Kansas House Speaker Pro Tem Peggy Mast, R-Emporia, initially said she didn’t recall writing the letter on her office stationery that was sent along with an anti-climate-change book to the homes of Kansas House members. But she later confirmed that she wrote the letter endorsing the book, which she has not read. Parts of Mast’s endorsement were taken almost word for word from a Publishers Weekly review of the book, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. The book, “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism,” was distributed by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank funded in part by Charles and David Koch.
A pledge by some state lawmakers to never raise taxes is a factor in finalizing the state budget, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. Fifteen House members (half of whom are from the Wichita area) signed a no-tax pledge administered by Americans for Prosperity, and AFP considers the proposed extension of the statewide sales tax to be a tax increase. However, eight state senators who signed the AFP pledge voted for the sales-tax extension, including Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita.
Claims by some conservative state and federal lawmakers that the Common Core education standards are being imposed by the federal government “do not stand up to close scrutiny,” Sol Stern and Joel Klein wrote in a Wall Street Journal commentary. “The Common Core standards were not written by the federal government, but by a committee selected by the National Governors Association and the Council of Chief State School Officers.” What’s more, they wrote, “all Americans, including conservatives, should applaud these standards, which celebrate the country’s foundational documents and enable students to share the heritage of Americans.” Attempts in the Kansas Legislature to block Common Core couldn’t make it out of the House and Senate education committees this session, but some GOP lawmakers are trying to tie it to end-of-session budget negotiations. “There is a general resistance to the federal government imposing a curriculum on our Kansas schools,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover. That would be understandable if it were happening, but it’s not.
“To pass a tax increase at a time like this would be far worse on the people and far worse on the economic recovery than taking the needed cuts.” – Sen. Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, in early 2010, about a proposal to avert damaging state budget cuts by raising the statewide sales tax to 6.3 percent for three years
“Let’s just leave Kansas. Let’s forget about buying food in Kansas.” – Wagle again in May 2010, as the Senate passed the sales-tax hike
“Sales tax has nothing to do with economic growth. It doesn’t really matter what your sales-tax rate is.” – Wagle, now Senate president and an advocate for keeping the sales-tax rate where it is after July 1 to pay for income-tax cuts, speaking last week to GOP Senate and House members
A promotional video for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce includes endorsements by top political leaders in the state. “I don’t know where we would be without the chamber,” Gov. Sam Brownback (in photo) says in the video. Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, notes that the chamber “was involved in the elections for both House and Senate members” and that it “helped change the environment in the Capitol.” The chamber’s political action committee spent more than $1 million during the 2012 legislative election, much of it directed at defeating moderate Republicans. One of those purged lawmakers, former Sen. Ruth Teichman of Stafford, wondered if the chamber is now trying to convince Kansas that “getting rid of us” was a good thing, the Hutchinson News reported. Also of note in the video is Neeli Bendapudi, the dean of the University of Kansas School of Business. She says that “the Kansas Chamber and the University of Kansas are united for business.” When contacted by the Hutchinson News, Bendapudi said she did not intend to speak for the entire university. “I honestly did not think it through,” she said.
Good for the Wichita Metro Chamber of Commerce and city and county leaders for writing University of Kansas chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little to express their concerns over possible cuts to the KU School of Medicine in Wichita. Gray-Little has said that if the state cuts more funding for university programs, the Wichita medical school likely would be reduced from a four-year program to a two-year program. As the local leaders noted, the Wichita community – particularly area doctors – donated money and helped lead the demanding accreditation process of expanding the medical school to a four-year program. KU shouldn’t abandon all that work. Also, the expanded program addresses a pressing state need for more physicians, particularly in rural Kansas. But it must also be noted that KU wouldn’t be faced with these possible cuts if Gov. Sam Brownback hadn’t signed last year’s massive tax cuts – reductions that the local chamber championed.
New bills aimed at changing (and punishing) the Kansas courts are another example of why the legislative and judicial branches should be kept separate. Apparently angered that the Kansas Bar Association doesn’t support a GOP plan to alter how Kansas Supreme Court justices are selected, Rep. Lance Kinzer, R-Olathe, hastily introduced a constitutional amendment to allow the governor to make lifetime appointments to the state Supreme Court, subject to Senate approval. But in a seemingly contradictory move, he also introduced bills that would reduce the mandatory retirement age for appellate judges to 65 and split the Court of Appeals into criminal and civil divisions, with the criminal division having final say on all criminal cases. These bills are petty attempts to weaken the Supreme Court and purge justices. Kinzer said he doubted that his bills would get a vote before the session ends. They certainly don’t deserve serious consideration.
