The state’s approval this week of $700 million in budget transfers will enable it to make payments to school districts and pay tax refunds. That’s good. But the transfers also reflect the rocky condition of state finances, which has already required $160 million in allotment cuts this month and still has no margin for error. Authorizing certificates of indebtedness in July isn’t unusual. But this year’s transfers are about double the normal amount.
“I’m getting used to my new title, ‘Madam Secretary.’ First, no one would ever want me to be their secretary, and I’ve never aspired to be a madam. And now I’m both.” — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, addressing the American Health Lawyers Association
“So if they get hit by a bus, they’ll be OK. Well, not OK, but at least they’ll have insurance.” — Sebelius again, referring to the many Americans with only catastrophic health coverage
“The Legislature absolutely failed its responsibility.” — Gary Sherrer, member of the Kansas Board of Regents, on the Legislature’s decision to continue to phase out several taxes while cutting education funding, which forced tuition hikes
“I would feel good confessing my sins to Bob.” — Regent Dan Lykins, suggesting that retiring University of Kansas chancellor Robert Hemenway would have made a good priest
Congratulations to former Attorney General Robert Stephan for being honored this week by Gov. Mark Parkinson for his work on behalf of crime victims. A plaque recognizing the former Wichitan is being placed by a tree that was planted on the Capitol grounds 20 years ago to commemorate the passage of the Kansas Crime Victims’ Bill of Rights. During the 1989 legislative process, Stephan said, “My firm conviction that crime victims need to be guaranteed certain rights flows from an appreciation of how they have been denied access to the criminal justice system in the past.” Stephan continues to work on behalf of crime victims as chairman of the Governor’s Domestic Violence Fatality Review Board and by trying to raise public awareness about domestic violence.
Through Tuesday, Kansas drivers could hog the left lane of multilane highways and risk only a honk or dirty look. As of today, they can get an officer warning if they loiter in the left lane on roads outside cities. A year from today, they may draw a fine. Is this the most important measure the Legislature passed this year? No. But it puts the law on the side of those who’ve always taken care to use the left lane sparingly, for passing and left turns.
Last spring the city of Wichita didn’t get far in Topeka with a legislative proposal to allow higher fines for speeders along Kellogg and other statistically deadly roadways in the state, despite Kellogg’s 2008 death toll of seven. But last week city officials got some more ammunition, as part of a radar blitz that resulted in 22 citations on 60 mph Kellogg — one driver going 107 mph and another (with a revoked license) going 85 mph. Such recklessness defies belief and justifies officers’ special attention to Kellogg. But the question remains: Would a driver willing to go 107 mph and risk a $291 minimum fine be fazed by the threat of a $592 fine?
Faced with a deep state spending cut, the Kansas Board of Regents and the state’s universities had to find more money somewhere for the fall. Unfortunately, the natural place to look was to students and their families, in the form of newly approved tuition increases ranging from 3.9 to 8.5 percent. Wichita State University is to be credited for trying to use stimulus money to offset the pain with automatic scholarships for in-state students. Still, there’s no telling how many wannabe students will be deterred by any tuition increase — and there have been many this decade. Put “more affordable tuition” on the lengthening list of things the state needs to work on once the economy improves.
Even though the Senate seat he’s leaving next year has sparked a GOP family feud, Sam Brownback appears to have broken a cycle of GOP gubernatorial primaries going back at least six elections. The Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske hands it to the two-term senator in a column on today’s Opinion page: “Brownback has salted his conservatism with just enough pragmatism to give pause to even die-hard skeptics,” Kraske writes. He concludes: “Brownback is off to Cedar Crest. Here’s betting that with a few years of executive experience, he’ll try one more time for residence in another mansion — that big, white one in Washington, D.C.”
The Kansas Board of Regents had help in deciding to do the right thing and release the results of its audit of questionable financial transactions at Kansas State University. The release came after the Manhattan Mercury filed an open-records complaint with Attorney General Steve Six (in photo), whose office decided the audit should be public. “Shedding light on the transactions outlined in the audit helps to inform the public about the practices employed by the athletic department and will help Kansas State improve in the future,” Six’s spokeswoman, Ashley Anstaett, told the Kansas City Star. It shouldn’t take another open-records complaint to convince the regents to release the similar audits of the University of Kansas and Pittsburg State University under way.
Kansans may not be thinking much about the increasingly likely governorship of Sen. Sam Brownback starting in 2011, but other media observers are on it. The blog Feministing fretted: “Brownback equates reproductive rights with slavery, says rape and incest survivors shouldn’t have access to abortion, has opposed contraception access for low-income women, supported the global gag rule, and has backed a whole host of abortion restrictions. So, yeah, he’d be bad news for the women of Kansas.” And a Brownback item on the liberal American Prospect’s Tapped blog was headlined: “New Front in Abortion Wars: the Kansas Governor’s Mansion.”
