback signed into law last year after a brutal
political battle between Brownback’s conservative allies and moderate Republicans and Democrats.
The House’s negotiators are Carlson, Rep. Scott Schawb, R-Olathe, and Rep. Tom Sawyer, DWichita. The Senate’s team is Donovan, Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker, and Sen. Tom Holland, DBaldwin City.
They plan to continue to work out differences in the tax plans next week.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2735154/sales-tax-continuation-majorissue.html#storylink=cpy
Using Texas as a tax model for Kansas has its
drawbacks, some state officials say
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By Dion Lefler
The Wichita Eagle
Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 8:27 p.m.
Updated Friday, March 29, 2013, at 8:04 p.m.
Gov. Sam Brownback has always cited Texas as a model for the kind of no-income-tax state he
wants to create here.
While Texas doesn’t tax the income of individuals, it does have a franchise tax on business that is so
close to an income tax that the Kansas Department of Revenue officially recognizes it as one.
State Democrats say the governor ignored the Texas franchise tax to mislead voters and advance
an ongoing political agenda of shifting the state tax burden from businesses and the wealthy to
ordinary workers who pay a higher share of their income in sales and property taxes.
“It’s misleading not to look at the whole tax structure,” said Democratic state Chairwoman Joan
Wagnon, a former Kansas secretary of revenue. “He’s just looking at one piece of it.” Brownback
said many officials cite Texas as a successful example of a state without income taxes.
“I think you can hold them up as a no-income tax state,” he said. “I’m not the only one who holds
them up that way. Most are. There are different permutations on things. But I think most people
would look at Texas as a no-income-tax state.”
The Texas franchise tax, also called a “margin” tax, is usually levied against business revenue minus
expense deductions, much like an income tax.
But by using a different name and a more complicated method of calculation, Texas has been able
to legally skirt its constitutional prohibition on income taxes and tap businesses for $4.5 billion a
year, the state’s second-highest source of revenue behind sales taxes.
Kansas can’t do that. The Legislature eliminated the Kansas franchise tax in 2011.
Asked about the Texas franchise tax, Brownback said, “You’re going to collect your revenue
somewhere, and a key part of it is holding your cost down so your revenue stream doesn’t have to
be quite as large. But you’re going to need to collect revenue to run the state somewhere.”
Texas ran into that reality in 2006 under pressure from a court decision that the state was
underfunding its schools.
In response, the Texas Legislature revised the franchize tax to capture revenue from limited liability
companies and corporations organized under Subchapter S of the federal tax code.
Both states tax the income of regular corporations, but when it comes to LLCs and S-Corps., Texas
and Kansas have taken opposite approaches.
Texas taxes the revenue of the businesses directly, while Kansas taxes the wages of the people that
work for such businesses.
Last year, at Brownback’s urging, the Legislature eliminated the income tax on owners’ profits from
LLC and S-Corp businesses in Kansas.
Both houses of the Kansas Legislature have passed bills to cut income taxes again this year to stay
on Brownback’s “glide path to zero” on personal income taxes.
Those bills will now go to a conference committee, where six lawmakers – three representatives and
three senators – will work to hammer out a single bill.
For more than a year, Brownback has cited Texas as his model state for taxation and the inspiration
for reducing personal income tax to zero.
Probably the best-known instance was the catchphrase of his State of the State speech in January:
“Look out, Texas, here comes Kansas!” delivered to both houses of the Legislature and broadcast
statewide.
“When I started as governor, we had the highest state income tax in the region; now we have the
second-lowest, and I want us to take it to zero,” Brownback said.
As he has many times in the past, Brownback lamented the state’s loss of residents to the Lone Star
State in the January speech and during a recent appearance on Fox Business Channel.
“Fortunately, we get people in from California, but we lose them to Texas,” Brownback said on Fox.
He added that he sees eliminating the income tax as critical to reversing the population loss.
“We’ve really got a red-state (Republican) model going,” he said. “There are a number of us as red
states going at this – Nebraska, Louisiana. Texas obviously is already there.”
Interpretation of facts
Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, said Brownback distorted the Texas tax system to gain political points for
his plan to zero out the income tax.
“It’s just another example of the Brownback administration playing fast and loose with the facts,”
Ward said.
In the State of the State address, Brownback “failed to tell us that Texas funds their schools with a
margin tax and it was the result of a lawsuit,” Ward said. “We can disagree on policy, we should
disagree on policy. But the math and the facts should match.”
Brownback’s Budget Director, Steve Anderson, said zero personal income tax is a big factor for
executives who make the decisions on where their businesses will have their headquarters, because
it’s the equivalent of a pay raise for them.
“The governor believes, like I believe, if you’re going to have a tax base, it should be a consumption
tax base (and) that the income tax is punitive, that it disincentivizes business,” he said.
Contributing: Brent Wistrom of The Eagle
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2734507/using-texas-as-a-tax-modelfor.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
H. Edward Flentje: Brownback stuck on sidelines on
Medicaid
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By H. Edward Flentje
Published Friday, March 29, 2013, at 6:21 p.m.
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Updated Friday, March 29, 2013, at 6:21 p.m.
Gov. Sam Brownback remains sidelined on whether to extend Medicaid coverage to thousands of
lower-income Kansans at little cost to state taxpayers. The governor has delayed and ducked this
major issue confronting state policymakers in Kansas and every other state in the nation.
In confirming the constitutionality of the Affordable Care Act, popularly known as Obamacare, the
U.S. Supreme Court ruled nine months ago that state governments could not be coerced into
expanding Medicaid but must be allowed to make that choice on a state-by-state basis.
Since the court decision, most governors across the nation have weighed in on the issue, either pro
or con. At least seven independent reports have analyzed Medicaid expansion in Kansas, focusing
most attention on the number of low-income Kansans who would receive coverage and the financial
impact on state taxpayers.
While projections of enrollment vary, the best estimate of the nonpartisan Kansas Health Institute is
that 110,000 adults and 88,000 children would take advantage of broader eligibility through Medicaid
expansion. ACA covers the full cost of newly eligible adults under Medicaid expansion for the first
three years, 2014-16, phasing down to 90 percent in 2020 and beyond. Providing health care for
these low-income Kansans over the next seven years would cost $4 for every $100 in coverage.
A report prepared for the Kansas Hospital Association projects that by 2020, Medicaid expansion
would create more than 4,000 new jobs and add more than $300 million in personal income annually
to the Kansas economy. Further, the report estimates that these economic impacts coupled with
related health care savings would actually produce a net gain in the state budget for the period.
So, what has immobilized Brownback into a state of indecision uncharacteristic of his aggressive
instincts in tackling most state issues?
On the one hand, his most intimate anti-government allies – Americans for Prosperity, the Kansas
Chamber of Commerce, the American Legislative Exchange Council and their legislative
collaborators – despise Obamacare as overreach into individual liberty, loathe the safety net
represented by Medicaid, and vehemently oppose its expansion in any form. They applaud Gov.
Rick Perry, who has dug in his heels against Medicaid expansion in Texas, a state that ranks at or
near the bottom among the 50 states on most measures of health insurance coverage for children
and adults.
On the other hand, a vocal array of health care advocates in Kansas support expansion of Medicaid.
They point to the decision as an economic issue of creating jobs but also frame it as a moral issue,
that of assisting vulnerable Kansans. They point to red-state Gov. John Kasich of Ohio, who in
supporting expansion called on Ohioans to seek guidance from the Bible, stating: “I can’t look at the
disabled, I can’t look at the poor, I can’t look at the mentally ill, I can’t look at the addicted and think
we ought to ignore them…. For those that live in the shadows of life, those who are the least among
us, I will not accept the fact that the most vulnerable in our state should be ignored. We can help
them.”
Brownback has been hoisted on the horns of a political dilemma, much of his own making. His tax
policies favor the rich and shift the state tax burden onto lower-income Kansans. His social-welfare
policies have eliminated assistance for thousands of the neediest Kansans and threaten to unravel
the safety net for thousands of other vulnerable Kansans.
Choosing to align himself with his libertarian fringe on Medicaid expansion would reinforce once
again his alliance with the rich against the poor and drive his low approval ratings, now standing in
the mid-30s, even further downward.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/31/2738831/h-edward-flentje-brownbackstuck.html#storylink=cpy
Eagle editorial: Be open to Medicaid expansion
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Published Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 6:13 p.m.
Updated Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 6:13 p.m.
Good for Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, for being open to expanding Medicaid in
Kansas. The rest of the Legislature and Gov. Sam Brownback should be, too.
During a debate last week on an amendment to require legislative approval for any effort to expand
Medicaid, Wagle said she supported the amendment (which passed), but not because she was
trying to block expansion.
“We need to remain flexible here in this state and find our own Kansas-based solutions,” Wagle later
told the Topeka Capital-Journal. “If that means drawing down some of those federal funds, we need
to be flexible in how we draw them down.”
That’s smart.
A study by the Kansas Hospital Association concluded that expansion would enable more than
150,000 Kansans to get needed insurance. It also would inject more than $3 billion into the state’s
economy and create 4,000 jobs over the next seven years. What’s more, expansion could save the
state more money than it costs.
Conversely, not expanding Medicaid would be a major financial blow to the state’s hospitals. That’s
because the Affordable Care Act reduces payments to help hospitals that serve low-income
uninsured patients (in expectation that many of these patients would be joining Medicaid). Losing
this funding could put some small hospitals out of business.
