Praise is due members of the south-central Kansas legislative delegation for their bipartisan efforts to spare disaster victims from paying property tax on destroyed homes. There are significant differences between the bill that passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday and the House version, including whether the cost of the tax relief would fall on the state or individual counties. But many lawmakers clearly recognize the unfairness of receiving a property-tax bill in December for a house that was blown away in April, which is what some south Wichitans experienced in 2012. Good for area legislators for leading the way on this commonsense fix.
State Rep. Ponka-We Victors, D-Wichita, the only American Indian serving in the Legislature, inspired a meme on social media after last week’s House hearing on whether to stop allowing some children of undocumented immigrants to pay in-state tuition rates. Addressing Secretary of State Kris Kobach, who testified in favor of the bill, Victors said: “When you mention illegal immigrants, I think of all of you.” The cheers and applause were hushed by the committee chairman. But they continued online. A Londoner tweeted: “Fabulous. The ultimate people-in-glasshouses putdown. Ponka-We Victors, you’re my kinda gal.” Others variously tweeted: “Oh, snap!” and “bazinga!”
Count former state budget director Duane Goossen among those wondering how Kansas will fund a state budget without a state income tax, which currently represents 46.5 percent of state general fund revenue. None of the options Goossen offered sounded possible, let alone politically viable, including more than doubling the sales tax or newly applying it to professional services, pharmaceuticals, farm machinery and more, or implementing a 100-mill statewide property-tax levy. “A decision to not replace the income-tax revenue would dramatically lower education and human service budgets,” Goossen wrote on his blog for the Kansas Health Institute. “The governor and other supporters of a zero income tax have not identified how income-tax receipts might be replaced other than to suggest that economic growth will somehow take care of it.”
“‘The sky is falling’ is so much rhetoric.” – House Speaker Ray Merrick (in photo), R-Stilwell, defending the House budget’s 4 percent across-the-board cut to the state’s higher-education system
“I would submit to you that higher ed is out of control.” – Rep. Marc Rhoades, R-Newton, pointing to rising tuition in defending the proposed cut
“I think they understand that there is so much bad stuff in this budget that they don’t want people to have time to read it – or else they wouldn’t support it.” – Rep. John Wilson, D-Lawrence, on the 512-page budget
Can increasing American energy exploration improve our economy? Yes, but more to the point, it’s already happening. Energy – and the jobs and growth it will drive – is the foundation for our economic recovery. Our nation is blessed with some of the most abundant energy resources on Earth. Thanks in large part to the technology-driven shale boom, we have enough natural gas to power America for 120 years. We also have at least 200 years of oil under our lands and off our shores and more than 250 years of coal. And that’s just what we can recover with today’s technology. With continued advancements, we will be able to access even greater domestic supplies in the future. Energy presents the biggest opportunity to build a stronger foundation and a brighter future for our country. The 21st century has brought America an era of energy abundance. Let’s make the most of it for the sake of our economy, competitiveness and national security. – Karen A. Harbert, U.S. Chamber of Commerce
Abandoning fossil-fuel exploration altogether is not feasible for America. But significant further government support of oil and gas drilling in places like the Alaskan wilderness or the American heartland in the name of economic growth would be a huge mistake. Instead, for our national security, economic growth and a sound energy policy, what we need is to shift to promoting industries and technologies that focus on clean, renewable and alternative sources of energy. Clean-tech is a fast-growing global industry that holds the potential to fix our current climate and other environmental challenges and build the jobs of tomorrow. The 2010 BP oil catastrophe in the Gulf of Mexico, the 1989 Exxon Valdez oil spill and the serious concerns raised about hydraulic fracturing have not merely been the results of chance. Nor are the extreme storms, droughts and heat waves, which are expected to rise in frequency and severity with fossil fuel use-linked climate change. The U.S. cannot afford to invest and lock itself into many more decades of reliance on the dirty and unsustainable sources of energy of the past. – Tseming Yang, Santa Clara University
The parade of commentaries looking at the Iraq War 10 years after “shock and awe” include Peggy Noonan’s blunt take on the wounds it inflicted on her Republican Party. Among her conclusions: “It ruined the party’s hard-earned reputation for foreign-affairs probity.” “It muddied up the meaning of conservatism and bloodied up its reputation.” “It ended the Republican political ascendance that had begun in 1980.” And “it undermined respect for Republican economic stewardship.” Noonan also writes that the war was bad for GOP debate: “The high stakes and high drama of the wars – and the sense within the Bush White House that it was fighting for our very life after 9/11 – stoked an atmosphere in which doubters and critics were dismissed as weak, unpatriotic, disloyal.” Meanwhile, she wonders, where are the Democrats’ self-examination and self-criticism about their foreign policy?
