Wichitopekington

TOPEKA — Preparing to take their months-long redistricting battle to federal court, Republican Senate moderates and Republican House conservatives passed district maps they hope will beat their rivals before a three-judge panel that will open the case on Monday.

The senators passed a map called “Buffalo 30,” which favors moderate Republican incumbents over GOP conservatives, who control the House and the governorship and have announced plans to try to take control of the Senate.

The House turned its attention to the congressional districts, passing a map that splits the Democratic stronghold of Lawrence and strengthens the GOP’s chances of holding all four of Kansas’ seats in Congress.

The Buffalo 30 map is the second map senators have passed. With virtually no chance in the House, it was designed to give the Senate the strongest possible map for the coming court case.

The map has major implications for south-central Kansas Senate races.

It puts both Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover and Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, in the 16th District, which could mean a head-to-head battle between two prominent Senate conservatives in the August primary.

The map also carves conservative Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, out of the 25th Senate District, where she has announced plans to challenge moderate Republican Sen. Jean Schodorf.

The map also leaves Wichita businessman Gary Mason out of the 31st Senate District. Mason plans to challenge incumbent Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick and has said he will move to run against her if necessary.

Along with most of the conservatives in the Senate, Masterson and Abrams both criticized the map during the floor debate.

Masterson accused Senate redistricting committee Chairman Tim Owens, R-Overland Park, of pushing for a map similar to one he had once considered unacceptable.

Chuckling, Masterson likened it to a running gag on Saturday Night Live in which the late Chris Farley would open embarrassing celebrity interviews with the line “you remember when you said…”

“That (earlier map) was obviously gerrymandering, you remember what your response was to that?” Masterson asked Owens. “’That wasn’t serious, that was a conversation starter,’ well here’s the conversation and it’s a serious conversation … It’s ironically right in front of us now.”

Asked if he wanted to respond, Owens drew laughs in the chamber when he deadpanned “I have no comment, unless he’s referring to me as Chris Farley.”

After having failed multiple times to get one of his maps passed, Abrams didn’t seek a vote on a version the House had approved.

He said he repeatedly tried to draw maps that didn’t create incumbent vs. incumbent matchups and made numerous changes to accommodate critics.

“I have not much doubt what the outcome is going to be,” he said. “To that end, I think I will just have a seat and just say we know where it’s headed and I would suggest we just get there as quickly as we can.”

The Senate’s first district map, called “Ad Astra Revised,” was rejected by the House.

House members complained that the population deviations from district to district in the Ad Astra map were too large. They passed an Abrams-drawn map instead.

Population deviation is generally an important factor for courts considering redistricting plans, because the purpose is to account for population changes and equalize representation across the state.

Buffalo 30 gives the Senate leadership and majority a map with smaller deviations.

The Legislature is required to redraw the House, Senate, congressional and state Board of Education districts every 10 years.

With the House and Senate deeply divided, the decision is now destined for the courts, although there are differing opinions on whether state or federal courts will make the final call on the state offices.

The court review begins Monday with motion hearings at the Kansas City federal courthouse, where Johnson County Republican precinct committeewoman Robyn Essex has filed suit against Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

Kobach, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, is closely linked to the conservative faction of the GOP.

In court papers filed his week, Kobach recommended the court choose from maps that have made it partway through the Legislature, or let him draw the maps.

Two Johnson County resident, Benjamin D. Craig and Larry Winn III, filed to intervene in the case on Friday. According to their filing, they have both been active in local politics and fear that some proposed maps would leave their rapidly growing county under-represented.

The three-judge panel on the case will include two Kansas district judges, Chief Judge Kathryn Vratil and Senior Judge John W. Lungstrom, and Judge Mary Beck Briscoe, chief judge of the 10th Circuit Court of Appeals.

Vratil and Lungstrom were appointed by the first President Bush; Briscoe was appointed by President Clinton.

Kathryn Vratil is Senate President John Vratil’s ex-wife.

Sen. Vratil, R-Overland Park, is a leader of the Senate’s moderate Republican faction.

