February 2007
Feb. 22, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 19, 2007)Who’s calling, please?
Sometimes it’s important for the Kansas Legislature to appear to be doing something that its constituents want, whether it’s actually doing anything or not.
A case in point: Those “robo calls” that pestered a lot of Kansans during the last election cycle.
You know what we mean: Those calls you get, generally on behalf of congressional candidates, telling you that Newt Gingrich or President Bush or the College of Cardinals is urging you to vote for one candidate or another.
They call them “robo calls” because they’re all computerized. One computer has a list of all the telephones in a congressional district and another computer contains the prerecorded message. When you turn them both on, they start making telephone calls and there’s virtually nothing you can do to stop them except get up from the dinner table, get the gist of what the call is about, and then hang up.
Now, they’re upsetting for a lot of people. They make some people so mad they’ll listen to the entire call to see who it’s from and then probably make a note to vote for anyone else in that election contest.
There’s actually not much of anything that the Kansas Legislature can do about those calls when the sponsors of the calls are seeking a federal office. The feds have their own laws about campaign activities.
But, on the off-chance that some Kansas candidates decide to get into the robo call business, the Legislature is working on bills that would address the problem—if you really think it’s a problem—on the state office campaign level.
One option that some found appealing was to require a real, live person to ask the person answering the phone in a voter’s house whether he or she would like to hear a little ditty about why the caller’s candidate is the best. The object there was to essentially shut down the calls because that intervention by a real live person would make the calls pretty expensive and campaigns wouldn’t be able to buy a lot of those calls. (Or, possibly the voice making that introduction would sound a lot like the person somewhere in southern Asia who helps you solve your computer software glitches.)
That idea, to price the calls out of the campaigns, generally isn’t going anywhere this session.
Next idea that legislators think that voters might believe is a real breakthrough in stopping the calls would be for those robo voices to say right from the start who is paying for the call and who the person with the checkbook wants elected or defeated. The idea there is that once you know you can make your own decision on whether to hang up or maybe learn some dirt on a candidate you don’t like or hear dirt from a candidate who you are prepared not to like because, well, because that person is dishing dirt in the first place.
And there’s another idea out there, to make sure that whoever pays for the call proclaims who he is and who he’s for at the end of the call. So, if you hang up, you were merely inconvenienced; if you liked what you heard, you know who brought you the good news, and if you don’t like what you heard, well, the rotten crew that brought you that information will be fresh in your mind when the message is over…so you can remember more easily whom you are against.
All of those options sound like the Legislature is doing something about those robo calls, which really aren’t a big deal in state office races anyway and which won’t apply to federal election contests that the Legislature can’t do anything about anyway.
But, it sure sounds like the Legislature is hot on the trail of those calls. Maybe that’s enough for some voters.
And, maybe you’ll get a robo call at some point, stressing what a good job the Legislature did…
Feb. 15, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 12, 2007)Getting it done right
There is a school of thought, and not an entirely bad one, that the Kansas Legislature isn’t good at doing complicated things well: Things which require projections into the future, technical things that the Legislature doesn’t actually do but encourages others to do, and figuring out how to pay for those future deeds.
Well, the Legislature may just have proven those doubters wrong.
In one of the most technically complicated, detail-riddled proposals of 2004, lawmakers decided they wanted to encourage enhanced 9-1-1- services statewide. No, not the simple, pick up your landline telephone at home, dial 9-1-1 and emergency services personnel will find where you called from and help you. The 2004 Legislature wanted Enhanced 9-1-1, which would enable you to press 9-1-1 on your cell phone when you need help and those emergency services people would find you and help you.
That’s a dramatically high level of service, and in 2004 the Legislature passed a bill to get that program started. When the Division of Legislative Post Audit recently investigated to see how that complicated program is doing, it found solid progress and not much in the way of problems.
Post Auditors found that every emergency dispatcher in the state is likely by the target date of 2010 to have bought and installed the gear that will allow it to locate the cell phone from which a call for help was made. That’s needle-in-a-haystack stuff that we’ve grown accustomed to seeing in movies and on TV shows but which by 2010 ought to be available right here in Kansas.