Sen. Rob Portman (in photo), R-Ohio, created a buzz by announcing a change of heart on same-sex marriage, a decision that followed a son’s announcement that he is gay. But according to ThinkProgress, Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, was dismissive, calling Portman “a senator who couldn’t deliver his own home state in the presidential election” and complaining that “somehow we’re supposed to believe that if we abandon traditional marriage that liberals are going to flock to us.” Speaking at the recent Conservative Political Action Conference, Huelskamp also said, “The principle is, traditional marriage and family is the foundation of society.” Asked whether he would re-examine his own position if he had a gay son, the Kansan said: “I support traditional marriage.”
The 2013 Legislature has spent time trying to undermine past legislatures’ decisions on the sales-tax sunset, the transportation plan, the state’s renewable-energy goals and more. But a new poll confirms that lawmakers should not repeal or weaken the Kansas Clean Indoor Air Act, which is more popular now than when it became law in 2010. In the poll, sponsored by Topeka-based Sunflower Foundation: Health Care for Kansans, 78 percent of registered voters and 81 percent of GOP primary voters said they support the law, which prohibits smoking in public spaces and workplaces including restaurants and bars. A January 2010 SurveyUSA poll had found that 65 percent favored a statewide smoking ban. The latest poll followed a Kansas Health Institute study last month that found “no apparent evidence that smoking bans in Kansas have been associated with a decrease in statewide restaurant and bar sales, or with a decrease in the number of establishments serving liquor.” The law does have one obvious flaw: the loophole for state-owned casinos.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was characteristically vivid in describing the meeting that he and other Senate Republicans had last week with President Obama. “He’s smothering us with the milk of human kindness and hoping it doesn’t curdle,” Roberts said. The Kansan also said that Republicans “tried to stress that it’s extremely helpful for the president to weigh in on some of these big-time issues. We have to have him if we’re going to get anything done.” After Obama’s previous visit to the Senate GOP caucus in 2010, Roberts famously told reporters that the president needed “to take a Valium” and had some “pretty thin-skinned” moments.
A Reuters article examines the impact on Wichita of President Obama’s bad-mouthing of business jets and push for a seven-year depreciation schedule for private-plane buyers. “I’m certainly disappointed that he would do something of this nature. As long as you’re doing something to threaten my aviation industry … I’ll continue to speak out against it,” Mayor Carl Brewer told Reuters, which noted Brewer is a Democrat who has Obama’s portrait on his wall. Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, said: “It’s so frustrating. All the aviation manufacturers want is for him to stop talking down their industry. Don’t write them a check, don’t give them a tax credit, don’t hand them a subsidy. Stop bashing them.”
As a retired physician, Rep. Barbara Bollier, R-Mission Hills, should be a valued resource for her House colleagues when they consider health-related legislation. But as the House gave initial approval to the latest big anti-abortion bill Tuesday, it ignored her efforts to excise medically inaccurate language linking breast cancer to abortion. She made another excellent point: Legislation dealing with health issues should go through the chamber’s health committee.
Is Gov. Sam Brownback’s Kansas the model for the future Republican Party? The Atlantic Wire’s Elspeth Reeve has doubts. “The Kansas House of Representatives is 72 percent Republican. The Kansas Senate is 80 percent Republican. That might have something to do with the fact that Kansas looks a lot like the Republican Party. It’s 78 percent white,” Reeve wrote. And “according to 2012 exit polls, 39 percent of voters are conservative, 48 percent are moderate, and only 17 percent are liberal.” The Republican National Committee’s new internal review suggests that the nation’s 30 GOP governors, including Brownback, will lead the way for the party, and there are tax and education reforms to watch in those states. “It is time for Republicans on the federal level to learn from successful Republicans on the state level,” the report said. But Reeve argued that in the cases of “less reliably red states, governors’ conservative policy records are more mixed.”
A week after participating in the Senate filibuster on drones, Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., announced that Kansas is one of the top 10 states predicted to benefit the most as production of unmanned aerial systems increases. Moran, who is a member of a Senate UAS caucus (who knew that existed?), cited a new report estimating a projected economic impact in Kansas of $2.9 billion and an estimated 3,716 new jobs between 2015 and 2025. “Kansas already boasts the necessary attributes to manage UAS activities: airspace for UAS operations; multiple airport support facilities; university research and development on sensors, airframes and engines; university flight and operations training; and avionics development and manufacturing capabilities,” Moran said in a statement, adding that “the future for UAS in Kansas – the Air Capital of the World – is bright.” Meanwhile, a bill in the Legislature, House Bill 2394, would prohibit the operation of drones in Kansas while carrying a lethal payload and prohibit law enforcement agencies from using drones to collect evidence.