While the Senate worked on its own districts Friday, the House passed a new map for congressional seats.

Under the new map, dubbed Kansas Six, east Lawrence would be part of a west Kansas district and west Lawrence would be part of an east Kansas district.

The House’s original map, rejected in the state Senate, had split Topeka in much the same fashion, with the east side of the city going to the western district and west Topeka in the eastern district.

The new map passed with the barest of majorities, 56-54 with 15 members absent or not voting.

The districts in the proposed map are considered favorable to incumbent Republicans who now hold all four seats in the congressional delegation.

During floor debate in the House, it was revealed that the sitting Congress members had reviewed the maps, although it was not made clear how much influence they had over the drawing of their districts.

The primary objection to the new map was that it dilutes voting strength of moderate- to liberal populations in Lawrence, hometown of the University of Kansas.

East Lawrence would be at the end of a peninsula linking it to the 1st Congressional District, which includes all of western Kansas and is dominated by conservative Republicans.

West Lawrence would be part of the 2nd District, which is now held by Republican Rep. Lynn Jenkins, but is considered more of a swing district and sent Democrat Nancy Boyda to Washington from 2007 to 2009.

Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, said her city and her party are being treated unfairly by Republicans, who want to dilute the Democratic vote and cement their control over the congressional delegation.

“We know that underlying agenda is there,” she said.

Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, who carried the bill on the floor, acknowledged that the main reason to pass another map was to strengthen the House’s hand in the coming court case.

Splitting a city was necessary to balance populations among the districts, Kinzer said.

He said Lawrence being part of two districts could benefit the area because two congresspersons would need to pay attention to the city.

“Actually there is a real benefit to being split,” Kinzer said. “Having more representation on balance … can be a positive thing.”

Kobach

TOPEKA – As the state Senate makes a last-ditch effort to draw district maps acceptable to moderate and conservative Republicans, Secretary of State Kris Kobach filed court papers asking that federal judges redistrict Kansas – and offering to draw the districts himself.

Kobach said the court could select from maps that have been submitted in the Legislature or draw their own. Or, his filing said, “alternatively Defendant (Kobach) stands ready to submit valid plans of legislative apportionment, congressional apportionment, and state Board of Education apportionment for the court’s consideration and issuance.”

The legal papers are in response to a lawsuit filed by Robyn Essex, a Republican precinct committeewoman from Olathe. Essex is represented in court by Brent E. Hayden, a Missouri lawyer who formerly served as chief of staff to Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson.

Both O’Neal and Kobach, a former chairman of the state Republican Party, are closely aligned with the conservative wing of their party. Conservatives are planning to challenge at least eight senators in the August primary in an effort to swing the Senate more to the right.

In a news conference, Kobach said he “fervently” hopes the Legislature does reach agreement on district maps.

“This task does not belong in the hands of a plaintiff and the secretary of state and three federal judges,” Kobach said. “This task belongs, under the Kansas Constitution, in the hands of the Legislature. Time is very short; they can still render this case moot. But we have to proceed.”

Essex’s case argues that the current House, Senate and congressional districts are unlawful because of wide population shifts since the districts were drawn 10 years ago. The Kansas Constitution tasks the Legislature with redrawing districts every 10 years to ensure equality of representation.

This year, redistricting has been held up by a political battle pitting moderate Republican senators against the House and conservatives in their own chamber.

A map that passed the Senate favors moderates, while the House has approved a map friendlier to conservatives.

While stopping short of endorsing or opposing any existing map, Kobach singled out the Senate for criticism.

He said if he is called on to draw districts, his guiding principles will be “that districts be compact, that communities of interest be preserved, and notions of fundamental fairness demand that you don’t gerrymander in a way to give one side or another an unfair advantage.

“I think one of the reasons the Senate has been so dysfunctional has been because they have abandoned those basic principals and have been torn apart by efforts to gerrymander (and) to take particular individuals out of districts. That simply has no place in redistricting.”

Kobach praised the House for passing maps that achieved “broad consensus” while the Senate’s map passed that body by a minimum majority.