“A no-comment day.” — Sen. Pat Roberts (in photo), R-Kan., as he and other Senate Republicans brushed off media requests Wednesday for reaction to news of Nevada Sen. John Ensign’s extramarital affair
“A wonderfully quiet town that is sometimes shocked into the limelight.” — KAKE News anchorman Larry Hatteberg, describing Wichita in Time magazine
“It’s like a guy coming up from the Triple-A trying to knock off a major leaguer.” — Kansas State University political science professor Joe Aistrup, on why Ron Thornburgh opted not to challenge Sam Brownback for the GOP gubernatorial primary
“Iraq and a lot of the skirmishes we are in are about energy. . . . We feel it makes more sense to put wind turbines on our prairie instead of our fine young men and women under the prairie.” — Kirk Lowell, executive director of CloudCorp, on the Meridian Way Wind Farm
“I really believe that, if the right decisions are made, Kansas can be the renewable energy capital of the world in the same way that we are the Air Capital of the World.” — Gov. Mark Parkinson
With the state’s university system facing a repair backlog and dollars limited, it seemed worth a try in 2007 for the Legislature to offer tax credits to those wishing to donate money for campus repairs. But in the tax credit’s first year, it generated $862,000 — nice but not enough to address a list of $825 million in projects. The problem is the economy, but it’s also the idea of contributing toward repairs. “It’s hard to make a tax credit for a boiler,” state Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said at a recent meeting of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction. Other funding sources, including bonding, have enabled the universities to do $26.2 million in deferred maintenance, according to the Lawrence Journal-World.
With Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh ending his long-declared campaign for governor Monday, saying that “a run for governor is not meant to be,” and the Kansas Democrats still without a candidate, Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., might want to start planning his 2011 inauguration. At this point, Brownback’s desired move from the Senate to Cedar Crest looks unimpeded.
One other tidbit on the gubernatorial front, from the Kansas City Star’s Steve Kraske: “Kansas Democrats are kicking the tires on a new name that’s surfaced for governor. That’s former CBS newsman Bill Kurtis, who resides, at least part of the time, at his Red Buffalo Ranch in the Flint Hills.” But Monday Kurtis told the Topeka Capital-Journal: “No, I am not running for governor. Not interested in it. I’m just trying to survive the depression. And judging from the success I’m having, I have no business handling anybody else’s money, let alone the taxpayers’.”
“I’ve come to appreciate that it’s not what people call you when you enter the room but what people say about you when you’ve left the room that counts.” — Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, addressing the Harvard Kennedy School’s graduating students (including her son Ned)
“I was a very dispensable quarterback.” — Sen. Sam Brownback, R-Kan., in La Cygne, recalling his gridiron days during a reunion of Prairie View High School’s class of 1974
“Someone has a sense of humor.” — Andrea White, spokeswoman for the Kansas Democratic Party, denying that the party placed an on Craigslist for Democrats to run for the U.S. Senate next year
“Madame Secretary, thank you for taking on this difficult job, leaving the beautiful state of Kansas. Today has been a Kansas day of appropriation hearings. Secretary (Robert) Gates testified this morning. He’s from Wichita and . . . he went to a very distinguished grade school. It’s called College Hill. Only went to the sixth grade. I went there not quite at the same time but the same school.” — Sen. Arlen Specter, D-Pa., who also incorrectly said during the Senate subcommittee hearing Tuesday that native Ohioan Sebelius was “from a town not too far from Russell”
Kansas newly tops the list of states most likely to switch party control between now and next November, according to the Washington Post’s Chris Cillizza. That’s because neither Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson nor his handpicked successor as lieutenant governor, Troy Findley, plans to run for governor in 2010, and Republican Sen. Sam Brownback wants the job, as does Republican Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh. Cillizza wrote: “To say Parkinson is handing this seat to Brownback would be an understatement.” Other states where the governor’s job soon could change party hands: Rhode Island, Nevada, Oklahoma, Hawaii, Tennessee, Florida, California, Michigan and Virginia.
Kansas lawmakers are right to be concerned about the rising costs of the seemingly endless Statehouse renovation. But is it really necessary to hire an outside company to do an audit of the project, a step to be considered this summer? Can’t somebody on the state payroll crunch the numbers? Worse, the company pitching the audit idea is based in Missouri. This is the kind of thing that drives taxpayers wild.
From the cries of concern in Wichita and around the state, it’s clear that lawmakers didn’t understand the potential impact of a recent decision to save money by capping tax breaks for historic renewal projects. And now it’s hard to trust that they know what they’re doing by waiting until January to address the problem. “It’s important to take our time and get it right,” said Senate Majority Leader Derek Schmidt, R-Independence, as the Senate declined to attempt a fix at last week’s “sine die” session. Times are tough, of course, but it will be tragic if the change proves to be the undoing, for example, of the Broadview’s renovation as a Drury Plaza Hotel or of other reinventions of historic properties in downtown Wichita.