The Hill newspaper checked in with Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, and other congressmen who were stripped of key committee assignments for not toeing the GOP leadership’s line. How is Huelskamp doing three months later? “One of my colleagues put it interestingly. He said, ‘Well, Tim, they’ve given you a platform that you’ve never had before,’” the Kansan told the Hill, noting he also has been in demand on cable-news shows. Being stripped of committee assignments, he said, “had the opposite effect (of) trying to silence myself and a few others. It’s actually enhanced our ability to speak out and impact the process.” An unidentified lawmaker close to leadership told the Hill that Huelskamp “is just not trustworthy, and if he wants to be up here and a lone wolf and cause problems, he’ll never have any legislative accomplishments.”
While he is distracted with his quest against voter fraud, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach is neglecting the real problem – voter apathy. According to research from the group Nonprofit Vote, which calculated percentages by dividing the number of ballots cast by the voting eligible population, Kansas slipped to 36th place among states in 2012 for voter turnout, with 58.1 percent. That was down from 28th place in 2008, and less than the 58.7 percent national turnout in 2012. The group found that voter turnout was 12 percentage points higher in states with Election Day registration. Kansas law cuts off voter registration 21 days before any election and, as of this year, requires proof of citizenship to register to vote. Worse, a ridiculous bill passed by the Kansas House this month and awaiting Senate consideration would bar people from switching parties after the candidate filing deadline of June 1 in advance of an August primary election. Proponents argue it would protect the integrity of each party from the undue influence of the other, but it would erode the right of voters to participate in the primary of their choice.
Sixteen current state senators who had bitterly opposed and voted against the temporary sales-tax hike in 2010 nevertheless voted last week to make it permanent, arguing that it’s now needed to pay for income-tax cuts. They may not have lost any sleep over the hypocrisy of their flip-flop, but it upset some of the moderate GOP legislators who were targeted for defeat after voting for the increase. “I think it’s disingenuous that people who were so adamantly opposed to it are saying, ‘Oh, no – it’s OK,’” former Sen. Ruth Teichman of Stafford told the Hutchinson News. Former Sen. Jean Schodorf of Wichita told The Eagle editorial board: “It seems like the end justifies the means, and the conservatives believe that cutting income tax is so important to people that they don’t think the public will see the hypocrisy of raising the sales tax.”
“The governor saying we should be like Texas is like the governor saying to me, ‘You know, Tom, you could jam just like Kobe Bryant.’ I could buy 50,000 pairs of gym shoes and I could never touch the bottom of the net.” – Sen. Tom Holland (in photo), D-Baldwin City, during the Senate tax debate
“I’ll be dead. I’ll tell you that.” – Rep. Arlen Siegfreid, R-Olathe, forecasting when a House proposal would result in the elimination of the state income tax
“This kind of gives me the willies.” – Rep. Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, questioning the $55 million estimated cost of a proposed new Kansas Bureau of Investigation crime lab at Washburn University
“I’m going to tell the story that the president came to see if we really needed a tower.” – Don Rogers, president of Wells Aircraft, about the sighting of a Boeing 747 with the presidential logo (known as Air Force One when the president is aboard) doing practice approaches at Hutchinson Municipal Airport, which would lose its air tower funding under the sequester
So they said
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., was among the lawmakers who met with President Obama this week, as the White House tried to ease the partisanship that has paralyzed Capitol Hill. Moran told Politico there was agreement between Obama and Senate Republicans that “there might by an opportunity for common ground” on corporate tax reform, but that when entitlement reform came up, “the president responded with the need for revenues.” Overall, Moran said, “I really think it was rather a bland conversation. No fireworks on either tone. This wasn’t memorable; it was the opposite of that.”
Kansas Sens. Pat Roberts and Jerry Moran and Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, deserve credit for tenacity in protesting the Air Force’s recent decision to pass over Wichita-based Beechcraft and instead give a $427.5 million light-air support contract to Sierra Nevada Corp. and Brazil-based Embraer. That order, which will supply 20 airplanes to Afghanistan’s air force, would have given Beechcraft a big boost post-bankruptcy. The Kansans sent a letter Friday to Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel requesting a “thorough, compelling explanation for your decision” and saying the award “raises significant concerns for the entire U.S. defense industrial base.” It’s awkward, however, that just two weeks ago the two Kansas senators voted against Hagel’s confirmation as defense secretary.