One way to reduce “he said, she said” disagreements at the Statehouse – such as the dispute about whether House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, referred to Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, as childish and egotistical – is to not have so many closed meetings. Merrick’s disputed comments were made during a closed meeting with House Republican freshmen. Of more concern was that until Wednesday, budget and tax negotiations had been occurring in closed meetings between Merrick, Wagle and Gov. Sam Brownback, rather than in open conference committee meetings. Such backroom dealings reduce the public’s faith in the legislative process – and suggest that state leaders also don’t have much faith in lawmakers or the process.
The state budget and tax policy are the two big issues that still must be resolved in Topeka. Our Wednesday editorial also lists some other issues that are best left undone:
• The House should resist a revised constitutional amendment still aimed at politicizing appointments to the state Supreme Court. Kansas’ appellate judges should be chosen because they know and will follow the law, not because of their political connections and beliefs.
• Legislators should not revive efforts to override the Kansas State Board of Education on the multistate Common Core standards for English and math, which the state has been working toward implementing for years. The costs of shelving them and starting over would be too high. And much of the growing paranoia about the Common Core standards is baseless.
• Lawmakers should not enable Secretary of State Kris Kobach to prosecute voter fraud or anything else. Kansas already has county attorneys and an attorney general to handle such prosecutions. And if there is one thing Kobach does not need, it’s more power.
The bizarre case of the reported mugging of Rep. Joe Edwards, R-Haysville, has gotten even more bizarre. In February, Edwards said that someone attacked him from behind as he entered his Topeka hotel room, knocked him unconscious and robbed him of about $250. But security cameras at the hotel didn’t show any attack. Edwards told the Topeka Capital-Journal that police investigators delved into the possibility he fabricated all or parts of the incident, a suspicion apparently fueled by the possibility that Edwards might have been involved in two prostitution cases in Wichita in 1997. The Eagle reported in March and August 1997 that charges were filed against a George F. Edwards II with the birthdate of Sept. 16, 1954. The lawmaker has the same name and birth date. Edwards told the Capital-Journal that he has no criminal record and no knowledge of those cases, and that it must have been a mix-up with another person with the same name. “That ain’t me,” he said. Officials with the Wichita Municipal Court and the Wichita Police Department were unable to locate records on the cases, which could mean that the records were expunged.
Despite its continued resistance to anything associated with Obamacare, Kansas is set to benefit from it. Up to 9,000 jobs are expected to be created at Medicare call centers in six states, including one in Lawrence. The call centers will answer inquiries related to the federally run insurance marketplaces. Kansas will get an even bigger economic boost if it allows the federal expansion of Medicaid. A study by the Kansas Hospital Association concluded that the expansion would inject more than $3 billion into the state’s economy and create 4,000 jobs over the next seven years.
However the sales-tax debate turns out, state lawmakers and Gov. Sam Brownback can say they lowered one tax by a whopping 30 percent this year – the property tax on boats and other watercraft. That tax had been so high in Kansas that many residents unlawfully registered and kept their boats in neighboring states. Voters finally passed a constitutional amendment last November authorizing lawmakers to classify and tax watercraft on a different basis from other personal property, and Brownback signed the resulting measure April 16 as part of a larger tax-related bill. Now, boats will be taxed at 11.5 percent of appraised value next year and 5 percent as of 2015. The new tax rate should benefit Kansas boat owners and dealers as well as the state’s lakes, parks and budget.
Freshman Kansas House Republicans got advice last week on how to get re-elected, the Lawrence Journal-World reported. House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey, R-Louisburg, told them to get busy raising money, because it will discourage potential challengers (and discourage lobbyists from giving money to challengers). Karl Hansen of the direct mail firm Singularis Group, which produced many campaign hit pieces last election, encouraged lawmakers to take advantage of their taxpayer-paid franking privileges and to host telephone town hall meetings. “It essentially works like talk radio. You’re the Rush Limbaugh,” he said. Gov. Sam Brownback’s former chief of staff David Kensinger said the lawmakers would benefit because Brownback and Sen Pat Roberts, R-Kan., will also be on the ballot in 2014. “We’re interested in helping you succeed,” he said. Whatever happened to getting re-elected because you did a good job?