Wagle is interested in crafting more of a free-market approach to expansion. She has cited
Arkansas, which has received preliminary approval to use federal Medicaid money to help lowincome residents pay premiums for private insurance (an idea that is similar to the Obamacare
insurance marketplace).
“One thing we need to do is keep doors open, keep talking and keep trying to find Kansas solutions,”
she said.
Wagle’s pragmatism isn’t out of character. In 2008, she supported an expansion of the State
Children’s Health Insurance Program in Kansas. She called SCHIP a “tried-and-true program” and
noted that the federal government would pick up most of the cost of expansion.
That’s even more the case now, as the federal government will cover the full cost of this expansion
until 2016, and nearly all the cost afterward.
Wagle also has noted that if Kansas doesn’t opt in to Medicaid expansion, other states that do will
benefit from Kansans’ tax dollars.
“Kansas is losing out, and it does affect our health care industry and it does affect the quality of our
services,” she told the Lawrence Journal-World.
For his part, Brownback remains noncommittal, even as more than half a dozen GOP governors
recently have announced they are expanding Medicaid in their states.
“We’re open on it,” Brownback said. “We’re very concerned about the long-term costs. I want to
listen to the Legislature.”
He should start by listening to Wagle.
For the editorial board, Phillip Brownlee
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/29/2737484/eagle-editorial-be-open-tomedicaid.html#storylink=cpy
Deadline approaches for changing KanCare
providers
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By Kelsey Ryan
The Wichita Eagle
Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 10:48 a.m.
KanCare recipients whose enrollments went into effect on Jan. 1 have until April 4 to switch to
another health plan if they do not wish to stay with their current provider, according to a news
release from the Kansas Department of Health and Environment.
The three health plans – Amerigroup, Sunflower State and UnitedHealthcare – cover the same
services that recipients had prior to KanCare’s implementation on Jan. 1. However, each plan also
offers various additional services.
Those who enrolled after Jan. 1 have 90 days to change plans.
To change plans, call 866-305-5147.
For more information, visit http://www.kancare.ks.gov/choosing_a_plan.htm
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2735253/deadline-approaches-forchanging.html#storylink=cpy
Lawmakers: Hospitals that serve uninsured could
lose some funding if state doesn’t expand Medicaid
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 11:03 a.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 12:13 a.m.
TOPEKA — Hospitals large and small that serve people who don’t have insurance could lose
millions if the state doesn’t expand Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act, and the state is poised
to not expand, lawmakers said Tuesday.
To help buffer a potential dropoff in federal “disproportionate share money” for hospitals that help the
uninsured, Sen. Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, is pushing to at least keep up with the state part of
that funding to provide “a soft landing.”
The roughly $76 million in state and federal money is intended to help hospitals take care of people
who don’t have insurance. Lawmakers say they think federal funding will drop significantly, if not be
eliminated, as funding shifts to Medicaid expansion.
That could decrease funding for Wichita’s Via Christi hospitals by more than $10 million, and it could
leave rural safety net hospitals nearly broke, according to some lawmakers.
“Without it, they would not be able to continue operations,” Denning said.
The state covers about 40 percent of the total for the fund and the federal government takes care of
the rest, meaning hospitals could see big effects even if the state continues with its $33 million in
aid.
“They’ll have to do more with less,” Denning said.
The state’s share of money is subject to debate as House and Senate negotiators work out the
differences between the proposed state spending plans that have been approved by each chamber.
Provisions in the Affordable Care Act were intended to expand Medicaid, but expansion became a
state decision after a Supreme Court ruling.
The expansion would extend health coverage to anyone earning less than 133 percent of the federal
poverty level, or about $2,555 a month for a family of four. That includes about a quarter of a million
Kansans.
Many Kansans who already qualify are expected to also apply for benefits because of the increased
attention to government-assisted health insurance.
Gov. Sam Brownback has not said whether he wants to expand Medicaid, but lawmakers seem
unlikely to approve it. Under an addition to the Senate budget, lawmakers would have to approve
expansion.
The debate over funding for the hospitals comes as a coalition of residents plans to deliver a 2,700signature petition to Brownback on Wednesday afternoon.
The Kansas Medicaid Access Coalition petitions urge lawmakers to accept federal money in 2014 to
expand access to Medicaid. The Coalition includes AARP Kansas, the Kansas Farmers Union,
Kansas Action for Children, the Kansas Coalition Against Sexual and Domestic Violence and many
others.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2733790/lawmakers-hospitals-thatserve.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Kansas House approves bill establishing drug
testing for welfare, unemployment recipients
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 3:36 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 9:32 p.m.
TOPEKA — The House swiftly approved a bill Tuesday requiring drug testing of unemployment and
welfare recipients suspected of substance abuse.
Those who fail tests would have to go to drug treatment and job skills training paid for by the state
and federal government. Those who apply again and fail again would lose assistance for a year.
The bill also would prevent anyone who is convicted of a drug felony after July from getting welfare
for five years. A second conviction would result in a lifelong ban.
“We’re trying to help people get job training and substance abuse treatment,” said Rep. Ron
Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe.
No one spoke in opposition to the bill, and it passed on a vote of 106-16. All south-central Kansas
representatives voted for the bill except for Democrats Carolyn Bridges, Gail Finney, Roderick
Houston, Patricia Sloop and Ponka-We Victors, who voted no, and Republican Rep. Les Osterman,
who was absent after undergoing heart surgery last week.
The Senate has already approved the bill; it’s likely the Senate will agree to a couple of minor
tweaks approved by the House before advancing the bill to Gov. Sam Brownback.
The bill allows for testing of House and Senate members as well if reasonable suspicion arises.
A person’s demeanor, missed appointments, police records or failed drug tests with a potential
employer would qualify as reasonable suspicion.
Those who fail a first test could request a second test at a different testing facility, but if they fail the
second test, they must pay for it.
An opponent of the bill said “reasonable suspicion” is a subjective term and could be used as it has
been in the war on drugs to unfairly target women of color.
Most people who get temporary assistance for needy families, typically referred to as welfare, are
women, and requiring drug tests unfairly targets them, said Elise Higgins, a lobbyist with the Kansas
National Organization for Women.
Setting up a drug test program and related expenses are expected to require the state to hire four
full-time employees and would cost about $1 million next year. That includes about $461,000 in state
money.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2734175/kansas-house-advances-billestablishing.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Kansas governor signs bill eliminating statute of
limitations on rape cases
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Monday, April 1, 2013, at 11:07 a.m.
Updated Wednesday, April 3, 2013, at 9:45 a.m.
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law a bill that eliminates the statute of limitations on
rape and aggravated sodomy as advocates, lawmakers and a rape survivor applauded Monday.
House Bill 2252 also allows victims of other violent sexual crimes 10 years after turning age 18 to
report a crime, a move intended to help those who were molested or assaulted by a family member
and are afraid to report it until they can safely leave their home.
Kansas joins about 20 other states that have no time limit for the prosecution of rape.
“I think this is a very important message and signal to put out there,” Brownback said.
Several rape and assault survivors from the Wichita area testified earlier this year about how they
couldn’t get justice despite taped confessions and other evidence because the state’s laws didn’t
allow prosecution after the statute of limitations ran out.
The bill had broad support, including that of Wichita Democratic Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau and
Democratic Reps. Gail Finney and Ponka-We Victors.
Faust-Goudeau said the eight victims from Wichita who came to testify are thankful and grateful that
the bill is becoming law.
Mel Townsend, a rape survivor who testified about how a serial rapist broke into her home in
Lawrence and assaulted her, said she is elated about the bill being passed.
She said it will help other survivors.
“It will give them a little bit of hope,” she said.
Only three other crimes in Kansas have no statute of limitations – murder and two terrorism-related
charges approved after the Sept. 11 attacks.
Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said new technology allows authorities to prove who
committed crimes.
It’s not clear how many new cases will be prosecuted under the new law, he said.
“It won’t change the reality that evidence has to be there in order for a successful prosecution to be
mounted,” he said. “And the passage of time can weaken some types of evidence. But in cases
where there is strong and enduring evidence, such as physical evidence, the law will now not create
an arbitrary bar.”
Schmidt said the bill has a big impact on prosecution of child sex crimes, too.
“The effect of this on our ability to hold accountable those who prey on kids… is going to be
measurable,” he said.
About 90 percent of child sex crimes involve family members or other trusted adults.
“That makes it even more difficult. When a child leaves the house at, say, age 18, in many ways
that’s when the clock starts running on the child’s ability to weigh the consequence of disclosing or to
allow the memory to come forward to be disclosed,” he said. “They’re very difficult crimes. This is a
big step.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/04/01/2741810/kansas-governor-signs-billeliminating.html#storylink=cpy
First new law of 2013 bad for Kansas
courts
How regrettable that the first bill to become law this year – House Bill 2019,
which Gov. Sam Brownbacksigned Wednesday – was one that needlessly politicizes a merit-selection
process for the Court of Appeals that has served Kansas well for 36 years. Now, Kansas reportedly is
unique in the nation for selecting Court of Appeals judges one way and Supreme Court justices another
way. Because the new system lets the governor pick anyone he wants but requires that his choices be
confirmed by the Senate, which only works during the spring, the change could result in long-vacant seats
on the court. Never mind that January poll showing 61 percent of Kansas voters opposed changing how
appellate judges are selected. And so much for the 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals’ 2012 opinion that
the nonpartisan nominating commission long used for Kansas’ appellate courts “is designed to ensure the
conduct of the executive branch does not threaten the integrity of the judicial branch.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/first-new-law-of-2013-bad-for-kansascourts/#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Southeast Kansas casino backers to try again to pass
bill
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The Associated Press
Published Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at 4:14 a.m.
