July 2000

July 27, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers July 24, 2000)

OK, we Railsters know that there is predicted by some to be a big rush to the polls to vote next Tuesday on members of the State Board of Education.

We're not sure that massive tidal wave of voting is going to occur. In fact, we can't recall the last time anyone even bothered to break out aclean shirt to vote on SBE races.

At any rate, we're figuring that if the makeup of the board chances significantly, there are going to be major changes in the state standards for testing students on science. It's basically a choice between Adam and Eve and the development of thumbs over time. The real deal there is that the whole science standards issue probably will be voted on by the State Board of Education and over with by about February 2001.

But there is a bigger fish to fry before the SBE in the next two years...one that will represent a major change in the authority of the board in deciding who gets to teach the state's children. And so far, that big change, which would establish a new licensing board with new standards for winning a teaching credential, may be the real indicator of whether Kansas is going to continue electing the state board.

The change is proposed by the Kansas Commission on Teaching and America's Future, a little-known board appointed by Gov. Bill Graves four years ago. That commission earlier this month rolled out in a sparsely attended press conference its goal of passage of a state constitutional amendment to take the power to credential teachers from the grip--thumbs or not--of the SBE and hand it to an industry-dominated licensing board.

Railsters figure that if the SBE ever loses the authority to determine who gets a license to teach in Kansas, well, the board has pretty well devolved into a popularly elected social group, which can get together once a month and comment on the weather and relative humidity and then pack up and return home until the next month.

What would an independent, non-elected state teacher licensing board really do? A couple things. It would have the authority to determine the supply of teachers in the state. And you know the routine there: many teachers, low salaries; few teachers, higher salaries. Teacher colleges are enthused about the idea, and so is the Kansas-National Education Association.

School districts? Well, they're waiting in the wings to see how this major shift of authority over the elementary and secondary education industry plays out.

The Commission on Teaching and America's Future now is waiting for the State Board of Education elections. Actually, Tuesday's primary election ought to tell the story of whether the group will try to encourage the SBE to go along with the major authority shift and endorse a constitutional amendment that will put the education industry in charge of credentialing teachers, or whether the commission is going to have to try to steamroller the board and encourage Kansas voters to strip its power away when it comes to determining who has the right stuff to teach Kansas children.

There's a ripple effect to allowing an industry-dominated board to determine who gets to teach in Kansas. It means that school superintendents are going to have smaller lists to choose from when it is time to hire new teachers. It means higher salaries and it means higher school district budgets.

And it will also mean that whenever your family tree included its first thumbed ancestor, you'll get to use your thumb to write bigger checks to your local school board for what is presumed to be paychecks for smarter, more highly trained schoolteachers for your children.

That might just be a good trade.

July 20, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers July 17, 2000)

Let's skip around a little bit today, from candidates and then to the State Board of Education, and then, well, to whatever's left in the bottom of the net.

Now, let's begin with what you'd have to call an inauspicious start to the 23rd District House race of Doug Lytle, a Republican who runs a cabinetmaking shop in Johnson County. Nice enough guy, good haircut, just a hint of a cleft chin, but it turns out that he'll be voting for the first time, probably, in the Aug. 1 primary, when he is on the ballot against Rep. Rep. Judy Morrison, R-Shawnee.

At age 31, seems he's never voted before. H'mmm... Now, this might be a tactic that will work in Johnson County, where voters there don't do a lot of primary election voting anyway...but Railsters are thinking that it probably won't work there either.

There's nothing wrong with people starting political activity at any age, we guess, but his excuse--too busy starting businesses and aiding economic development--surely isn't going to work. If it does, then we've got a problem, Houston.

...Although, at a Saturday morning Johnson County Republican "Shake and Bake" event, where candidates paid $150 apiece to put up a card table on a blazing hot black asphalt parking lot in hopes voters would stream by, Railsters noticed that there were virtually no voters showing up. But...maybe those voters who didn't show up are Lytle's natural constituents. And, maybe all the non-voters who weren't there either are a potent Johnson County support group, if Lytle can figure what to do with them on election day...
***
Reporters spend a lot of time tossing out questions hoping for a "gotcha" answer, one that will make a snappy quote, or better yet, what we call a monumental gaffe that will allow us to make fun of the candidate for the rest of the campaign.

Well, we tried last week when the State Board of Education, which is still being regularly beaten up for its science standards, dealt with standards for teaching foreign languages in Kansas elementary and secondary schools.

It was board member Linda Holloway, of Shawnee, who was asked whether there was a "Tower of Babel" issue in the teaching of foreign languages...and for about a half-second, you could see in her eyes that she was considering the possibility, before just grinning and saying, "No, no problem at all."

Rats. See, reporters hate to to throw out the hook and have the suspect fish spit it back at them with no embarrassing quote attached. But don't worry, reporters will keep tossing hooks at public figures to see what we can catch...
***
Remember the talk about "securitization" of the national tobacco settlement that is supposed to provide Kansas with at least $1.6 billion over the next 25 years? The concept is relatively simple, that the state issue bonds--pretty high-risk bonds paying a relatively high rate of interest--that would be supported solely by the annual tobacco company payments.

The tradeoff: Kansas would have gotten cash-in-hand, which Railsters were always told is the very best sort of cash, and that bond-buyers would either profit handsomely or not, based on the fortunes of the nation's cigarette makers.