A new risk-assessment tool may help Sedgwick County judges better determine whether an offender is likely to succeed at a community correction facility or should be sentenced to prison. But another key to reducing Sedgwick County’s probation-failure rate, which is significantly higher than the state average, is to make sure community correction programs are adequately funded. Pound-foolish budget cuts have reduced by half the number of beds at the county’s adult residential center, which means more higher-risk offenders are living in the community with less structure and supervision. That’s a recipe for recidivism. Gov. Sam Brownback recently signed a bill aimed at reducing the need for prison beds, which is projected to save the state $53million in the next five years. About $5million of those savings are supposed to be reinvested in community-based programs. Those programs need better support. As Mark Masterson, director of the county’s department of corrections, acknowledged: “To say that services have not been compromised – the truth is they have.”
What’s the delay in releasing the terms of a settlement the state reached this year with tobacco companies? The settlement was finalized in March, and several other states have released their settlement terms. But Kansas Action for Children had to file an open-records request to try to get the information. And all it’s received so far is a letter from the Kansas Attorney General’s Office saying it needs more time. This information is of particularly interest as lawmakers finalize the state’s budget. And keep in mind, the Attorney General’s Office is in charge of enforcing the state’s open-records law. Maybe it needs to police itself.
It’s up to state lawmakers to keep long-term care services for intellectually and developmentally disabled Kansas out of KanCare – because the Brownback administration won’t listen. Parents and advocates rallied in Topeka Wednesday and signed a giant banner asking Gov. Sam Brownback to “carve out long-term I/DD services from KanCare.” But when asked about it by the Lawrence Journal World, Brownback said: “We’re putting forward our proposal as we have.” Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services Secretary Shawn Sullivan criticized the service providers who organized the rally for trying “to create more fear for those they serve.” But it’s the administration insistence on entrusting the daily care of these vulnerable citizens to for-profit insurance companies that has families scared and upset.
When Aaron Jack – a former state representative from Andover – resigned on Feb. 12 from the top job at the Kansas Securities Commission, the announcement said he wanted to return to private industry. But the Topeka Capital-Journal reported this week that he was told to resign or be fired by Gov. Sam Brownback’s chief of staff. And with good reason. During his two-year tenure, Jack pushed out nearly three-fourths of the commission’s staff, replacing many of them with GOP operatives. Not surprisingly, the commission’s enforcement record dropped. Jack also authorized more than $500,000 to be spent on a “public education” media campaign that seemed mostly aimed at aiding his planned run for Kansas insurance commissioner. “They’ve turned the agency into a dysfunctional pro-industry political bastion,” a former securities examiner told the Capital-Journal. “One of the best securities agencies in the country has been wiped out.” So has Jack’s political career.
Keeping long-term care services for intellectually and developmentally disabled Kansans out of KanCare would cost the state nearly $100 million, Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer said last week. But where exactly would those savings come from? The Brownback administration has promised that services and reimbursement rates wouldn’t be cut, and it’s not as if the current system is flush with funding. “It’s a grossly underfunded system at this time,” Colin McKenney, CEO of Starkey Inc., told The Eagle editorial board earlier this year, calling the notion of the state squeezing $100 million out of the I/DD system “very alarming.” Are these more made-up savings, like the $30 million that the administration claimed it would saved by the turnpike merger but could never explain? Or would the savings come from making it such as fight to get approval for services that people give up?
The overcast weather didn’t dampen the passion of more than 100 people who rallied at the Statehouse last Saturday against the polices of Gov. Sam Brownback and the conservative Legislature. “We’re not going to stand for this foolishness,” said Lisa Ochs, president of the American Federation of Teachers-Kansas. House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, was more strident. “I’ve had enough of Sam Brownback and right-wing Republicans that want to impose more and more laws to tear down the working man and woman,” Davis said. But with so few people attending the rally, the protestors have their work cut out for them.
Gov. Sam Brownback is reluctant to allow an expansion of Medicaid because he thinks the federal government is broke and may not honor its funding commitment. But he is also pushing the Legislature to authorize an additional $200 million in state bonds to help ensure the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility is built in Manhattan, without any worries that the government will honor its funding commitment. Brownback wants NBAF because it is expected to create about 750 construction jobs and more than 300 permanent jobs. But the Medicaid expansion is projected to create about 4,000 jobs. “I think we can say with some certainty,” wrote Kansas City Star columnist Barbara Shelly, “that a pathogen lab is more attractive to him as an economic stimulus than an expansion of health care to low-income Kansans.”