Updated Tuesday, April 2, 2013, at 6:19 a.m.
TOPEKA, Kan. — Southeast Kansas legislators hoping to bring a state-owned casino to their area
will try again to pass a bill designed to make it happen.
But their measure would kill off any chance of slot machines at dog and horse racing tracks.
The gambling bill is on the Senate's agenda Tuesday. Southeast Kansas legislators have tried
repeatedly in the past to revise a 2007 gambling law.
The law requires developers of state casinos to invest at least $225 million in a southeast Kansas
casino, and backers of such a project say the threshold is too high. The bill would drop it to $50
million.
Past proposals also have addressed track owners' complaints that the law doesn't make slots
lucrative enough for them. This year's bill repeals the authorization for slots.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/04/02/2742916/se-kan-casino-backers-to-tryagain.html#storylink=cpy
Kansas views on buying access, risky tax bet,
pickpockets, education meddling, KU mandate
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Published Friday, March 29, 2013, at 6:24 p.m.
Updated Monday, April 1, 2013, at 5:52 a.m.
Buying access – If middle-class Kansans are curious about how they can make their voices heard
in Topeka, they should take a cue from Rodney Steven. For several years, Steven and his Genesis
Health Clubs have pressed legislators to address what he viewed as inequity in a tax system that
charged his for-profit clubs sales and property taxes, while allowing recreation centers and YMCAs
to organize as tax-exempt nonprofits. This year, however, Steven put his money – about $45,000 –
behind his request, and now this previously ignored bill has some senators’ ears, and some
momentum. The GOP-dominated Senate voted to advance Senate Bill 72, which grants a propertytax exemption. Stevens and Genesis donated money to 24 of 40 of the Senate’s current members,
including most of the members of the assessment and taxation committee, where the bill originated.
Hutchinson News
Risky bet – What will happen if Gov. Sam Brownback gets his way and is able to eliminate the state
income tax? According to Duane Goossen, a former secretary of the Kansas Department of
Administration who also was the state’s budget director, individual income tax makes up 46.5
percent – or $2.8 billion – of the $6.2 billion state general-fund budget and sales tax represents 41.7
percent, with the rest made up of corporate, severance, tobacco, liquor and other taxes. Imagine
what you’d have to do if you lost nearly half your household income. So, do you bet your future on
the hard numbers of a former budget director, or on someone who hopes eliminating the income tax
will help land him in the White House? Let’s put it this way. Casinos thrive on people who are willing
to make bets like the one Brownback and his allies are making.
Salina Journal
Pickpockets – Beware, Kansans. A band of pickpockets is roaming your state Capitol. They are
your state legislators, desperately seeking cash after giving it away in the form of income-tax cuts
last session. The disastrous tax move has stripped the Kansas Legislature of its integrity. There is
no promise that can’t be broken, no pot of money in state government safe from plunder. The
Kansas Legislature has the feel of a powerful family whose members have been reduced to raiding
their own estates and assets. Why in the world would neighboring Missouri want to make the same
sorry mistakes?
Kansas City Star
Education meddling – Despite the Kansas Constitution’s explicit instructions for the State Board of
Education and Kansas Board of Regents to control and supervise all public schools and institutions,
legislators attempt to wrangle governance responsibilities away from them. Lawmakers need to
focus on properly funding all school districts – and leave the education part to educators. The
Kansas Constitution sort of requires it.
Hays Daily News
KU mandate – The capricious Kansas Legislature has struck again with a bill ordering the University
of Kansas Medical Center to create a new adult stem-cell research center. The center was the
brainchild of legislators, who even gave it a name: the Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center. It wasn’t
part of any KU request, but legislators think such a center would be good for the state. However, the
center is not so important to them that they are willing to allocate any state funds to get it started. So
much for KU trying to plan or focus its efforts on key priorities. Legislators have some priorities of
their own.
Lawrence Journal-World
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/04/01/2738836/kansas-views-on-buyingaccess.html#storylink=cpy
Capitol Beats: ‘I don’t think that’s a wise place for us
to cut.’
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Published Sunday, March 31, 2013, at 6:55 a.m.
Updated Sunday, March 31, 2013, at 9:01 a.m.
Say what?
“I don’t think that’s a wise place for us to cut.”
– Gov. Sam Brownback on the proposed 2 and 4 percent cuts to state universities included in the
House and Senate spending plans. The higher ed cuts are a major part of the spending reductions
needed to accommodate income tax cuts Brownback signed into law last year. Lawmakers are
working on a plan to bring in new state revenue by reducing the value of tax deductions and
extending a temporary sales tax increase scheduled to expire in July. Negotiations continue this
week.
2,796
That’s how many signatures a coalition of business and nonprofit groups submitted on petitions to
Gov. Sam Brownback’s office urging the governor and lawmakers to expand Medicaid under the
Affordable Care Act. Brownback hasn’t said whether he wants expansion, and lawmakers seem
disinclined to support it. But they’ve increasingly advocated for some solution to provide insurance to
more people some other, unspecified way. Senate President Susan Wagle, for example, has cited
an agreement in Arkansas to expand health coverage using Medicaid money to subsidize private
insurance instead of Medicaid. So far, officials in 26 states have agreed to expand Medicaid, and at
least 17 have opposed it.
Trending
Abortion opponents appear to be winning more battles as the Kansas Senate looks at laws to block
tax breaks for providers. Meanwhile, a new push has emerged to ban most abortions after a fetal
heartbeat is detected, similar to a measure signed by the governor in North Dakota last week.
News ahead
Lawmakers are headed into the last week of their regular legislative session. Leaders are
demanding that members finish debates on taxes and the budget by Friday, allowing them to go
home for about a month before reconvening for a week or two of wrapup. Lawmakers are expected
to hammer out differences between bills and take quick action to clear the legislative decks and
provide at least partial victories for conservatives and the governor on taxes, lower spending, gun
rights, abortion, limits to unemployment benefits and education reform.
— Brent Wistrom
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/31/2740644/capitol-beats-i-dont-thinkthats.html#storylink=cpy
David P. Rundle: Don’t break promise to disabled
Kansans
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By David P. Rundle
Published Sunday, March 31, 2013, at 12 a.m.
The Legislature is considering a bill that would prohibit places that provide services to people with
developmental disabilities from also providing targeted case management. So if you get services
through KETCH in Wichita, your case manager could not work at KETCH.
The current case-management system has been in place for many years, but some lawmakers
recently have become concerned. They think there might be a conflict of interest – though there is
no proof there is a problem.
Senate Substitute for House Bill 2155 would take case management away from agencies that
provide other services and give it to the three managed-care organizations operating KanCare.
Might the MCOs provide better case management than is happening now? Based on my experience
with the home- and community-based services waiver for individuals with physical disabilities, the
answer is clearly “no.”
I receive many services paid for by KanCare, including sleep-cycle support. Every night an aide
stays in my apartment from 11 p.m. to 5 a.m. The aide turns me every two hours and helps me in
other ways.
Someone involved with KanCare decided I only needed that for 21 days every month. My oldest
brother and I learned this on March 6. Together, we spent hours on the phone and writing e-mails
trying to resolve this mistake. It wasn’t finally resolved until last week.
John and I are fairly well-educated, and we’re having trouble understanding what my MCO case
manager – who will not try to understand me if I call her by myself – can and can’t do and will and
will not do on my behalf.
If I were intellectually disabled and by myself and had to resolve a problem with my MCO case
manager, could I? I don’t know, but it would be cruel to expect me to.
Under the old system, my case manager knew and cared about me. I needed that. I still do. But
someone with an IQ of 70 or lower needs a concerned and caring case manager more.
Nonprofit agencies’ case managers have 50 clients at most. My MCO case manager has 200 clients.
She cannot develop a deep relationship with each of us.
I understand this, but, again, I am not intellectually disabled.
Shawn Sullivan, secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, should
oppose the bill. People opposed to it are already blaming his boss, Gov. Sam Brownback.
The legislation “is one more Brownback promise to Kansans with disabilities that has been broken,”
one mother told me. “I want my son’s case manager to be a person who will be his advocate, not an
employee of his MCO. If that happens, his case manager’s primary job task will be to save the MCO
money.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/31/2738833/david-p-rundle-dont-breakpromise.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
So they said
“This may be the absolute worst idea I have ever heard in my life.” – Sen. Les Donovan
(in photo), R-Wichita, about a proposal that Kansas Turnpike fees be higher the faster you drive
“If I had my way, you’d have to pass a test to get out of high school.” – House Speaker Ray Merrick, RStilwell, whilesaying he’s “not for mandates” but supports the governor’s proposal to hold back slowreading third-graders
“Universal truth: the phrase ‘with all due respect’ precedes a statement devoid of said respect.” – Rep.
Stephanie Clayton, R-Overland Park, tweeting during a House debate
“Ten years ago, you’d have never heard of me again.” – U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, in
Salina, crediting the Internet with giving him even greater influence since his ouster from House
committees
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/so-they-said-163/#storylink=cpy
A turnpike merger by any other name?