“He shook us by the neck, turned us around. We call it the Wefald Revolution.” — Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., a Kansas State University alum, on retiring KSU president Jon Wefald
“Raise your hands if you are naked underneath that robe. I guess the chairman of the Board of Regents and I are the only ones.” — Retiring University of Kansas chancellor Robert Hemenway, in 2005, in one of many memorable commencement lines (one year he sang and last month he told graduates that on Twitter he’s known as “Bob-is-the-bomb-41”)
“I’m taking the heat. I’m the governor.” — Gov. Mark Parkinson, on the job of rebalancing the state budget after May’s $103 million revenue shortfall
Two Kansans were among the “top five political daughters with the most influence” on the Stimulist Web site. Second on the list was former Kansas Sen. Nancy Landon Kassebaum Baker (in photo), whose dad was former Kansas governor and 1936 GOP presidential nominee Alf Landon. “The second-longest serving woman senator in U.S. history, Kassebaum should be remembered by every female politician to come,” blogged Carlos Watson. Third place went to Health and Human Services Secretary Kathleen Sebelius, whose father was Ohio’s governor before she was Kansas’ governor. Watson wrote: “Could she challenge Hillary in 2016 to become the first female president? That probably depends on her success with health care reform. If, after 60 years of failure, Sebelius can . . . lead the change that gets this health care thing to work, she might just get a shot at the big desk.” The rest of the top five? House Speaker Nancy Pelosi (first), the late Indian Prime Minister Indira Gandhi (fourth) and Kennedy clan member and California first lady Maria Shriver (fifth).
“I don’t know if it was clear to her. Judging from some of her actions, I don’t know if anything’s clear to her.” — Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., asked if it was clear that House Speaker Nancy Pelosi knew about waterboarding
“I’ve never been the guy with the most money, never been the guy with the biggest name ID, but I’ve been the guy with the most friends.” — Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh (in photo), on his ability to beat Sen. Sam Brownback in the 2010 GOP primary for governor
“You don’t stop when you’re in the fourth and final phase, basically, of fixing your house.” — Sen. Jay Emler, R-Lindsborg, on the $285 million renovation of the Statehouse
Just as the Obama presidency has been a stimulus package for gun dealers, it has stepped up requests for concealed-carry permits in Kansas — to an average 45 per working day in 2009, compared with 23.6 per day in 2008 and 26.4 per day in 2007. “They are concerned about a lot of things and want to get a license before someone changes the law again,” Topeka concealed-carry instructor George Petersen told the Topeka Capital-Journal. So far, more than 4,000 of the 21,000 concealed-carry applicants to the Kansas Attorney General’s Office have been men ages 50 to 60, but six women older than 80 have sought permits. As of last week, the office had issued 19,100 licenses. That means the state is on track to have 20,000 concealed-carry permit holders by 2010.
“We think it’s way more important to bring jobs to Kansas in the year 2009 than to worry about what our own jobs will be in the year 2011.” — Gov. Mark Parkinson, referring to the choice he and Lt. Gov. Troy Findley have made not to run for their jobs next year
“It could be a GOP tsunami in 2010 in Kansas.” — Washburn University political scientist professor Bob Beatty, on the dearth of strong Democratic candidates
“There will be no cakewalks.” — Secretary of State Ron Thornburgh, a Republican running for governor, suggesting Democrats can’t be counted out in the gubernatorial and Senate races
The resignation this week of Tracy Taylor (in photo) as president and CEO of the Kansas Technology Enterprise Corp., effective June 30, provides a good opportunity to review and refocus KTEC’s mission and operations. A recent consultant’s report concluded that KTEC needed a clearer vision and focus and that it lacked transparency. Some lawmakers have also complained about the salaries of KTEC executives — Taylor was paid $280,000 a year. But rather than shut down KTEC and try to re-create some of its programs within the Kansas Department of Commerce, as former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius proposed, the state should find ways to make KTEC more effective.
“Increasingly, it appears that state Democratic Party chair Larry Gates will run for governor. And Democrats say they have a businessman in mind for the Senate.” — Kansas City Star columnist Steve Kraske
Though their numbers aren’t large, Democrats in the Kansas Legislature had a productive session this year, their leaders contend. Among the achievements cited were raising the state minimum wage, limiting cuts to public education, expanding unemployment benefits, and preventing pay cuts and furloughs for state employees. “By forming bipartisan coalitions within the House and Senate on multiple occasions throughout the session,” said House Minority Leader Paul Davis of Lawrence, “we were able to pass legislation that was important to both sides of the aisle — and to Kansans in need.”
Does the “D” after the names of Kansas’ minority party legislators stand for “denial” these days? Gov. Mark Parkinson and the new lieutenant governor, Troy Findley, have ruled out running for governor. So has Rep. Dennis Moore, D-Lenexa. And the Democrats’ appointed statewide officeholders, Attorney General Steve Six and Treasurer Dennis McKinney, haven’t even had a chance to run for their own seats yet, let alone aim for Cedar Crest. Yet House Assistant Minority Leader Jim Ward (in photo), D-Wichita, said: “We will have a very strong candidate for governor.” And House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, said: “We have a very good chance of winning.”
But who among them can possibly win against likely GOP nominee Sam Brownback, whose experience includes 12 years in the U.S. Senate, one term in the U.S. House and a run for president?
