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.
President Obama joined the criticism of IRS officials who targeted tea party groups for special scrutiny, saying it was “outrageous” and “contrary to our traditions and people have to be held accountable.” Obama added: “I have got no patience with it. I will not tolerate it, and we’ve got to find out what happened with it.” An inspector general’s report on the matter has yet to be released.
A new report from the AFL-CIO ranks Kansas as the 10th deadliest state for workers in 2011. Kansas had 78 workplace deaths in 2011 (7 fewer than in 2010). That’s a rate of 5.9 fatalities per 100,000 workers, compared with the nationwide rate of 3.5. Kansas also had 34,400 injuries or incidents of job-related illness. The study blames the poor record in part on a lack of safety regulations and inspectors. It said that Kansas had only 14 federal job safety inspectors and no state inspectors, and that those federal inspectors inspected only 786 of the state’s 87,223 work establishments in fiscal year 2012. But job accidents are also associated with certain types of work. States with significant mining, oil and gas extraction and agriculture sectors have higher job-fatality rates.
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.”
Good for Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, for trying to lower costs and increase innovation in the general aviation industry. Pompeo and four other lawmakers have introduced the Light Aircraft Revitalization Act, which would implement regulatory changes recommended by a Federal Aviation Administration committee of aviation authorities and industry representatives. Congress needs to review these recommendations to make sure they wouldn’t compromise safety. But Pompeo contends that the slow and burdensome certification process keeps products out of the market that could actually improve safety.
“Mainstream media are alarmed by reports that billionaires Charles and David Koch are considering the purchase of Tribune Company’s eight daily newspapers, including the Los Angeles Times,” columnist Cal Thomas wrote. Reportedly, about half of the L.A. Times staff said they would quit if the Kochs bought the paper. “That should make things easier for the Kochs,” Thomas wrote. “They can start by replacing liberal quitters and others whose ideology has turned off conservative readers. They could hire reporters and editors who will try to win back readers and advertisers by providing the type of ideologically balanced coverage they seek.”
It’s hard to know what to make out of the wildly varying rates hospitals charge for the same procedures – other than that it shows how dysfunctional our health care system is. As the Eagle reported today, costs related to joint replacement ranged from $5,300 at a hospital in Ada, Okla., to $223,000 at a hospital in Monterey Park, Calif. Prices at Wichita hospitals and surgery centers also vary greatly, even between Via Christi Via Hospital on St. Teresa and Via Christi Hospital on St. Francis. Hospital officials warn that many factors are involved in pricing, including the health of the patient and whether the patient was admitted through the emergency room. Also, some hospitals charge higher because they have to cover the cost of training future doctors or providing charity care. They also note that few people pay the “list price” for procedures. Still, this complicated pricing system is part of the problem.
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was one of only 27 senators to vote Monday against the Internet sales tax bill. Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan, missed the vote because of speaking commitment but supports the measure. As Moran noted earlier, the bill is about leveling the playing field between online retailers and brick-and-mortar vendors. States also lost $23 billion in sales tax collections last year on out-of-state Internet, catalog and mail order sales, according to a study by the National Conference of State Legislatures. The bill faces tougher odds in the House, where many lawmakers are afraid to vote for anything that might be considered a tax increase. But as Moran has said, “The legislation will not impose a new tax on the Internet or anyone. It will, however, protect small businesses and empower states with the ability to control fiscal policy as they see fit.” The Kansas House delegation should back
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.
Is there more to the suspension of the senior class president at Wichita Heights High School than what school officials have said? They suspended Wesley Teague (in photo) for the rest of the school year and barred him from most graduation activities for what assistant principal Monique Arndt said were “very inappropriate tweets about the Heights athletic teams, aggressively disrespecting many athletes.” But the tweets seemed quite benign. The problem seemed to be the overreaction of some other students. School officials have a difficult job maintaining a safe and healthy school environment, but this punishment seems much too harsh.
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?
Bryan Robert Whitney is seeking the Democratic nomination for the 2014 District 1 congressional race against Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, the Hutchinson News reported. In addition to Huelskamp’s campaign war chest of more than $500,000 and the large GOP advantage in voter registrations, Whitney faces another challenge: He lives in Wichita, which is in District 4. The U.S. Constitution allows Whitney to run for any Congressional seat in the state, as long as he lives in the state. He grew up in District 1, graduating from Syracuse High School, and plans to move back to the district in 2015 after his wife graduates from the University of Kansas Medical School in Wichita. But Whitney acknowledged that not living in the district during the campaign “will be difficult.”
The account of the three mission women being recued yesterday in Cleveland is incredible. Amanda Berry (right in photo), who was kidnapped 10 years ago, was able to scream for help, and a neighbor kicked in the door of the house where the women had been held captive. She then called 911, telling the dispatcher: “I’ve been kidnapped and I’ve been missing for 10 years and I’m, I’m here, I’m free now.” Police found the two other women in the house. The owner of that house and his two brothers have been arrested.
Benghazi will be back in the news this week, as a U.S. House committee will hold more hearings on the Sept. 11, 2012, attack on the U.S. embassy in Libya. Testimony by State Department whistleblowers is expected to contradict some earlier accounts by Obama administration officials. For example, Gregory Hicks, the deputy The deputy of slain U.S. Ambassador Christopher Stevens, maintains that a team of Special Forces prepared to fly to Benghazi during the attacks was forbidden from doing so by U.S. Special Operations Command South Africa, CBS News reported.
Good for Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., for leading an effort to provide more oversight of pharmacy compounding, which now is mostly unregulated. Roberts has been working for more than 10 years to strengthen regulations regarding the mixing of medications, but the issue received more urgency after dozens of people died last year from an outbreak of spinal meningitis linked to contaminated steroid injections prepared by a compounding company in Massachusetts. “It really is unfortunate that 53 people have to die and 700 get sick before we have the will to do this,” Roberts said. Though Roberts is normally leery of more regulations, he recognizes that this is needed for public safety. “We just have to get it done,” he said. He’s right.
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.”
Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., is tired of the protracted battle over the planned memorial to Dwight D. Eisenhower (in photo) in Washington, D.C. Congress authorized the construction of the memorial in 1999, and its design was approved in 2010. But some Eisenhower family members oppose the design, as do some other critics who want a more classical memorial. Roberts, who is a member of the Eisenhower Memorial Commission’s executive board, approves of the design and wants to start construction, the Topeka Capital-Journal reported. “It’s a highly deserved memorial,” Roberts said. “It fits Eisenhower’s life and what he would have wanted.” Carl Reddel, executive director of the memorial commission, was in Wichita last week trying to generate support for the project, noting how the design highlights Ike’s Kansas roots. Roberts said that it is time to move on the project, “or else we’ll see another decade go by without an Eisenhower memorial.”
“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
“The unfailing reverence on the American right for Ronald Reagan is understandable,” wrote conservative columnist Jennifer Rubin. But it also has bound the right to “policies and positions that were time-specific.” Rather than being a “Ronald Reagan historical society,” the GOP needs to attract “a diverse, media-savvy generation that understands the America we actually live in,” she wrote, adding that “only then can the essence of conservatism – the promotion of personal liberty – survive, and the GOP along with it.”
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.