“It is not a merger. It is not a money grab,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover,
about a Senate-passed bill that would make the secretary of the Kansas Department of Transportation
also the chairman of the Kansas Turnpike Authority. But other lawmakers aren’t buying that. “Trust me,
it’s a merger. KDOT will be running the turnpike,” said Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita.
Donovan’s opinion of the Senate vote: “This is a sad day in the state of Kansas.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/a-turnpike-merger-by-any-othername/#storylink=cpy
Lawmakers restore air subsidy, seek to send it
directly to counties
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Thursday, March 28, 2013, at 11:18 a.m.
TOPEKA — After briefly zapping state subsidies for airlines in Wichita and Garden City in 2015,
lawmakers this week reinstated the $5 million to bolster flight service.
But they say they now want the money to go directly to county governments rather than through the
Regional Economic Partnership that, by law, has been managing the program for years at the state’s
request.
The proposal, which is likely to evolve as House and Senate negotiators work through their
differences in their spending plans, comes less than a week after REAP CEO Joe Yager resigned
after sending sexually explicit e-mails to members of a water committee.
Yager said he accidentally pasted the sexual material from a spam e-mail after trying to delete it.
Rep. Marc Rhoades, a Newton Republican who is the House’s chief budget negotiator, said the shift
isn’t tied to recent controversy.
He said he strongly supports REAP, but he has heard from some in Sedgwick County who say the
money should go straight to county governments, which would then evaluate requests from airlines
and allocate the money. He didn’t say who advocated for that.
“They’re going to give it to (Sedgwick County and Garden City), right? So there’s no reason to have
a holding point with REAP,” he said.
Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said he’s not concerned about how the money gets to the airfares
program as long as it gets there. The new proposal, he said, would initially channel through the
state’s commerce department.
Sen. Michael O’Donnell, R-Wichita, said people may have some concerns about the uncertainty of
leadership at REAP because of Yager’s departure. But, he said, the shift makes sense to him.
“I feel that the taxpayers of Kansas would be better served if a governing body like the county
commission would handle the funds instead of some bureaucrat,” he said. “I would much rather see
it go directly to counties because I have the utmost confidence in our elected officials in Sedgwick
County.”
Sedgwick Republican Sen. Carolyn McGinn, who was key in getting the airfare subsidy approved,
said it makes sense to reevaluate how the money is allocated, but new policy shouldn’t be done
through the state’s budget.
“I hate to see us lose any kind of oversight of this,” she said. “Maybe the need goes away in
southwest Kansas and is needed somewhere else. But we need somebody who’s constantly looking
at where’s the biggest bang for our buck, especially as it deals with air travel.”
For years, REAP has evaluated requests for airfare subsidy money from across the state. It has
traditionally been awarded to airlines flying out of Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport. But in 2011, REAP
awarded $250,000 to provide commercial jet service to Dallas out of the Garden City Regional
Airport.
Jeff Longwell, a Wichita City Council member and REAP executive board member, said channeling
the money directly to counties could erode the regional support and oversight provided by REAP.
“It seems like REAP continues to get beat up for all of the wrong reasons on Affordable Airfares
when we expanded that to Garden City, which is exactly what the state envisioned,” he said.
“Affordable Airfares is bigger than just Sedgwick County.”
Longwell said REAP is poised to announce an interim CEO following Yager’s departure and that
news of the Yager’s e-mails shouldn’t affect a program that benefits people across the state.
“I’ve never heard anyone tell us they’re dissatisfied with how REAP administered the program,” he
said.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/28/2736879/lawmakers-restore-airsubsidy.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Eagle editorial: Higher ed taking hit
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Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 5:04 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 5:38 p.m.
As Kansas House and Senate negotiators try to agree on a two-year budget plan, public universities
and colleges are bracing for a funding cut wrapped in an insult.
“I would submit to you that higher ed is out of control,” House Appropriations Committee Chairman
Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, said last week, complaining about tuition hikes in defending his
chamber’s 4 percent across-the-board cut to state universities and colleges.
And Rhoades said he didn’t want to hear that universities would have to raise tuition in response to
such a reduction. “They do that anyway,” he said.
Such criticism is pretty rich coming from the Legislature.
The loss of state funding is the prime reason that universities and colleges governed by the Kansas
Board of Regents have leaned so heavily on tuition to cover their costs.
Overall state funding has dropped from $829.1 million in 2008 to $763.4 million this year, or about 8
percent. But that’s only the recent history: In 1985, universities saw 49 percent of their funding come
from the state and 15 percent from tuition. By 2009, state dollars had diminished to 26 percent and
tuition was up to 28 percent.
Naturally, to keep up with costs and attract and retain high-quality faculty and programs, the
institutions have raised tuition in varying amounts – 37 and 30 percent since 2008 at the University
of Kansas and Kansas State University, respectively – even as lawmakers have set high
expectations for cancer research, the training of nurses and engineers, and more.
Still, a regents study last year found that Kansas residents pay an average 7.3 percent less to attend
KU, KSU and Wichita State University than residents in neighboring states pay to attend similar
institutions.
The House budget’s 4 percent cut would mean losses of $2.6 million for WSU, $6.7 million for KSU,
and $9 million for KU.
The Senate-passed budget includes a 2 percent across-the-board cut, as well as a $2 million
reduction for Wichita’s National Center for Aviation Training. Meanwhile, both chambers have
passed bills mandating (but not funding) a center for nonembryonic stem-cell research at the KU
Medical Center.
The House and Senate plans contrast with Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget blueprint, which proposed
to keep higher education funding flat for two years and included special appropriations. The state’s
“glide path to zero (income tax) will not cut funding for schools, higher education or essential safetynet programs,” Brownback promised during his State of the State address.
Given that stated commitment to higher education, the governor should use his powers of
persuasion during the House-Senate budget negotiations now, or his veto pen later.
Otherwise, that promise to higher education will have been broken – and universities likely will have
little choice but to raise tuition even higher.
For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/28/2735859/eagle-editorial-higher-edtaking.html#storylink=cpy
Kansas House budget eliminates airfare subsidy for
2015; lawmakers say they plan to restore it
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
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Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 5:45 p.m.
TOPEKA — A state subsidy that helps keep airfares down at Wichita’s Mid-Continent Airport would
disappear in 2015 under an initial budget recommendation from the House.
But lawmakers say the money will probably be swiftly restored as budget negotiations continue.
The state has traditionally provided $5 million to help low-cost air carriers flying out of Wichita, and
local governments also pitch in. Most of the subsidy has gone to AirTran. But Southwest Airlines
bought the company last year and announced a new set of daily flights.
Southwest officials have said they would use the subsidy initially but hope to grow to the point of not
needing it.
With that in mind, Rep. Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, and his fellow House GOP budget leaders
proposed providing $5 million next year, then deleting funding in 2015.
But Rhoades said he plans to agree with the Senate to keep the money in through 2015 while
keeping options open for next year’s legislative session.
“They want to know it’s there if they need it,” he said. “We can come back next year and adjust that if
we need to.”
Lawmakers are considering a broad range of budget cuts that are driven by income tax cuts
approved last year. Negotiations over the House and Senate spending plans are expected to
continue for at least a few more days.
Sen. Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover leading budget negotiations for the Senate, said he
plans to stand pat on the Senate’s spending plan, which maintains the $5 million for the Affordable
Airfares program in 2014 and 2015.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2734368/kansas-house-budgeteliminates.html#storylink=cpy
Senate panel advances bill relaxing oversight of
phone company services in Kansas
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By Dion Lefler
Eagle Topeka Bureau
Published Thursday, March 21, 2013, at 7:34 p.m.
Updated Thursday, March 21, 2013, at 9:38 p.m.
TOPEKA — A bill stripping the state’s utility regulation agency of most of its consumer protection
authority over phone service was passed by a Senate committee Thursday.
A proposed amendment to uphold the Kansas Corporation Commission’s authority to address fraud
and consumer-abusive practices was replaced with less stringent language proposed by AT&T, the
state’s dominant telecommunications provider.
The Senate Utilities Committee passage of House Bill 2201 – and the process of letting phone
companies offer their own amendments to it – angered David Springe, chief consumer counsel for
the Citizens’ Utility Ratepayer Board, the state agency that represents residential and small-business
customers.
“They sent all the proposed amendments to the telephone companies,” Springe said. “I stood in front
of this committee (testifying in the hearing on the bill), and they didn’t send them to me. Consumers
are left out of the room again.”
Sen. Pat Apple, R-Louisburg and chairman of the committee, said the bill is part of moving AT&T
from a regulated phone company to an unregulated provider of a broad spectrum of communications
services.
He said that the KCC would still act as a clearinghouse for consumer complaints.
“They will put you in contact with the right agency in the (phone) company to deal with that,” he said.
In addition, Kansas customers would be able to take claims of fraud or abusive practices to the
Federal Communications Commission in Washington or the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.
Apple said the bill also would reduce by $18 million the statewide assessments for the Kansas
Universal Service Fund, which helps offset the costs of serving customers in difficult-to-reach rural
areas. AT&T alone would give up $5 million from the fund, he said.
The bill would relieve AT&T of its current responsibility as “carrier of last resort,” required to provide
service to all customers in its coverage area.
“With that, they got the right to turn off the rural customers,” Springe said. “If you are a customer of
AT&T in rural Kansas, they (the committee) just made you a second-class citizen.”
The bill also would free the company from having to serve low-income Kansans who receive Lifeline
subsidies.
In its testimony on the bill, AT&T promised not to abandon hard-to-serve customers, although it
acknowledged it may seek to switch them from landline to wireless services.