“According to the House, and I think these are legitimate concerns; one is that one of the challengers was redistricted out of the district in which he would have challenged the sitting senator,” Kobach said. “The other concern is that the Senate map deviated populationwise more than is prudent.”

The challenger Kobach referenced is Wichita businessman Gary Mason, a political newcomer who has announced a challenge to Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick.

Senate redistricting Chairman Tim Owens, R-Overland Park, said the Senate is not dysfunctional, just politically divided. He said it’s no surprise that Kobach is taking the side of the more conservative House.

“I have to call it what it is,” Owens said. “There’s no question in anybody’s mind that the secretary of state’s leanings are very conservative, so he’s joined the crew of conservatives who blame the moderates.”

In Kobach’s response to the Essex lawsuit, he agreed with the plaintiff that it is unlikely that the Senate will create a district map that will also pass the House and Gov. Sam Brownback.

“We’re now at a point where the state is in grave danger of violating federal law,” Kobach said.

If they can’t reach accord on redistricting by the end of this week, he proposes that the court appoint a three-judge panel to pass the maps.

Kobach said the federal courts are the only venue that can take over redistricting from the Legislature. The state Supreme Court has the authority only to review maps passed by the Legislature and governor, he said.

“I’ve been a professor of constitutional law for much of my career,” he said, adding that he has taught classes on court decisions at issue in the case.

Owens, who is also a lawyer, said he believes the state will have jurisdiction on the House and Senate maps, not the federal courts as Kobach maintains.

“I’m very surprised to see that an attorney with his (Kobach’s) national involvements would make a statement like that when it’s very clear that the jurisdiction for the state issues is in the state Supreme Court,” he said. “They have original jurisdiction on a mandamus action dealing with the maps.”

He said the federal court would likely defer the state legislative maps to the Kansas court. The congressional map would probably be the only one decided at the federal level, he added.

Throughout the day, a working group of seven senators – three conservative Republicans, three moderate Republicans and one Democrat – went through the tedious process of trying to draft a map that might gain a broader consensus.

Sitting in the basement office of the Legislative Research Department, they used mapping software to move district lines around, trying to meet as many senators’ preferences as possible.

At the end of the day, no new maps emerged from the process. Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka and the lone Democrat in the group, said the process will continue Thursday.

TOPEKA — The Kansas House moved today to ease penalties on some small-time drug offenders and to take employers’ addresses off the state sex offender web site.

House Bill 2318 would link the penalties for drug possession to the amount of drugs actually possessed.

Primarily, it would allow judges more discretion when sentencing low-level drug offenders who have a single prior conviction on their record, when they either possess small amounts of drugs for personal use or sell small quantities to support their own drug habit, said Rep. Pat Colloton, R-Leawood, who carried the bill on the floor of the House.

At present, the offenses are considered “presumptive prison” on the state drug-crime sentencing grid. That means a judge who wants to give a lesser sentence has to make and state specific findings to justify a departure from the prison terms in the grid, Colloton said.

Under HB 2318, the offenses would be a “border box” on the grid.

Colloton said that would give judges more of a choice on whether to order prison time for low level repeat drug offenders, or send them to a treatment program if they think that might be more effective in addressing the problem.

In addition to potentially lowering the penalties for minor offenders, the bill would create harsher penalties for large-scale manufacturers and dealers of illegal drugs.

However, Colloton said those sentences are unlikely to come into play since those types of prosecutions are far more likely to be handled at the federal level.

The final vote was 94-23.

Also at Colloton’s urging, the House approved a bill to delete employers’ names and addresses from a state sex-offender web site.

The measure was part of House Bill 2568, written to eliminate unintended consequences from last year’s passage of the Kansas version of the Adam Walsh Child Protection and Safety Act.

The act, named for the murdered son of America’s Most Wanted host John Walsh, mandates strict reporting requirements for sex offenders and that the information from the reports be published by the state in an online database.

Colloton said including work addresses created a problem for businesses that hire ex offenders who have served their time in prison. She said the business people told her they were reluctant to hire those who had committed sexually related crimes, because they did not want their companies and/or addresses listed on the offender database.

