Daily Archives: July 12, 2009

Kansas less safe because of budget cuts

July 12, 20096:05 a.m.

jailhandsinbars2Cutting the state budget has consequences, and one of them is that Kansas is less safe. As a result of about $23.5 million in cuts, the Kansas Department of Correction has lost 300 positions and decimated a number of programs aimed at preventing inmates from reoffending, the Lawrence Journal World reported. “We’re not as safe as we were,” Corrections Secretary Roger Werholtz told an oversight committee last week. Are lawmakers going to put that quote on their campaign literature?

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Crime, Kansas government | Comments (32)

Open thread 7/12

July 12, 20096:04 a.m.

thread417

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Open thread | Comments (90)

Great progress on downtown arena

July 12, 20096:03 a.m.

arenainsideThe downtown area is started to look as good on the inside as it does on the outside. About 90 percent of the permanent seating is in, the hockey floor has been poured and workers are about to install terrazzo flooring in the main lobby. A video tour of the arena is on Kansas.com. The arena is scheduled to open in mid-January but may be completed three months early. Though the arena could still use more tenants besides the Wichita Thunder hockey team, it’s encouraging that sales of luxury suites and loge boxes seem to be going well, especially in this down economy.

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Wichita | Comments (44)

Parkinson as Lassie

July 12, 20096:02 a.m.

lassie“If he manages to get the state through this difficult budget year and puts together a reasonable budget for the coming fiscal year, well, that would be the equivalent of Lassie pulling a child out of a burning barn,” Martin Hawver of Hawver’s Capitol Report wrote about Gov. Mark Parkinson. Hawver also predicted that GOP lawmakers would maneuver to make sure that Parkinson “at some point has to do something so distasteful and drastic to save the state’s budget” that he couldn’t change his mind and run for election in 2010. “Republicans are happy to hear Parkinson say he won’t seek election,” Hawver wrote, “but being the party of belts and suspenders, they’d like to make sure he couldn’t be elected, anyway.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Kansas government | Comments (11)

Kansan helped make filibuster-proof majority possible

July 12, 20096:01 a.m.

pearsonjKansas Republicans concerned that Sen. Al Franken, D-Minn., gives Democrats a potential filibuster-proof majority might be surprised to learn that a former one of their own played a key role in making this possible. Former Kansas GOP Sen. James B. Pearson, who died this past January, spent the better part of two Senate terms collecting enough support to lower the votes required for cloture from 67 to 60, former Kansas Rep. Bill Roy noted. And that’s a good thing. Llowering the vote requirement has greatly helped the Senate function in recent year. “If today cloture required 67 votes, it is unlikely the Senate would get much done,” Roy wrote. “It would make it extremely difficult to confirm judges, particularly Supreme Court nominees, in this era of extremism at both ends of the political spectrum.”

By Phillip Brownlee | Filed under Congress | Comments (7)