HB 2201 was proposed by AT&T and approved by most of the state’s other phone companies before
it was submitted to the Legislature for consideration.
It passed the House 118-1.
Thursday’s committee vote tees up the bill for a floor vote in the Senate.
The consumer-protection amendment proposed in Thursday’s committee hearing would have
clarified that the KCC would have the responsibility to oversee AT&T and other telecommunications
carriers “to prevent fraud, undue discrimination and other practices harmful to consumers.”
In its answer to the amendment, AT&T revised it to read that the commission would “administer”
complaints rather than “overseeing” them.
AT&T also added language stating: “But the commission shall not use this authority to regulate
telecommunications carriers or electing carriers beyond the jurisdiction provided the commission in
this subsection.”
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/21/2727040/senate-panel-advances-billrelaxing.html#storylink=misearch#storylink=cpy
Differing views of mental health funding
Our March 22 Eagle editorial, “Speak now on budget,” referred to the
unsuccessful effort by state Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, to amend the Senate budget plan “to help
community mental health centers recover from the deep cuts they’ve sustained.” That drew an e-mail to
the editorial board from Shawn Sullivan, secretary of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability
Services, who said “the mental health centers have not received deep cuts” and cited, among other
increases, an “increase of $209 million in fiscal year 2011 to $252 million in fiscal year 2014 (budget
projection) for total community mental health center funding.” Sullivan’s perspective differs sharply from
that of Michael J. Hammond, executive director of the Association of Community Mental Health Centers of
Kansas, who has saidthat mental health reform dollars, which are what the system relies on to serve the
uninsured and underinsured, have been “reduced by 50 percent since fiscal year 2008” and that “funding
cuts to mental health reform dollars continue to place the public mental health system at a breaking
point.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/differing-views-of-mental-healthfunding/#storylink=cpy
Sen. O’Donnell defends his support of health clubs’
tax break
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By BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 7:36 p.m.
Updated Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 9:26 a.m.
TOPEKA — Democrats blasted Wichita Republican Sen. Michael O’Donnell on Tuesday for voting
in favor of eliminating property taxes for qualified health clubs.
Wichita’s Rodney Steven, part owner of Genesis Health Clubs, was the primary advocate for the
specialized tax break, and he and his company donated at least $45,000 to Senate Republicans,
including $4,000 to O’Donnell.
That’s the most any Senate Republican got, but other senators, including Senate President Susan
Wagle and Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, also received contributions.
“Senator O’Donnell has been bought and paid for,” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said in
a prepared statement.
O'Donnell is among at least 22 senators who received money from Steven or Genesis. O'Donnell
acknowledged he may have the most in total this year, but he said Democrats have singled him out.
O’Donnell said no one can buy his vote, and he said he’s not afraid to vote against the wishes of
donors.
The donations came in the form of maximum $1,000 contributions during the primary and general
election phases last year. Steven’s wife also gave O’Donnell a $1,000 contribution, as did Steven’s
business partner, Brandon Steven.
O’Donnell said $4,000 is a lot of campaign donations. But he said in the context of about $170,000 in
campaign money, it’s a very small percentage. He said he wasn’t asked and made no promises on
how he would vote on the issue.
O’Donnell said senators discussed amendments that would have stripped YMCAs of their taxexempt status.
“I wanted to make sure we left the YMCA portion tax-exempt,” said O’Donnell, who is on the board of
the South YMCA in Wichita.
Senate Bill 72 lets fitness clubs forgo property tax payments, which could have a significant impact
on local school and municipal budgets that collect the majority of property tax money. The exemption
applies to clubs that focus on weight and cardio equipment, but not specialty clubs such as golf
courses, spas and tennis facilities.
O’Donnell was among senators who approved the bill in a 25-14 vote.
“Private health clubs in Kansas are on a huge decline, and it’s because nonprofits and local
municipalities are getting into the business of health clubs,” he said. “If this helps protect private
health clubs from becoming extinct, I’m going to support that.”
Democrats opposed the bill, saying that private clubs should continue to pay taxes to support local
and state government services.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2734476/sen-odonnell-defends-hissupport.html#storylink=cpy
Eagle editorial: Tax perk undeserved

Published Wednesday, March 27, 2013, at 12 a.m.
It’s hard to believe 25 state senators could think a property-tax exemption for Kansas’ for-profit
health clubs would be a wise idea, given how much benefit many such businesses already received
from last year’s income-tax elimination and how the budgets of local governments and school
districts will be hurt.
Then there is how it looks to bestow such a special tax break on a business owner, Rodney Steven
of Wichita’s Genesis Health Clubs, who was behind a total $45,000 in campaign donations to 24
senators’ campaigns (including four who voted “no” Tuesday).
Senators may be shocked – shocked! – that anyone would dare connect the dots from the
contributions to the bill’s passage. “I really don’t like those kinds of aspersions,” Senate Tax
Committee Chairman Les Donovan, R-Wichita, said on the floor Monday, noting he received none of
the donations in question.
But Kansans aren’t naive about how things work in Topeka. Indeed, the whole legislative session
has been one big return on the investment of campaign donations last year, especially in the
conservative GOP takeover of the Senate that occurred in last August’s primaries.
Steven argues that the property-tax relief for private health clubs is only fair because they are in
competition with YMCAs, which are tax-exempt nonprofit organizations. “It is time to treat all health
clubs the same,” Steven said in testimony to a Senate committee.
But they are not all the same. The Greater Wichita YMCA, for example, provided a record $10.2
million in free, discounted or subsidized services last year for 70,000 children and adults, including
for a summer camp and child care program for 2,500 children and swimming lessons for 1,900 lowincome second-graders. That $10.2 million represented a quarter of the agency’s funding, and was
$400,000 more than the year before.
Genesis is a great local business playing an important role in south-central Kansans’ health and
wellness, but it and the 190 similar health clubs statewide do not deserve a special property-tax
break. Plus, such tax goodies, once passed into law, tend to be impossible to roll back.
It’s telling that the Senate Tax Committee decided against similarly exempting for-profit health clubs
from collecting sales taxes on membership fees, which Steven also wanted. That exemption would
have cut $3.4 million in state revenue at a time when the state needs every dime to offset incometax cuts. Yet senators had no problem with the property-tax exemption, which could mean millions of
dollars in lost revenue for local governments and school districts.
It’s now up to the House to think better of Senate Bill 72, which is an undeserved perk for health
clubs that will only inspire other businesses to go to Topeka with their checkbooks open and their
hands out.
For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/27/2734251/eagle-editorial-tax-perkundeserved.html#storylink=cpy
Kansas proposal for $1.5 billion in pension bonds
advances
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Associated Press
Published Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 1:20 p.m.
Updated Tuesday, March 26, 2013, at 4:19 p.m.
TOPEKA — Kansas would issue $1.5 billion in bonds to improve the short-term financial health of its
pension system for teachers and government workers under a bill that received first-round approval
Tuesday in the state House.
The measure, HB 2403, would allow the state to inject a big dose of new dollars into the Kansas
Public Employees Retirement System so that its assets would cover more of its long-term
obligations to provide retirement benefits to workers. Also, supporters believe that the state’s annual
contribution of tax dollars to keep KPERS financially stable wouldn’t have to grow as much as it
would now, even with the bond payments.
House members advanced the bill on a voice vote. They expected to take a final action on the bill by
Wednesday, and passage then would send the measure to the Senate.
Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said the state pension system is “kind of like a patient
going to a doctor.”
“The patient’s just kind of run down, maybe a little sick, needing a little bit of help,” Hawkins said.
“And so they give that patient a booster shot to get them going.”
The pension system’s assets now cover only 53 percent of its long-term obligations, and issuing
bonds would allow the state to boost that percentage to 61 percent in 2015 and accelerate its rise to
100 percent.
But the state also would be gambling that KPERS investment earnings would outstrip the interest it
would pay on the bonds, and some House members questioned using debt to bolster the pension
system.
“We need to solve the problem with assets, with income. We need to be paying down our liabilities,”
said Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a Mulvane Republican. “My concern is that if we say yes to bonding, we’re
going to go to sleep.”
The bill would follow up on two years’ worth of legislation overhauling KPERS to eliminate a
projected $9.3 billion shortfall between anticipated revenues and benefits promised to teachers and
government workers through 2033. The pension system projects that the gap will be eliminated over
two decades even if lawmakers do nothing more.
The two years’ worth of legislation committed the state to larger annual contributions to KPERS and
dedicated future profits from state-owned casinos to the retirement system. Reining in the annual
contribution of tax dollars to the pension system would lessen the squeeze on other parts of the
budget.
The state authorized $500 million in pension bonds in 2004 to help lessen the long-term KPERS
funding gap. Supporters of this year’s bill noted that the state is paying 5.4 percent interest on those
bonds while KPERS has earned 6.4 percent on its investments since they were issued, even with
the recession.
Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/2013/03/26/2733930/kansas-proposal-for-15billion.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Moran’s anti-sequestration efforts
highlighted
The efforts of Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., to curb Federal Aviation Administration cuts
under sequestration and keep 149 airport control towers open were highlighted in a Wall Street
Journal editorial blasting Senate Majority Leader Harry Reid, D-Nev. Moran “proposed replacing $50
million of FAA sequester cuts with savings from unspent balances, which are a kind of agency slush fund,
and by reducing other low-priority spending. Great idea. How did the vote turn out? There wasn’t one.