The work addresses of sex offenders would still be public information and available on request, she said.

In addition, the bill also removes hospitals from a list of treatment facilities that must report to the state when they admit a registered sex offender.

Colloton said the Via Christi health system in Wichita was among those who requested the change, because as written, the law would require hospitals to background-check all incoming patients for prior sex offenses.

The law was actually aimed at reporting offenders in institutions such as drug- and mental-health treatment facilities and was not intended to burden general hospitals, Colloton said.

She said the attorney general’s office has decided not to enforce the requirement on hospitals for the time being, to give the Legislature time to clarify the law.

The bill passed the House 114-2.

Both bills will now proceed to the governor’s desk.

TOPEKA – Positioning for an increasingly likely court fight over redistricting, the House of Representatives and a Senate committee both passed Senate district maps today that are unlikely to ever pass both houses.

With the annual session scheduled to end Friday, hope is fading that the House and Senate will reach accord on redistricting. If they can’t, the districts will end up being drawn in court.

The deadlock has already forced a change in the deadline to file for candidacy in the upcoming August primary election. The Secretary of State’s office announced the deadline to file for House, Senate and Board of Education seats is being pushed back from June 1 to June 11.

The Senate Reapportionment Committee, having had its original Senate map rebuffed in the more conservative House, passed three new district maps for consideration by the full Senate. All three maps draw conservative challengers out of the districts of moderate incumbents they want to challenge.

Later, the House sent the Senate a variant on a district map the Senate has rejected twice. That map, which originated with Sen. Steve Abrams, R-Arkansas City, is far friendlier to the conservative challengers.

Rep. Clay Aurand, R-Belleville and vice chairman of the House Redistricting Committee, blamed the delay on the conservative-moderate division in the Senate.

“I’m hopeful that the fear of the unknown will motivate some senators to finally find a way to talk to each other,” Aurand said. “I hope this (the House passing a Senate map) helps, but I’m not overly optimistic.”

Senate redistricting Chairman Tim Owens, R-Overland Park, has already said that he thinks the courts would draw a fairer map than anything that could pass the staunchly conservative House.

Conservatives have targeted at least eight Senate Republican incumbents for primary challenges in an effort to take control from more moderate elements of their party.

All involved believe that the way the district lines are drawn can heavily influence whether conservatives or moderates prevail, which has delayed the once-every-10-year task of realigning House, Senate and congressional districts to account for population shifts in the 2010 Census.

House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, said the maps the Senate will consider are all unacceptable because they draw out the challengers, and he urged the House to go forward with the Abrams map.

“I would respectfully suggest that we not wait for the Senate to pass us yet another fatally, incredibly flawed map that perpetuates this arrogance of entitlement to districts at the expense of anybody who would dare to challenge them,” O’Neal said.

At O’Neal’s request, the Senate had amended its original district map to put two challengers – both sitting members of the House — in the districts where they want to challenge sitting senators.

“We gave them a map that put them (the challengers) in and none of them voted for it,” Owens said.

Senate leaders have said they thought they had an agreement with O’Neal to approve their maps if they did that.

Instead, O’Neal denied such an agreement existed and he escalated the battle with disparaging comments about the Senate and by getting the House to step in and put through its own Senate map.

The Senate’s three new maps, called “Buffalo 20,” “Buffalo 30” and “Buffalo 40,” all would create a new Senate seat in Johnson County, which has grown by in the last 10 years more than 90,000 voters – about 20,000 more than the average population of a Senate district.

Each of the three maps also creates a district where incumbent senators would have to run against each other:

The Buffalo 20 map would set a head-to-head match for the 40th District between Sen. Ralph Ostmeyer, R-Grinnell, and Sen. Allen Schmidt, D-Hays.

Buffalo 30 would match Abrams against Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover.

Buffalo 40 would match Schmidt against Senate Majority Leader Jay Emler, R-Emporia.

In Sedgwick County, any of the three maps would draw Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, out of the 25th District where Landwehr wants to challenge incumbent Sen. Jean Schodorf. Landwehr would be in the 29th District, a largely minority and Democratic district now represented by Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau.

