August 2007
Aug. 30, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 27, 2007)Giving kids a good start
In several of the summer’s Kansas legislative interim committees a careful observer can detect the makings of a high-stakes scrap over children, basically from birth to kindergarten.
The issue? How to make sure that they are healthy and get a good start in school, and consequently, life. Addressed correctly—and nobody seems very sure just how that can be done by the state—we would wind up with children who get to kindergarten and their early grades in school ready to learn, with no health problems that haven’t been treated.
But this is the Kansas Legislature, so nothing is ever very simple, like finding where to start this experiment. Yes, it is an experiment because no state really seems to have a handle on how to intervene early during pregnancy to make sure that mothers are healthy and their babies will have the best possible chance of being born healthy.
Plus, there’s this gap between the last of the childhood inoculations just after age 2 and when the children show up for pre-kindergarten health checkups at age 5.
During that time gap, for many children there is just the parent or parents, or maybe friends and other relatives, who actually see the child. An experienced parent, of course, will be able to tell whether a child is developing skills such as eye-hand coordination, language skills, physical abilities and such that are normal. An inexperienced parent? How’s he/she going to know?
Finding problems with children early is a big payoff for the child’s future, of course, but also for local school districts and state government which helps finance that schooling.
House Speaker Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, who is becoming an expert in early childhood health, says that a dollar spent on prenatal care—it can be as simple as convincing a young mother to quit smoking during pregnancy—pays big dividends not only in the child’s intellectual development but in the cost of educating that child and seeing the child excel.
Everyone, of course, wants Kansas children to be healthy and ready to learn when they arrive at kindergarten or first grade, but how to get there is the puzzle.
Schools have an interest in starting their programs earlier, maybe age 3 or 4. That means expansion of programs, more teachers and more money.
On the health side, there are groups that want the early “fresh eyes” look at infants and children to gauge their abilities, development and potential problems to be done by the health-care industry.
But the problem for legislators gets complicated because at a political level the effort becomes one that interjects government, or its agents, into families. That’s always a tricky area. There are families and some religious organizations that don’t want contact with the government. But those same families might use government financed health-care services for their children if they needed it or might enroll special needs children in higher-cost special education programs if the need became apparent.
Probably the best possible outcome is to find a way to reach expectant mothers early, make sure they are healthy and live healthy lifestyles during their pregnancy. But finding those women and convincing them that their health and lifestyle have much to do with the health of their children is a massive task. Then there’s the observing of the children in the years before they sign up for school. Another daunting task.
But legislators, at least some of them, are starting to try to figure out how to do it. We’ll see what they come up with…
Aug. 23, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 20, 2007)Avert your eyes
Something interesting is either about to happen or specifically not happen when a legislative committee, assigned a passel of topics to research and consider during this off-session interim season, deals with legislative pay.
Oh, there’s also a piece of that assignment for study that deals with the pay of statewide elected officials, too.
But for legislators, the real issue is their pay for the 90 days or so that they spend in Topeka each winter and early spring and how to boost it in a way that either nobody notices, which is preferable politically, of course, or that makes the pay raise inevitable, something that they really can’t stop.
Legislators, the rank-and-file ones who count toward a quorum and get to vote on everything but really don’t do heavy legislative leadership chores, make just a dab over $17,000 a year. That’s split between salary, which is $86.50 a day, and “per diem” (or expenses), which is $99 a day.
Now, that might sound like quite a bit of pocket change, but it really isn’t if you have to rent an apartment or a hotel room for 90 days a year in Topeka, make the mortgage and taxes back home, and well, maybe send the spouse something nice on Valentine’s Day.
While each state has its own per diem schedule, the total compensation for legislators across the nation ranges from $100 a year in New Hampshire, which is basically small enough that nearly everyone can sleep in his/her own bed during a legislative session, to California, where it comes to nearly $111,000.
Kansas ranks—and legislators are always wondering where Kansas ranks in everything from altitude to the lettuce crop—No. 43 in legislative pay amongst the 50 states. That’s comfortably low enough that you’d think they would be bragging on it, but they don’t.
With the Kansas salary and per diem rolled together, legislators have seen their inflation-adjusted compensation nosedive over the past 30 years. Now, that’s something they might want to brag about. In 1975, legislators’ salaries and per diem totaled $12,052 in 1975-era dollars. That’s when you couldn’t find enough options for a new Mustang to make its price reach $3,000. Coffee was generally 25 cents a cup.
Well, legislative pay has gone up in terms of dollars, but if you do that inflation calculation, the $12,052 lawmakers earned in 1975 is worth about $6,651 now. Probably a little less, because the latest figures are from 2005, and we’re trying to think what got cheaper in the past two years…
Today’s legislative buying-power from salary and per diem has dropped by about $5,400, or 44% from 30 years ago.
Surprisingly, we guess, there aren’t dozens of cardboard boxes around the Statehouse where constituents can donate canned food for legislators who are in financial straits, and we haven’t noticed any candles and flowers surrounding pictures of legislators who are probably underpaid.