Majority Leader Reid blocked the amendment from ever getting to the Senate floor.” The editorial noted
that “Moran also couldn’t get a vote to restore funding for White House tours by cutting $2.5 million for
new uniforms for airport screeners.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/04/morans-anti-sequestration-effortshighlighted/#storylink=cpy
Roberts locks down support from fellow
GOP officeholders
“Roberts Racks Up GOP Endorsements, Thwarting Primary in
2014,” declared Roll Call, after Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., released a list of re-election endorsements
Thursday from “every top Republican official in Kansas.” Roll Call noted that “the Sunflower State is safe
GOP territory, and Republicans are expected to hold the seat in 2014. But earlier this cycle, some quietly
wondered if Roberts would face a primary challenge.”
Read more here: http://blogs.kansas.com/weblog/2013/03/roberts-locks-down-support-from-fellow-gopofficeholders/#storylink=cpy
From the Kansas City Star
Despite jobs gain, average weekly wages
shrank in Kansas City area counties
March 28
BY DIANE STAFFORD
The Kansas City Star
Here’s another data set that shows why it doesn’t feel like an economic recovery to many
workers: The U.S. average weekly wage in the third quarter last year was down 1.1
percent from a year earlier.
According to the most recent county-level figures released Thursday by the U.S. Bureau
of Labor Statistics, workers in Jackson, Johnson, Wyandotte and Clay counties had
average weekly wage declines from September 2011 to September 2012.
Along with 270 other large U.S. counties
included in the report, the four Kansas City
area counties each had over-the-year average
wage declines.
“Those are telling statistics that unfortunately
reflect reality,” said Jeff Pinkerton, economist
at the Mid America Regional Council. “Jobs
are coming back, but many of them at lower
wages than people had before, and much of
the new job creation is in lower-paying sectors
like food preparation and retail, not like the
manufacturing and professional jobs that
were lost.”
Employment in Johnson County, for example,
grew 2.3 percent in the September-toSeptember period, but the average weekly
wage fell 1.8 percent.
Similarly, employment in Wyandotte County
grew 2.9 percent, but average weekly wages
fell 1.6 percent, and employment in Jackson
County rose 1.5 percent while the wage
average dropped 1.7 percent.
The report painted a different economic
picture for Clay County. It charted an
employment decline of 0.8 percent, along
with an average wage decline of 2.2 percent.
“Economists have long been talking about a
baseline shift, a real shift, in the workplace,”
Pinkerton said. “Coming back from the
recession, the nation is creating fewer jobs or
different jobs or requiring fewer people to do
the existing jobs.
“The bottom line is that if you don’t want to
do the job, someone else will, and that helps
depress wages further.”
The labor bureau said this September-toSeptember report was only the sixth time
since it started the data series in 1978 that it
found over-the-year average weekly wage
declines.
Over the most recent 12-month study,
national employment grew 1.6 percent — a
contrast to the 1.1 percent drop in average
weekly wages.
“Average weekly wages declined in every
industry except for information, in which
wages increased by 1.3 percent,” the labor
bureau said.
It found widespread wage declines across the
states, with the notable exception of North
Dakota, where workers are benefiting from an
oil boom.
The bureau studied 328 of the largest U.S.
counties and found an average wage decline
in the majority despite net growth.
For the nation as a whole, the average weekly
wage was $906 in September 2012, which
represented the 1.1 percent drop from a year
earlier.
The report published these average weekly
wages for the Kansas City area counties:
Johnson, $917; Wyandotte, $854; Jackson,
$914; and Clay, $804.
Other Kansas City area counties did not rank
among the nation’s largest counties included
in the report.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/28/4149572/despite-jobs-gain-averageweekly.html#storylink=cpy
Cutbacks in Kansas block grants threaten
youth court
March 27
BY BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star
TOPEKA — Busted for taking a strip of teeth whitener from a box, Meagan faced the
prospect of a theft charge — and having a criminal record as a teen.
Instead, her case went to Johnson County Youth Court, a county program for first-time
youth offenders. Twice a month, teens take up roles as judge, jury, prosecutor and
defense attorney in proceedings every bit as as serious as any adult case tried elsewhere
at the county courthouse.
The key difference: Teens like Meagan, an
honors student who plays three sports, get a
chance to avoid a criminal record and keep
from sinking deeper into the state’s justice
system.
Now, that program — and other juvenile
justice efforts like it across the state — could
be in trouble as the Legislature considers a
range of budget cuts as a way to pay for
income tax cuts.
The Johnson County program, which costs
about $100,000 a year, is funded from state
juvenile prevention block grants that go to
community programs intended to keep youth
out of prison because of bad decisions made
at an early age.
The block grants were an outgrowth of
reforms in the juvenile justice system during
the 1990s. The state’s reforms emphasized
rehabilitating teens with services in their own
community short of sending them to a
detention center.
State corrections officials estimate that
juvenile block grants benefit about 7,100
teens across the state, including about 1,800
who participate in programs like Youth Court.
The system that many of those young
offenders could have otherwise ended up in
has seen a decline in its population over the
years, corrections officials say. The average
daily population at the state’s juvenile
detention centers has dropped to 315 this year
from 490 in 2003.
That decline has allowed the state to close two
juvenile detention centers since 2008.
Johnson County’s Youth Court program,
which started in 1999, metes out justice for
misdemeanor offenses that don’t involve
drugs or alcohol. The cases, referred by the
district attorney, can include schoolyard
fights, vandalism and shoplifting.
Offenders can be photographed and
fingerprinted. Punishment can mean
community service, restitution and an apology
letter. Another offense can lead to prosecution
by the district attorney.
A few years after her incident, Meagan, an
aspiring lawyer at 16 who now volunteers as a
defense attorney in Youth Court, said the
program saved her dreams of going to college.
“That one chance is lifesaving,” said Meagan,
whose full name was withheld at her parents’
request so her education opportunities would
not be damaged.
She now can check a box on a college
application saying she doesn’t have a criminal
record without worrying about the
ramifications.
“First impressions are everything,” she said.
“The application is my first impression.”
Over the years, the state has slashed money
for the juvenile prevention grants. Funding
has plummeted by 69 percent since 2006,
dropping to $1.7 million this year from $5.4
million.
The House version of the state budget would
pare the grants even more, to about $350,000
next year.
If the House proposal prevails, Johnson
County would end up with about $35,000,
after receiving about $422,000 in 2006.
Sedgwick County would be left with about
$161,000, down from $1.3 million seven years
ago.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback
recommended about $1.4 million in grant
funding for fiscal 2014, which starts July 1.
Some lawmakers think cutting the block
grants would be counterproductive to the
state’s efforts to keep juveniles out of jail.
“I’m concerned that we’re taking out a
significant piece of juvenile justice reform of
about 16 or 17 years ago that reaps benefits,”
said Rep. Russ Jennings, a Lakin Republican
who once served as the state’s juvenile justice
commissioner.
“It’s a matter of patience,” Jennings said.
“Good programs that work will reduce
demand later in the system.”
Rep. John Rubin, a Shawnee Republican who
leads the House corrections committee, called
the cut “unwise.”
“We’ve got to look at alternatives to
incarceration, whether we’re talking about
juveniles or adults,” Rubin said.
Local officials report positive results from the
money they are spending on juvenile crime
prevention.
In Johnson County, Youth Court handles
about 250 cases a year. Officials there said
that from 2006 to 2010, an average of 10
percent of offenders ran afoul of the law again
within two years.
Further, 90 percent of the teens completed
the sanctions handed out by the Youth Court.
Wyandotte County’s Unified Government
spends about $110,000 in state prevention
money a year on a program that generally
allows youths 10 to 17 to enter into a diversion
agreement that lets them wipe their record
clean.
The program is only extended to first-time
offenders charged with nonviolent crimes who
must adhere to rules requiring them, among
other things, to stay out of trouble, undergo
drug testing and enroll in a conflict-resolution
course. A second offense lands them in court.
“Eighty percent of the kids in our system — no
matter what the offense is — we’re never
going to see again. It was a one-time thing
and they’re going to straighten up,” said Phil
Lockman, director of community corrections
for the Unified Government.
More cuts would hurt the Unified
Government’s ability to keep juveniles out of
prison, he said.
“It’s just ludicrous that more forethought isn’t
put into these things,” Lockman said. “It’s
going to come back. Those kids that had those
initial problems that we didn’t pay attention
to are going to end up getting worse and
worse, and they’re going to be a bigger
problem and more expensive later on.”
The chairman of the House budget-writing
committee, Republican Marc Rhoades of
Newton, said he had not heard from the
corrections department about the significance
of the grant money. He said he would discuss
the matter with the state corrections
secretary.
“I will let him tell me whether that’s
something that’s problematic or not,”
Rhoades said.
Rhoades said the House accepted what the
agency originally presented to the governor’s
budget office as a way to cut spending.
The cut proposed by the House “forces us to
take away our focus from prevention of
juvenile crime,” said Betsy Gillespie, Johnson
County’s corrections director.
It’s unclear just what might happen to Youth
Court if the state cuts the grant money as
proposed by the House. Johnson County
might have to dip into other state funds that
currently pay for intensive supervision of
teens already in the corrections system and
who are on probation, or that provide case
managers for youths who are taken out of the
home and placed in state custody.