They also separate incumbent Sen. Carolyn McGinn from her prospective opponent, Wichita businessman Gary Mason.

As part of the failed negotiation with O’Neal, the original Senate-passed map, called “Ad Astra Revised” was amended on the Senate floor to put Landwehr in Schodorf’s district and Rep. Greg Smith, R-Overland Park, in the district where he wants to challenge Sen. Tim Owens, R-Overland Park.

The new maps also draw Smith out of Owens’ district.

Landwehr said the new maps are “unrealistic” and split communities of interest.

“They’re ignoring the rules that were set out by the committee and ignoring federal law,” Landwehr said.

Schodorf said she’s tired of the “continuing saga of the maps.”

She said redistricting generated the same kind of “animosity and tension” 10 years ago but the factions eventually were able to settle it.

“I believe we will vote on another map, which one I don’t know,” she said. “I still hope the House will accept our map.”

As for putting Landwehr in her district, Schodorf said “I tried,” and on the new maps, “I would probably do it again.”

TOPEKA — The state House took action today trying to force the Senate into a vote on whether to move up the deadline when new Kansas voters will be required to provide proof of citizenship to register.

The bill, House Substitute for Senate Bill 15, would start requiring citizenship proof on June 15, rather than Jan. 1 as current law requires.

The overall effect would be that new voters would have to provide a birth certificate, passport or other less common citizenship documents to register for the August primary or the general election in November.

The bill is based on plans proposed by Secretary of State Kris Kobach.

The House had previously passed the same proposal in another bill, but it stalled in a Senate committee, where senators said next month is too soon for a smooth transition to the new rules.

Knowing they’d be unable to stop the Republican majority from passing the proposal again, House Democrats put up only token resistance.

Only Rep. Ann Mah, the ranking Democrat on the House Elections Committee went to the podium to speak against it.

She briefly recapped her ongoing criticism of the proof-of-citizenship requirement and said it would fall particularly hard on women, who would have to make an extra trip to the election office to swear out an affidavit if their birth name doesn’t match their married name.

“There isn’t any court in the land that is going to say that one sex has an extra step to vote,” she said. “For those of you who have a modicum of common sense, I ask you to vote no. For those of you who want to make the Senate look like heroes … then you can vote yes.”

Rep. Scott Schwab, who carried the bill on the floor, said opponents made the same dire predictions of court action when the Legislature passed the original voter-ID law last year.

“Even though we’ve had over 100 elections this year since voter ID has been implemented, we haven’t had one (court) challenge,” said Schwab, R-Olathe.

Kobach, former state chairman of the Republican Party, has advocated for strict voter ID requirements to fight what he says is widespread voting fraud. Opponents argue that voting fraud is actually negligible and that Kobach’s true mission is to suppress turnout among minority and poor voters who are more likely to support Democrats.

Substituting Kobach’s proposal into a Senate bill, as the House did today, could make it easier for supporters to force a floor vote in the Senate. The bill passed the House 67-53.

The Department of Motor Vehicles, often the first point of contact for new voters, is installing computer systems to handle the scanning of citizenship documents and transmit them to the secretary of state’s office. That system won’t be up and running until August.

As an interim workaround, Kobach has proposed allowing the DMV to certify that new registrants have produced the proper documents. The actual copies would be provided to the secretary of state later when the new computer system is up and running.

The House amended that idea into the bill it is sending to the Senate.

Senate Vice President John Vratil, R-Leawood, said senators still have concerns that the DMV is not yet ready to implement the proof of citizenship requirement.

“The last thing we want to do is mandate something that will deny voters the right to vote,” he said.

The Kansas-Western Missouri chapter of the American Civil Liberties Union today released a flow chart called “Navigating the Kansas Voter ID maze.”

Last year’s voter ID law “has already led to the creation of a Rube Goldberg maze of processes and procedures that almost seem designed to suppress voter participation,” said ACLU Executive director Gary Brunk. “Advancing the proof of citizenship requirement adds even more complexity to this convoluted process.”