(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers July 27, 2015)
Now, when it’s summertime and finding news in the Statehouse isn’t easy, it takes a little chutzpa to fill a room with reporters, even the governor’s ceremonial office where the chief executive officers of the state hold their press conferences.
It became clear last week that Gov. Sam Brownback and his staff are clever enough to do it.
First, of course, you trickle out information about what the governor is going to talk about. That’s called chumming the water—the list of topics is the food.
Usually, those press conference announcements just say that the governor will be there, wearing a clean shirt and ready to chat. Most of those “press availabilities” wind up dealing with the Legislature, a natural disaster or the appointment of someone to some important state job.
That’s enough to get the regular Statehouse press corps—generally those of us with reserved parking spaces in the bottom level of the Statehouse’s underground parking garage where during the session legislators get to park.
But last week, Brownback’s staffers decided they’d like a little bigger audience than the “regulars” so they announced the press conference with a little more detail sure to draw press from around the state to Topeka.
And, what is generally a three TV-camera press conference became a seven-camera event.
The offerings?
Arming employees at state-operated National Guard posts and recruiting stations in response to the killings at a Tennessee National Guard base and recruiting station. Brownback wants to see whether arming workers and employees at Kansas Guard facilities would protect those Kansas soldiers from attack and drive-by shootings.
And, of course, there is the reaction to the videotaping at a lunch of a Planned Parenthood official discussing the prices for tissues from aborted fetuses. Lots of interest there, Kansas is an antiabortion state, it’s a strong Republican issue and it shows that Brownback is looking into possible legislation next session, an election-year session for members of the House and Senate when it’s likely that the strongly antiabortion legislature can agree with Brownback on something…
The school finance issue? This one broke both ways…with Brownback asserting that Kansas schoolteachers average about $7,000 a year more in earnings than Missouri teachers, but the actual numbers probably aren’t as strong as the Brownback chart indicated, because each state’s K-12 education agencies count that average income differently. It took what was a teacher salary issue important enough to create that chart into the weeds, an important part of the governor’s assertions that he has put more money into school finance.
The school finance issue remains complicated, though, after the hour-long press conference that started at 3 p.m.; there’s a chance that if the governor had just started his press availability an hour later reporters probably couldn’t have chased down Missouri education officials on a Friday after the 5 p.m. quitting time. Probably a strategic error here, facts—whatever they turn out to be this week—notwithstanding. An hour would have probably would have reaped Brownback less criticism over the weekend when there wasn’t a lot of other news going on.
The hard news of the press conference? It was “come back next week” for the list of $50 million in budget cuts that the administration, or at least its recently rechristened “Director of Budget and Business Processes” Shawn Sullivan, will identify to bring the projected State General Fund balance at the end of this fiscal year to a paltry $67 million instead of the change-under-the-sofa-cushions $17 million in a $6.371 billion budget.
Politically? Probably at least break-even for the governor except for the teacher salary and ending balance issues. But at least we learned Brownback can’t really imagine himself endorsing Donald Trump for the GOP presidential nomination…oh, and that Brownback doesn’t believe Donald Trump has his cell phone number…