“There are (funding) options, not great
options,” Gillespie said.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/27/4148271/cuts-in-kansas-threatenyouth.html#storylink=cpy
Kansas House approves bill establishing
drug testing for welfare, unemployment
recipients
March 27
BY BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
TOPEKA — The House swiftly approved a bill Tuesday requiring drug testing of
unemployment and welfare recipients suspected of substance abuse.
Those who fail tests would have to go to drug treatment and job skills training paid for
by the state and federal government. Those who apply again and fail again would lose
assistance for a year.
The bill also would prevent anyone who is
convicted of a drug felony after July from
getting welfare for five years. A second
conviction would result in a lifelong ban.
“We’re trying to help people get job training
and substance abuse treatment,” said Rep.
Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe.
No one spoke in opposition to the bill, and it
passed on a vote of 106-16. All south-central
Kansas representatives voted for the bill
except for Democrats Carolyn Bridges, Gail
Finney, Roderick Houston, Patricia Sloop and
Ponka-We Victors, who voted no, and
Republican Rep. Les Osterman, who was
absent after undergoing heart surgery last
week.
The Senate has already approved the bill; it’s
likely the Senate will agree to a couple of
minor tweaks approved by the House before
advancing the bill to Gov. Sam Brownback.
The bill allows for testing of House and
Senate members as well if reasonable
suspicion arises.
A person’s demeanor, missed appointments,
police records or failed drug tests with a
potential employer would qualify as
reasonable suspicion.
Those who fail a first test could request a
second test at a different testing facility, but if
they fail the second test, they must pay for it.
An opponent of the bill said “reasonable
suspicion” is a subjective term and could be
used as it has been in the war on drugs to
unfairly target women of color.
Most people who get temporary assistance for
needy families, typically referred to as
welfare, are women, and requiring drug tests
unfairly targets them, said Elise Higgins, a
lobbyist with the Kansas National
Organization for Women.
Setting up a drug test program and related
expenses are expected to require the state to
hire four full-time employees and would cost
about $1 million next year. That includes
about $461,000 in state money.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/26/4145524/kansas-house-advances-billestablishing.html#storylink=cpy
Kansas GOP leaders eye final push on
budget, taxes
March 31
BY JOHN MILBURN
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Kansas legislators will return today from a long weekend determined to
push through tax legislation, new restrictions on abortion, gun-rights legislation, the
bulk of the next state budget and every other bill of any significance in just five days.
Republican leaders have pledged that lawmakers will finish almost all of the year’s work
by Friday. But to make good on the pledge, some tricky and contentious issues will have
to be resolved quickly.
The biggest piece of the puzzle is how to
resolve differences on taxes and whether a
2010 sales tax increase will be allowed to
expire in July as scheduled or will remain in
place to shore up the state’s $14 billion budget
for 2014.
“We either work now or we work later to
reach an agreement on taxes and the budget.
Those are the two issues that control the
session,” Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce
said.
The Hutchinson Republican said the Senate
was sticking to its Friday deadline for
finishing business and starting a monthlong
break. Senate GOP leaders want budget and
tax issues settled, limiting how much work
they have to complete when legislators return
May 8.
The tax plan has to come first, Bruce said, so
legislators know if the budget will balance.
Gov. Sam Brownback wants to keep the state
sales tax rate at 6.3 percent instead of letting
it fall to 5.7 percent as scheduled in July. The
Senate sides with the governor and his
proposal to raise additional revenue through
other adjustments to counter income tax cuts.
The House tax plan allows the sales tax rate to
drop but also makes other adjustments to
raise additional revenue. Republicans and
Brownback are looking for the revenue to
cushion the impact of massive income tax cuts
enacted last year.
“There’s just the budget reality,” Brownback
said last week. “I think it’s coming across to
people that you’ve got to get your resource
package somewhere. The budget doesn’t work
without the tax piece of it.”
House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey
compared the budget and tax negotiations to
families looking at their own finances.
“It’s better to know what your income is, and I
don’t know that we know what that is yet,”
said Vickrey, a Louisburg Republican.
Vickrey concedes that legislators must work
quickly. Still, House GOP leaders want a
clearer picture of state revenues in April
before putting matters to rest in May.
Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita
Republican, said she and House leaders
agreed to end the first portion of the regular
session Friday. The process was complicated
procedurally last week when the House
adjourned before the Senate passed a slew of
measures that will have to be negotiated. The
House will have to take action today to allow
committees to start working out differences.
“We may be a little delayed, and that means
we are going to have a very busy week,” Wagle
said.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley has
his doubts.
“I think they are overly optimistic this is all
going to be done, especially the tax bill,” the
Topeka Democrat said. “They may be able to
pass a budget in five days, but I just don’t see
where the House is going to come around and
support the governor in his tax increase.”
Brownback has signed just one bill this
session, a measure changing the process for
filling vacancies on the Court of Appeals. The
change allows the governor to make
independent selections to the bench, which
would then be subject to Senate confirmation.
Republicans want to go further and apply it to
the state Supreme Court. But unlike the Court
of Appeals, which is set by statute, changing
the Supreme Court requires voter approval to
amend the Kansas Constitution. Senators
approved a resolution to place the changes on
the August 2014 primary ballot, but the
measure has been stalled in the House.
Several education bills also remain in play,
many of which are aimed at breaking the
strength of the Kansas National Education
Association by rewriting rules for contract
negotiations and collective bargaining rights.
One measure sent back to the House last week
is a modified version of Brownback’s
elementary school reading initiative. Senators
amended the bill to require school districts,
with the consultation of parents, to retain
students at the first grade who aren’t
proficient in reading. The governor set the
target at third grade, saying it was cruel to
pass students along who weren’t prepared.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/31/4154535/kansas-gop-leaders-eye-finalpush.html#storylink=cpy
Senate revives, advances reading bill that
would hold back some first-graders
March 27
BY BRENT D. WISTROM
Eagle Topeka bureau
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback’s effort to improve fourth-grade reading levels by
jump-starting new programs and holding back failing third-graders got new life
Tuesday, but it now would hold back first-graders.
After significantly watering down the Read to Succeed Act, the Senate approved the plan
on a voice vote.
The altered plan only applies to districts with
below-average reading levels, and it raised
questions about what tests first graders would
be judged on.
Parents and teachers could recommend
advancing first-graders with approval from
principals and superintendents.
It’s unclear how many students might be
affected by the bill, but it includes funding
and appears to help reach a goal that almost
everyone agrees on, improving reading skills
of Kansas students, said Mark Tallman, a
lobbyist with the Kansas Association of School
Boards.
“The Kansas trends show we’re getting there
anyway,” he said.
Tallman was among many who questioned the
impact of holding back third-graders, as
Brownback had proposed. The idea initially
failed in a Senate committee, but it was
revived by lawmakers, in part, because it is
among the governor’s top goals.
A final vote on the amended version of
Substitute for House Bill 2140 is expected late
Tuesday or Wednesday.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/26/4146051/senate-revives-advancesreading.html#storylink=cpy
Missouri and Kansas lieutenant governors
call for pipeline approval
April 2
JEFFERSON CITY — Missouri Lt. Gov. Peter Kinder and Kansas Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer are
among more than 20 Republican lieutenant governors urging approval of the
TransCanada Keystone XL Pipeline.
The Republican Lieutenant Governors Association said in a letter to President Barack
Obama that more pipeline capacity is needed to tap oil supplies from formations in
Canada, Montana and North Dakota.
The lieutenant governors contend
construction of the pipeline would support
thousands of construction and manufacturing
jobs and would directly benefit many states.
Besides Kinder and Colyer, the letter is signed
by lieutenant governors from Nevada,
Mississippi, Alabama, Alaska, Arkansas,
Idaho, Indiana, Iowa, Louisiana, Michigan,
New Mexico, North Carolina, North Dakota,
Oklahoma, Pennsylvania, South Dakota,
Tennessee, Utah, Virginia and Wisconsin.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/02/4156832/missouri-and-kansaslieutenant.html#storylink=cpy
Brownback signs into law a big change in
judge selection
March 27
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Gov. Sam Brownback on Wednesday signed into law a measure that
dramatically changes the way Kansas appoints Court of Appeals judges.
The measure removes the Kansas Bar Association’s longstanding role of screening
candidates and gives the governor the sole power to select the nominees who then face
confirmation by the Kansas Senate.
The measure foreshadows an even larger
effort by the Republican governor to change
how state Supreme Court justices are chosen,
though that would require voter approval.
“This is not about controlling judges,” said
Brownback, who is also a lawyer. “Judicial
independence is vital and necessary for fair
and just rulings from our courts. But judicial
independence must rest firmly on the consent
of the people.”
Republican legislators sought to change the
process following a Kansas Supreme Court
ruling in 2005 that ordered the state to
increase funding for public schools. Those
efforts were blocked by moderate GOP leaders
in the Senate, but the process was revived this
year when conservatives gained control of
that chamber.
Defenders of the current system say it
insulates the judiciary from politics. But
Brownback and fellow Republicans believe it
puts too much power in the hands of
attorneys to screen nominees. The governor
must accept one of three names forwarded to
him with no legislative oversight of the
selection.
Currently, five of the nine members of the
nominating commission are selected by the
Kansas Bar Association and the remaining
four by the governor.
“Kansans expect and are entitled to a
government that is not beholden to any
special interest group,” Brownback said.
“Unfortunately in Kansas, our current system
of selecting our appellate judges fails the
democracy test.”