But fixing that? Well, that’s the trick. Nobody in the Legislature, especially heading into an election year, wants his/her name on a bill that would raise legislative salaries. Even if a bill got introduced through a committee and therefore didn’t have a prime sponsor’s name on it, chances are dim that it would go anywhere when it came to a roll-call vote—and all bills do.
Oh, those statewide elected officials’ pay? Their paychecks are smaller than in most states, too. That’s a different deal that might actually get some attention.
But legislative pay? Not unless every legislator agrees, essentially holds hands and leaps off a public relations cliff.
Or, unless everyone just looks the other way for a few minutes…
Aug. 16, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 13, 2007)
Back to school?Kansas legislators are just now starting to consider what could be a back-to-school horror story for the state in a few years.
No, it’s not schoolchildren bringing the wrong brand of glue or pencils on their first day of classes or even wondering whether their parents remembered to pack sandwiches for them.
It’s the nightmare that might happen if all the schoolchildren showed up, bright and shiny and ready to learn, and the teachers, or many of them, weren’t there.
That is what is becoming a looming problem for school districts across the state: Teachers, thousands of them, eligible for retirement in the next four or five years, not enough new schoolteachers entering the profession, and state law sending many of the wrong messages to teachers to keep them at their jobs.
The problem could see many rural schools and schools in cities where there are high percentages of poor children scramble to come up with enough teachers.
Much of the problem comes down to money, of course. Higher pay for schoolteachers is a simple solution, but there are other ways to address the problem that legislators are looking at.
One is providing mentors for those just starting what might be careers in the classroom. Those first couple years are daunting, teachers say, because they are finding out what works and what doesn’t work and how to present their information in a way that students will absorb. They also are learning the “softer” side of teaching, being aware of social issues in the classroom and managing on their own a couple dozen (or more) children who need to be managed.
Mentors, the “old hands” down the hall who have time to help those young teachers through their first two or three years, are crucial in preventing as many as a third of beginning teachers from leaving the job and finding other ways to make a living.
Mentoring is not a quick fix, though. Another part of the solution is working at the other end of the teaching spectrum—those teachers who are at or near the “rule of 85” threshold at which most Kansas teachers, if their age and years of service total 85, can retire on full pension.
Because teachers can reach that golden 85 number in their mid-50s if they have made teaching a career, they can and do retire while they still have at least a decade more time where they may teach more than 1,000 students.
The “rule of 85” was considered a solution in the early 1990s when there were lots of people entering the teaching profession—it gave districts a way to pension off older, more experienced but more expensive teachers at the top of their salary schedules. Districts 20 years ago just “backfilled” those retiring teachers with younger teachers who were lower on the salary schedule, therefore cheaper.
Now, that rule of 85 is letting teachers out the door in their mid-50s while there aren’t many fresh-faced new-hires coming in the front door.
Retire and go back to work? Not in the same school district, according to state law. If you do, there’s a $15,000 cap on what you can earn before losing your pension payments. Oh, you can move down the road, to another school district and both earn a salary and preserve your pension, but the district then has to pay more than 15% of your salary to the pension fund. That means that teachers returning to work in a different district start, essentially, at the bottom of the pay chart. Not much of an incentive, is it?
Look for legislators to do some fairly serious work to the state’s pension program probably next session to find ways to keep experienced teachers in the classroom after they’ve reached the “rule of 85” threshold.
Will it solve the shortage of new teachers? No. But it will give many school districts at least a little breathing time to figure out how to get more young teachers into the profession.
Solving part of the problem may be the best the Legislature can do next session. But it’s a start, the relatively easy first step to avoid the chilling possibility that in the next few years, schools could open across the state without enough teachers to reasonably be able to teach their pupils…
Aug. 9, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 6, 2007)Bridge fallout to reach Kansas Statehouse
The I-35 bridge collapse in Minneapolis we’ve been hearing about for the last week will likely have an effect in Kansas two years from now…one that has fiscal and political aspects that you’re not hearing much about.
The Kansas nexus: the state’s 1999 highway program expires in 2009 and for months legislators and the highway/bridge industry have been quietly talking about just what sort of highway program that the state should be planning now, or in the next session, or for sure the session after next.
Kansas is widely known for its superior highway system—just ask anyone who has crossed the state line into Missouri or traveled the country much, and Kansas roads win praise.
Remember, a key phrase about the 10-year highway program that is nearing its end has been to complete the full program promised to Kansans on time and on budget. So far, it’s working.
But the next highway plan will come at a time when legislators are increasingly conservative on spending. You don’t have to walk far in the Kansas Statehouse to hear laments about the evils of state debt—which translates into highway bonds.
Remember that nobody sells a bond for any purpose, highways or anything else, without a dedicated stream of revenue to make the bond payments. The vast majority of the state’s bonded debt is tied directly to a revenue source that bond-buyers are comfortable believing will pay off those bonds. But, all those bond payments represent money that is dedicated and not available for spending at the whim of the Legislature. And the Legislature likes “whim” money to spend.