The professionals at the Kansas State Department of Education have invested significant time and money in helping develop the Common Core standards, a multistate effort to align standards and progress measures on English and math. And it looks like the standards may escape a legislative attempt to scrap them in Kansas. But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was among nine GOP senators who signed a letter last week asking for language in an appropriations bill that would bar the use of funds to develop, implement or evaluate state-level education standards. Also last week, Kansas Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park, and Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, and 31 other House members sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan complaining that the “burdensome and misguided” Common Core standards “fail to address the specific needs of our states,” and raised concerns about how the federal government collects and distributes student data. The Common Core standards have been adopted by 45 states, including Kansas, and the District of Columbia, and officials have said it would cost Kansas $30 million to develop other standards and tests at this point.
At an April Wichita Downtown Rotary luncheon meeting featuring Gov. Sam Brownback, the questioners included Jill Docking, the Democrat and financial adviser who lost to Brownback in his first U.S. Senate race in 1996. Docking, a member of the Kansas Board of Regents from 2007 to 2010, wrote on her policy site, the Docking Blog, about Brownback’s recent lobbying to keep higher-education funding flat by extending the higher sales-tax rate. “Taken on its face, the governor’s endorsement of ‘no cuts’ sounds like support, even the work of a savior. But when you take a look at the history of funding for the regent institutions in Kansas, it becomes apparent that the governor is advocating for maintaining not adequate funding but recession-level funding,” Docking wrote, citing an 11 percent decline in state funding for higher ed from 2008 through 2012. Now that Brownback wants to “lock education funding into recession levels” to help fund his “experimental” business and personal income-tax cuts, she continued, one “danger is that those states reinvesting in higher education after the recession will prey on our talent pool – at the cost of Kansas’ future economic competitiveness. When you understand this context, you come to realize that the governor is not solving the problem of adequate funding of higher education – he is exacerbating it.”
“We know who these people are. They’re the good guys. Why would we take the good guys’ right to defend themselves away?” – Rep. Jim Howell, R-Derby, talking on Kansas City public radio station KCUR about the new law allowing concealed-carry in more public buildings
“This is definitely an unfunded mandate. I just don’t like someone telling me what I can do in my house.” – Pratt County Sheriff Vernon Chinn, about the concealed-carry expansion
“We have become a pawn in a game of high-stakes poker.” – Shawn Naccarato, director of community and governmental relations at Pittsburg State University, on how higher-education funding figures into the Statehouse’s sales-tax debate
“Why in the world would we abolish one of the rarest things in American political history, a government program that’s working?” – Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, in the Washington Times, on federal legislation that would repeal the E-Verify immigration-status check system
It’s too bad, but not at all surprising, that mediation talks on the state’s school-funding lawsuit have been unsuccessful. Because of confidentiality agreements, it is unclear whether more meetings are scheduled. But given that the state lost the last lawsuit, then reneged on the funding agreement, then chose to cut taxes rather than restore funding, the case always has seemed headed to the Kansas Supreme Court. And it’s difficult to imagine the high court failing to uphold the lower court’s ruling that state funding is unconstitutionally low.
That didn’t take long. U.S. Attorney General Eric Holder (in photo) informed Gov. Sam Brownback that part of a new state gun law is unconstitutional — the provisions saying guns made in Kansas are immune from federal regulation and prohibiting federal officials from enforcing those regulations. “In purporting to override federal law and to criminalize the official acts of federal officers, (the law) directly conflicts with federal law and is therefore unconstitutional,” Holder wrote. State lawmakers were told by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office that the law was unenforceable, yet they passed it anyway, and Brownback signed it into law. Now taxpayers will get stuck paying the legal bills in a losing attempt to defend the law.
Kansas House Speaker Pro Tem Peggy Mast, R-Emporia, initially said she didn’t recall writing the letter on her office stationery that was sent along with an anti-climate-change book to the homes of Kansas House members. But she later confirmed that she wrote the letter endorsing the book, which she has not read. Parts of Mast’s endorsement were taken almost word for word from a Publishers Weekly review of the book, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. The book, “The Mad, Mad, Mad World of Climatism,” was distributed by the Heartland Institute, a Chicago-based think tank funded in part by Charles and David Koch.