Eight years ago, an amendment to the Kansas Constitution banning same-sex marriage and civil unions passed with an unequivocal 70 percent of the vote. But attitudes are changing in the state, at least according to a February survey by Public Policy Polling. Fifty-one percent of those Kansans polled said same-sex marriage should not be allowed, but only 34 percent said there should be no legal recognition of gay relationships. Another 34 percent said gay couples should be allowed to marry, while 29 percent approved of civil unions but not marriages for gay couples.
Wichita City Council member Paul Gray used an agenda item on swimming pool improvements at last week’s meeting to blast the Americans With Disabilities Act. Gray, a contractor who works in commercial construction, said he appreciated the sensitivity of such issues and has friends and relatives with disabilities, but that making facilities ADA-compliant can add $15,000-$20,000 to a $80,000 project and prove too much for mom-and-pop businesses. “Some little bureaucrat sits in a room and draws a picture and says, ‘This is the rules everybody has to follow,’ but they far exceed the requirements of people that are handicapped,” Gray said. “We treat the world as if everybody is blind and in a wheelchair, and that is not the circumstance. We are driving our economy into the ground with stuff like this.” Gray voted for the item, as did reluctant fellow council member Pete Meitzner. Hearing Gray’s rant about the 23-year-old ADA, it was hard to believe he was talking about what then-Sen. Bob Dole called “fair and balanced legislation that carefully blends the rights of people with disabilities … with the legitimate needs of the American business community.”
It’s strange that as the Legislature talks about denying the University of Kansas Medical Center a requested $10 million to build a new health education building, the Senate would vote 33-7 to create a Midwest Stem Cell Therapy Center at KU estimated to cost $10 million over 10 years. Funding for the stem-cell center would come from federal grants, private gifts and other funds, according to a legislative note. “If Kansas could take a leadership position in that, it could be a highly useful thing for people to get treatments,” said Gov. Sam Brownback, who supports the new center but also recommended $10 million in state funding for a health education building at KU. Some KU faculty and administrators also have expressed support for the center, which would do non-embryonic stem-cell research. But such an important decision about the KU Medical Center and the Kansas Board of Regents should not start with a Statehouse mandate. And it’s hard to see why the center should take precedence over KU’s plan for the new $75 million medical building, which will help it train more physicians.
Missouri is wrestling with whether to imitate Kansas’ income-tax cuts and, not coincidentally, risk its own budget shortfall. “It may turn out that Kansas decides it wasn’t such a good fiscal policy to decimate their revenue,” said Sen. Jason Holsman, D-Kansas City, as the Missouri Senate approved a bill to cut state income taxes and raise sales taxes. Sponsoring Sen. Will Kraus, R-Lee’s Summit, said: “I’m trying to stop the bleeding. I’m trying to stop the businesses from fleeing into Kansas.” Earlier, Sen. Paul LeVota, D-Independence, had argued: “I believe we need to be the Show-Me State, not the ‘me too’ state.”
Do Kansans want to shop for hard liquor at the same places they buy their gas and groceries? “The people in our state do not want this changed,” state Rep. Jim Howell, R-Derby, said about the bill to expand liquor sales to grocery and convenience stores and big retailers. And a SurveyUSA poll, sponsored by KWCH, Channel 12, found 54 percent of Kansans against the move. When asked whether people younger than 21 should be allowed to handle and sell hard liquor under such a law change, 76 percent said “no.” An earlier poll by Public Opinion Strategies found 66 percent of Kansans against changing the law.
“I think that would be discussed during Celebrate Freedom Week.” – Wichita superintendent John Allison (in photo), on whether legislators discuss governmental checks and balances as they pass meddling education bills such as the Celebrate Freedom Week mandate (via The Eagle’s Suzanne Perez Tobias)
“This whole #ksleg gig is like college. Except everyone hates booze. And strip clubs.” – freshman state Rep. J.R. Claeys, R-Salina, on Twitter
“Most of the nation will wake up Friday morning and yawn.” – U.S. Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, before the sequestration cuts kicked in March 1
Praise is due members of the south-central Kansas legislative delegation for their bipartisan efforts to spare disaster victims from paying property tax on destroyed homes. There are significant differences between the bill that passed the Senate unanimously Wednesday and the House version, including whether the cost of the tax relief would fall on the state or individual counties. But many lawmakers clearly recognize the unfairness of receiving a property-tax bill in December for a house that was blown away in April, which is what some south Wichitans experienced in 2012. Good for area legislators for leading the way on this commonsense fix.