The money side of it: through June 30, 2010, landline phone users pay 75 cents a month, cell phones a total of 50 cents a month. That money sets up the electronic stuff to enable 9-1-1 services to get up and going, make the investment in hardware and software, and get everything moving. After July 1, 2010, the landline fees drop to 25 cents a month in counties with 125,000 or more persons and to 50 cents a month in smaller counties
Those landline and cell phone fees are roughly split between local Public Safety Answering Points (they call them PSAPs in technical jargon) and a statewide grant fund that doles out money to areas that need more money than their local phone users can generate for the hardware and technical equipment they need.
There are many moving parts here. The best news is that the auditors found that about half the PSAPs now and probably all but one by 2010 will be able to receive a 9-1-1 call, know who owns the cell phone and its billing address, and by using highly technical radio plotting be able to locate the cell phone from which the 9-1-1 call is being made.
That’s locating the phone—and you—nearly everywhere in the state you can make and receive a cell phone call. That’s at the supermarket, out hunting, on a roadway, wherever you can make a call, emergency services providers will be able to find you.
That’s pretty comforting. And, just three years into the program, it looks like it’s going to work.
The fees were adequate, figuring out who pays how much was pretty well spot-on, and there’s a pretty dramatic step toward public safety being made.
Now, there may be some fine-tuning needed in the next year or so—a handful of counties don’t have enough cell phone users to finance the ongoing E-9-1-1 service for just 50 cents a month, some would require more than $1, but that’s fine-tuning stuff.
Complicated, technical stuff that blends futuristic electronics, finance and training? The Legislature appears to have gotten it done right this time.
Feb. 8, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 5, 2007)Lots of ducks
Stop me if you’ve heard this one before:
“A guy walks into a bar with a duck under his arm…”
Of course, you’ve heard jokes that start that way. Thousands of them do.
But the point is that if you buy the premise that is being offered as the basis for the joke, chances are you’ll buy the joke. It’s that simple. It requires a brief leap of faith.
That’s about what we’re seeing in the State Board of Regents’ deferred maintenance furor.
Sure, the buildings on the state’s campuses are aging and many of them are in need of repair. That’s not a real leap of faith, is it?
Now, whether there is more than $800 million worth of absolutely, positively needed repairs, that’s something that probably requires some examination, and for all the publicity that the Regents get for burst pipes on campuses and that Frankenstein-style electric switch buried in the nether regions of some campus or other, not many in the Legislature are ready to write a check for repairs until there’s some semblance of order established: what needs to be done now, what can be done later.
Sometime, probably in the next month or two, the Legislature will have enough information to make a reasonable estimate of what needs to be fixed and what it will cost.
Now, the money for the repairs? That’s a real issue once the actual amount needed is demonstrated to lawmakers.
The easiest money out there? About $70 million or so for the Legislature to pay off the 1995-era “Crumbling Classrooms” bond issue. If the state would take over the payment of the bonds, it would free up the roughly $30 million a year that a dedicated property tax yields the Regents for, well, maintenance of its facilities.
The House proposes to use an unexpected torrent of state tax revenue for that purpose: Put it in a “lockbox” to pay off the bonds and let the Regents use its dedicated property tax revenue stream for new repairs and maintenance. Gov. Kathleen Sebelius proposes the same thing, but she won’t use the word “lockbox” because, well, legislative Republicans have claimed the word and she just won’t use it. All in all, though, it’s really not new money.
Sebelius proposes allowing Regents to obtain low-interest loans from the state’s Pooled Money Investment Board, which presides over the state’s idle funds. Sebelius says let colleges borrow the money at low-interest rates and repay it as quickly as possible. Think of it as a payday loan for Regents. The rates are low, the borrowing period is short and nobody gets hurt. It’s almost an invisible transaction as long as the loans are repaid.
The big issue: where’s the fresh money for the Regents repairs? It was Sebelius who proposed a seven-year program of 5 percent increases in Kansas Turnpike tolls.