If the nation, and Kansas, can stay spooked enough about the safety of bridges a couple things can happen. First, the Legislature can order K-DOT to spend more time and money on bridge inspections notwithstanding its current strict regimen of inspections. Enough attention to the Minneapolis bridge collapse that any legislator would forfeit his/her unfinished local highway project? Probably not. But maybe enough that some legislators who have already attended the ribbon-cutting on their local projects might stray and lose interest in much new construction.
Or, the Legislature might pick up on the catch-phrase of the week—“infrastructure”—and start talking not about much new construction but about maintenance and upgrades. You never go far wrong talking safety, of course, and there are enough old, not necessarily unsafe, but old and narrow bridges to gobble up billions of dollars in a 2009 highway plan and produce practically no new roads or bridges.
It’s hard to tell yet how many legislators are interested in “just maintenance” but you can be sure that the state’s economic development groups, highway lobby and contractors aren’t interested in “just maintenance.”
Kansas’ highway programs draw attention for different reasons. Some see new roads as vital to new commerce—think the multimodal rail-truck transfer facility and warehousing in Johnson County. And don’t forget the existing commerce in the southwest, where trucks into and out of beef processing plants pound the largely two-lane highways.
There are new roads, and yes, new bridges needed in Kansas, and sure, there are bridges that need to be replaced or rebuilt to handle heavier traffic.
But count on some legislators whose districts are in pretty good shape to figure that their constituents really don’t need much in the way of new roads or bridges. They aren’t going to be very interested in a multibillion dollar new highway plan. They can seize the Minneapolis disaster and take a fairly saleable stance that Kansas just needs to inspect its bridges, make repairs where necessary and leave it at that.
It will be a year or two before the new highway program—if there is one—takes shape. And what happened in Minneapolis will be a factor. Count on it.
Aug. 2, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers July 30, 2007)Power up
It was almost a shame that there wasn’t a bigger crowd when an obscure little government board, the Kansas Electric Transmission Authority, last week ordered up construction of a major electric transmission line in western Kansas.
That line, roughly from Dodge City to near Hays to maybe southern Nebraska, and a companion line that private industry plans to build in southern Kansas hold the keys to a lot of generally good stuff for Kansans who use electricity.
The KETA-authorized line would move electricity from north to south and create more usable electricity in western Kansas. Somehow, the physics of it creates a lot of new capacity to move electricity, taking load off lines that are near capacity limits and generally freeing up those electrons that lift our garage doors, fuel our air conditioners and power our welding machines.
The private-industry line, which KETA likes but didn’t do anything formal about, would take the shape of a check mark—about 160 miles long—from Kinsley to near Ashland to Wichita. It will become a major thru-way for wind power from southwest Kansas. One of the problems in southwest Kansas where there are some wind farms with more likely coming is that there isn’t a good way to get the power from southwest Kansas to points east, like Kansas City or Detroit or Chicago or other high-use areas.
It’s surprising, but Kansas really doesn’t now have good west-east electric transmission lines that would handle large outputs from wind farms in western Kansas. Sure, there are smaller lines that cross from west to east but nothing substantial that will get Kansas wind energy into the eastern power grid, where wind energy is in demand as an environmentally friendly source of power that utilities all want.
The privately financed line, by ITC Great Plains, creates that west-east transmission line that lets western Kansas wind energy be sold to users in the Midwest. Power experts say it might also nudge northward, from Texas and Oklahoma into Kansas, an important wind energy hub where it enters the national power grid for sale.
The dynamics of moving large amounts of electricity across the country are complicated, but because there is a user somewhere for nearly every volt of electricity generated, getting it to the end user is the key to keeping the nation’s lights lit.
And, that KETA transmission line might also create more capacity on smaller lines in northwest Kansas so if someone wants a wind farm up there, well, they can get the electricity to markets.
This KETA-approved line—KETA issued what is called an “intent to construct” notice—now gets advertised, and private transmission line companies can bid to build it.The state agency did most of the hard work. It’s computed that the line, which will probably cost more than $100 million, will be able to make enough revenue from carrying electricity that it will be profitable. And, if no entrepreneurs step forward, KETA can have the state issue bonds to build the line. KETA figures that the revenue from the transmission fees charged to use that line will pay for it. And, there are less tangible benefits to that KETA line—likely increased economic activity in western Kansas, confidence by businesses that there will be reliable power available.
Practically, nothing good happens in an area where there isn’t dependable, ample electricity for businesses, homes, farms, nearly any activity that creates an economic benefit.
Last week’s meeting? It was one of those low-visibility affairs that may have dramatic benefits for the state over the next few years, encouraging more energy production from wind and a better interconnect to the national electric power grid.
It’s all pretty heady and complicated stuff. But they did it right here in Kansas and now we just have to wait for wire to start being put on poles…