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/27/4147860/kansas-gov-brownback-signsjudge.html#storylink=cpy#storylink=cpy
Kansas Senate taking up sweeping antiabortion bill
April 1
TOPEKA — Abortion opponents expect the Kansas Senate to approve a bill this week to
block tax breaks for abortion providers and to bar them from participating in public
school sex education classes.
The bill on the Senate’s agenda Monday already has passed the House. Supporters hope
senators won’t make any changes so that a vote to pass it will send it to Republican Gov.
Sam Brownback, who opposes abortion.
The Senate has a solid anti-abortion majority.
The bill would prevent abortion providers
from claiming tax credits and exemptions
available to other groups and health care
providers. Also, a woman couldn’t include
abortion expenses if she deducts medical
expenses from her income taxes.
The legislation also would prohibit abortion
providers from providing materials or
instructors for sex education classes in public
schools.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/04/01/4155046/kansas-senate-taking-upsweeping.html#storylink=cpy
Unfit by any standards, legislators run amok
March 29
Your Senate on steroids
The Kansas Legislature has made many jaw-dropping moves these last few months, but
a Senate vote this week leaves us especially agog.
By a 25-14 vote, senators agreed to eliminate
property taxes for many of the state’s private
gyms and health clubs.
Seriously. The state that can’t figure out how
to balance its budget after binging on income
tax cuts last session is now contemplating an
additional tax break to a special group of
businesses, at a cost of around $4 million a
year.
The move is another flagrant show of
disregard for local governments and school
districts, which would also lose property tax
dollars.
So why did 25 senators, all Republicans, think
it was so important to help the fitness
industry?
The official reason: It’s only fair. Nonprofit
rec centers and YMCAs get tax exemptions, so
their competitors should also.
That’s completely bogus. Community
recreation centers and YMCAs serve multiple
civic-minded purposes and often discount
services for senior and low-income citizens.
Lawmakers know they aren’t obligated to put
private health clubs on an equal footing.
The actual reason surely has more to do with
the $45,000 in campaign contributions that a
part owner of Genesis Health Clubs in Wichita
passed around to Senate Republicans in last
year’s campaigns.
The House must put a stop to this craven
piece of legislation. As for the Senate, the new
conservative majority has lost any standing to
lecture Kansans about the need for fiscal
responsibility.
Buttinskys strike again
For a Legislature that can’t figure out how to
fund state government, the Kansas House and
Senate have no inhibitions about telling
others how to do their jobs.
Both chambers have now passed a bill
instructing the University of Kansas Medical
Center to establish a center devoted to
advancing stem cell research — or at least the
forms of stem cell research deemed acceptable
by anti-abortion lawmakers.
Normally hospitals start up new programs
after extensive analysis and planning. But
Kansas lawmakers apparently think they are
better qualified than hospital administrators
to determine research and medical priorities.
In mandating the creation of a “Midwest Stem
Cell Therapy Center” (yes, the Legislature has
even dictated the name) lawmakers proposed
no new funding for the university medical
center.
Officials said such a center would require
more than $1 million to set up, and about
$750,000 a year for operating expenses. No
problem, legislators said. The university could
raise that in grants and gifts. Never mind that
the medical center is looking at a possible
budget cut from the state of 2 to 4 percent.
That, people, is called an unfunded mandate.
Lawmakers despise those, unless they are
doing the mandating.
Enjoy that ham now
The neighboring lawmakers in Jefferson City
have actually been working rather diligently
on matters like the state budget.
But you know a few dubious actions are going
to seep out.
This week, the House approved an
agricultural bill which, among other things,
would exempt livestock farmers from any new
state or local laws or regulations.
It’s very curious to contemplate the state
passing a law that allows farmers to not follow
future state law. But more seriously, this is an
infringement on the authority of local
communities to protect the qualify of life of all
citizens.
A resolution calling for a constitutional
amendment guaranteeing the “right to farm”
is also working its way through the legislature.
According to a report from one of the
sponsors, Rep. Jason Smith of Salem, this is
needed to protect Missouri farmers.
Smith added: “The next time you sit down for
dinner with your family to enjoy a juicy steak
or a succulent ham, imagine what things
would be like if the radical animal rights
groups had their way — they want to take the
food off your table and out of the mouths of
your family.”
That would be bad, we agree. But no industry
should be given a free pass from new
regulations.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/29/4151354/unfit-by-any-standardslegislators.html#storylink=cpy
Know-it-all Kansas Legislature strikes again
Barb Shelly
Barb Shelly
Every week, it seems, the Kansas Legislature takes meddling to a new level.
This week, House members have adopted the role of wannabe hospital officials.
The chamber supported a bill that would require the University of Kansas Medical Center to establish a center
to advance stem cell research — but only the types of stem cell research approved by the Kansas Legislature.
In mandating the creation of a “Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center” (yes, the House even dictated the name)
lawmakers proposed no new funding for the university medical center.
Officials said such a center would require more than $1 million to set up, and about $750,000 a year for
operating expenses. House members blithely said the university could raise that in grants and gifts.
That, people, is what you call an unfunded mandate — something the Republican-dominated Kansas
Legislature professes to despise, unless of course the lawmakers are doing the mandating.
Opponents of the measure, including GOP Rep. Barbara Bollier of Mission Hills, argued correctly but
fruitlessly that the creation of a new hospital center should be the result of demonstrated need and a thorough
planning process, not a legislative mandate.
Those arguments were to no avail. Advancement of adult and cord blood stem cell research has been a favorite
cause of Kansas’ extreme “pro-life” faction ever since those technologies were pitted against a controversial
form of embryonic stem cell research. Opponents of the embryonic research claim a procedure which extracts
stem cells from a ball of cells smaller than the head of a pin amounts to the destruction of a human life.
The stem cell wars have mostly abated, happily quieted by rapidly emerging knowledge and technology. But
not, apparently, in the Kansas Legislature.
There is nothing wrong with a university hospital setting up a center to further stem cell research. But hospital
and university officials should have the freedom to determine its order on the priority list. And they definitely
shouldn’t be ordered to start a new program while receiving no new funding.
Read more here: http://voices.kansascity.com/entries/know-it-all-kansas-legislature-strikesagain/#storylink=cpy
Kansas proposal for pension bonds
advances
March 26
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — Kansas would issue $1.5 billion in bonds to improve the short-term financial
health of its pension system for teachers and government workers under a bill receiving
first-round approval on a voice vote Tuesday in the state House.
The measure would let the state inject a big dose of new dollars into the Kansas Public
Employees Retirement System so its assets would cover more of its long-term
obligations to provide retirement benefits to teachers and other government workers.
Rep. Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican,
said the pension system is “kind of like a
patient going to a doctor.”
“The patient’s just kind of run down, maybe a
little sick, needing a little bit of help,”
Hawkins said. “And so they give that patient a
booster shot to get them going.”
The system’s assets now cover only 53 percent
its long-term obligations, and bonds would
allow the state to boost that percentage to 61
percent in 2015 and accelerate its rise to 100
percent.
But Kansas also would be gambling that
investment earnings would outstrip the
interest paid on the bonds, and some House
members questioned using debt to bolster the
pension system.
“We need to solve the problem with assets,
with income,” said Rep. Pete DeGraaf, a
Mulvane Republican. “My concern is that if
we say yes to bonding, we’re going to go to
sleep.”
The bill would follow up on two years’ worth
of legislation aimed at eliminating a projected
$9.3 billion shortfall between revenues and
promised benefits through 2033. The system
projects that the gap will be eliminated over
two decades even if lawmakers do nothing
more.
The earlier legislation committed the state to
larger annual contributions to the pension
fund and dedicated future casino profits to
the retirement system. Supporters believe the
bonds would rein in the annual contributions,
lessening the squeeze on other parts of the
budget.
The state authorized $500 million in pension
bonds in 2004. Supporters of this year’s bill
noted that Kansas has been paying 5.4
percent interest on those bonds while the
pension system has earned 6.4 percent on its
investments, even with the Great Recession.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/26/4145689/kansas-proposal-for-pensionbonds.html#storylink=cpy
Brownback’s office says governor isn’t
taking sides in KCK mayoral race
March 30
BY STEVE KRASKE
The Kansas City Star
Last-minute jostling in the race for mayor/CEO of the Unified Government of
Wyandotte County stretched last week all the way to Topeka, where Democrats
questioned whether Gov. Sam Brownback, a Republican, was backing Ann Murguia.
The governor’s office denied that Brownback is taking sides in Tuesday’s election.
But Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley,
a Topeka Democrat, charged that Brownback
is involved in the race. One of his top
boosters, Americans for Prosperity, mailed
two fliers to voters critical of rival candidate
Mark Holland’s tax record. Also, Brownback’s
former chief of staff, David Kensinger,
contributed $500 to Murguia’s campaign.
“It’s inappropriate for the governor of Kansas
to be involved in a mayor’s race, a local
election,” Hensley said. “Wyandotte County
voters should be very concerned that AFP,
which is really an anti-labor organization, is
supporting her through the mailers.”
Brownback’s office said the governor is not
involved in any spring election contests.
For her part, Murguia disputed Hensley’s
charge that she would be Brownback’s person
in Wyandotte County and described herself as
a “lifelong Democrat.”
“I am insulted that a Democratic leader of the
state would imply otherwise,” Murguia said.
Read more here: http://www.kansascity.com/2013/03/30/4153061/brownbacks-office-says-heisnt.html#storylink=cpy