Who doesn’t like it? Turnpike users, but probably not the car drivers as much as the big truck drivers. Truckers figure the tolls into their cost-of-business, and it squeezes profits unless they can pass it on to shippers, and some will be able to, many won’t. Folks who don’t regularly use the Turnpike? Why should they care? And who cares if they care?
There’s also this presumption that “what happens on the Turnpike stays on the Turnpike” and that using Turnpike money for something that isn’t related to roads is somehow inappropriate.
It would be like the grocer spending money earned by selling food to, say, send his kids to college. Or buy a boat, or a hat. Not much of an argument. And let’s not forget, it’s the state’s Turnpike. This is not stealing money from the collection plate.
What happens? Well, there are lots of ducks under lots of arms on this one. We’ll see which ones the Legislature will buy to make the joke work…
Feb. 1, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 29, 2007)Rardin? Kriegshauser?
The Kansas House of Representatives is about to start one of the most politically sensitive expeditions that a legislative chamber can face: settling a close election.
It hasn’t made much news yet, but the issue is who was actually elected to the Johnson County 16th House District in November.
The race is one in which several-term Rep. Jim Yonally, R-Overland Park, a moderate among the House’s Republicans, was defeated at the primary election by considerably more conservative challenger John Kriegshauser.
That was an upset, and when Kriegshauser faced off in the November general election against Democrat Gene Rardin, a close vote was expected.
Well, did it ever get close. Rardin won by four votes in a heavily Republican district, and after a challenge and a lawsuit, a Johnson County District Court Judge produced ”findings of fact” that Rardin had indeed won, by two votes, 4,131-4,229.
The reason that the House faces a tough decision is that it is the House, by majority vote, decides just who its members are. Now, the House doesn’t upset runaway elections or even close ones, but it does get involved in ones that have been through a court proceeding. The court essentially isolated a handful of votes that may or may not be strictly legal.
So a House committee to be appointed this week will start examining those questioned votes, who cast them, whether all the proper legal steps were taken by the voters, and, well, whether they’re going to count in the razor-close race.
Oh, the House that makes the final decision? It’s 78 Republicans and 47 Democrats, including Rardin, who has been serving as the 16th District representative since this legislative session began.
Here’s where the dangerous politics comes into play. The special committee, which will be half Republicans and half Democrats, will have 10 days to study the ballots, the issues, the real addresses of the voters involved, and figure out who the committee believes won. That report goes to the full House for a vote to decide who gets the seat.
Rardin, of course, by that time will have spent nearly a month in office, have the letterhead and business cards, and be pretty well up and running. Kriegshauser will have to catch on to what’s going on, probably by watching the newspapers.
Now, maybe the committee will look at the ballots, and there’s just nothing amiss, and Rardin is proposed to keep his seat. But, what if there are some ballots that are a little tricky, that experienced legislators who live and die by the ballot box have real questions about? What if those change the totals?
That’s where the real problem could arise, one that will see the Republican lawyers for Kriegshauser working the halls, talking “benefit of the doubt” and that Republicans lost five seats in the House last election (including the 16th District) and a congressman and an attorney general, and it’s time to attend to the party.
That’s where things get politically interesting. Democrats clearly have the upper hand, they’ve seen their candidate through a lot of recounts, and Rardin continually wins.
But even if there was some outrageous error that would tip the votes to Kriegshauser, Republicans would not only have to explain to the full House the errors, but convince the public that there was really a problem. That would be an uphill battle.
Republicans would say they’ve done justice to voters of the 16th District, Democrats would say the House Republican majority stole the election.
Bipartisanship? It’s then out the window in the House. Democrats statewide, or at least in Johnson County, could wave (Rardin’s) bloody shirt and use the decision as a rallying cry for a county that is becoming increasingly moderate, still Republican, of course, but full of moderate Republicans who probably would prefer Rardin to Kriegshauser.
Yes, this could be just a routine House vote…but we’re not counting on that.