It worked out to something like $400 million cold cash in hand, and then state officials would not have to go to bed each night saying a little prayer for the financial health of tobacco companies. Well, last week's Florida tobacco lawsuit verdict pretty much KOs the securitization of Kansas' tobacco money revenue stream. And tosses into the category of "iffy" whether the state will get its $1.6 billion over the next quarter-century.

In hindsight--always 20-20--it looks like the state may have missed out on a good deal because some members of the Kansas House couldn't be brought up to speed on the concept quickly enough, and too many of them feared that someone was going to make a profit out of the deal.

July 13, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers July 10, 2000)

Gov. Bill Graves, who is generally considered one of the state's most polite governors in recent years, has about a week to deal ruthlessly with an Area Agency on Aging to prove that he won't stand for Kansas senior citizens being political pawns of politicians' election-year games.

Graves? Ruthless? Railsters are trying to recall the last time we have been able to put that adverb and that noun in the same sentence.

But the challenge is there, and for a governor who is in the last two years of his last term, and for a governor who has made much of his intention to provide appropriate care for the state's senior citizens, he has little choice.

As the story is developing, a rogue Area Agency on Aging headquartered in Manhattan, and serving senior citizens in more than a dozen northcentral Kansas counties, has done some long division. And that long division has yielded a decision that based on a couple days' experience, the agency won't have enough money in a special account from which home services are provided to the elderly near-poor, to handle all of the seniors services this winter.

Just days into the state's new fiscal year, and with more than half a million dollars sitting in an account, the North Central Flint Hills Area Agency on Aging computed that by year's end, it would run out of money, and therefore, ought to start putting seniors who need some simple home-based services, such as help with grocery shopping, laundry and housekeeping, on a waiting list to get those services. Just a week into Fiscal Year 2001, the AAA bank account is full now, and that agency, in fact, all Area Agencies on Aging in the state, will square up accounts in January, and then money will be either reshuffled or new money appropriated to care for the seniors.

But the agency started the waiting list, which now numbers, we understand, just two people, and Graves and his Secretary of Aging Connie Hubbell are clearly mad. Mad that clients aren't getting the services that the AAA contracted to provide, mad that they weren't told about the waiting list before two senior citizens were made to feel like beggars who were being stiff-armed by bureaucrats, and mad that a state senator responded politically to the situation.

Graves wants the senior citizens taken care of--he reshuffled his budget last year to make sure that would happen and he convinced the Legislature to spend the money to take care of the waiting lists that were a major political issue last (non-election) year--and believed he was done with it.

Hubbell says there is enough money available to the AAA to care for those two waiting senior citizens, and wants them served. The contract with the AAA requires that it serve the elderly as long as it has a dime in the account, and she wants the contract lived up to.

And the senator, Harry Stephens, D-Emporia, predictably, wants the seniors who might or might not be his constituents, served, and wants the governor to wade into the issue, and be seen as a defender of the elderly in his senatorial district. Stephens' letter to Graves, which the governor received after parts of it had been published in a newspaper, was unremarkable. It went, roughly, yada, yada, yada, don't abandon the elderly...

While Graves was visibly and verbally angry at Stephens, the senator, who was appointed (note: not elected) two years ago to fill out the Senate term of retiring Jerry Karr, D-Emporia, probably responded as a matter of instinct to a constituent problem. Maybe he should have called Graves first, but it was a pretty natural, predictable, political response to a waiting list that Stephens believed he had voted to make sure didn't reoccur.

What does the governor do? Probably the smartest thing is to deal...ruthlessly...with the Area Agency on Aging. Get the two senior citizens into programs to allow them to stay in their homes, and make an example of the AAA. Put it on probation, threaten to jerk the contract if this stuff happens again, pressure its board of directors to re-survey the AAA management and keep a close eye on the agency for the remaining two years in Graves' term.

Because if Graves doesn't, he's going to see state budget policy being made not from Topeka, but from the headquarters of AAAs, of rural water districts, of counties and school districts that are going to make his last two years in office miserable.

And there goes the possibility of two years of politeness...

 

July 6, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers July 3, 2000)

We’ve reached the time when you, if you are registered to vote, can start expecting real information from candidates who want your vote. That’s real information, not cute, puppyish babytalk, that “I’m not a politician” junk, or “I will just represent the people of my district” jumble.

Sorry to be cranky, but there was actually a Republican 3rd District congressional candidate whose staff over the just-passed Independence Day weekend was offering up the explanation that “he isn’t a professional politician” as if that was some sort of virtue.

By this time in any campaign, any candidate who is still saying he or she is not “a politician” is probably a very poor choice for your vote.

They might be personally very nice, have a charming smile, all their hair and a picture postcard family, but they are either inexplicably on the wrong career path--successful candidates grow up to be politicians--or, we guess, they are just not bright, and would likely be an impediment to governance. We believe that a friend or relative, or maybe a person holding the candidate’s durable power of attorney, should have interceded in there somewhere between the candidate acquiring the filing fee and the actually paying over the money to get on the ballot.

Now, at least on the state level, do you really want to send a coy “not a politician” to the Statehouse which is filled with politicians? How about, if that is a good idea, send a representative or senator who doesn’t speak English? That would be just as efficient, and you’d never have to worry about getting your highway bypass, or permission for a local option sales tax to keep the town from flooding after a heavy dew, or to prevent its high school from being traded off to another school district.

Yes, that would be just...precious.
***
By this time of year, also, it’s too late for candidates to say they aren’t really familiar with issues that you can expect they will deal with if elected to public office.

Now, Railsters, who hang on every nuance of policy decision, and who actually care which fiscal year expenditures fall into, probably aren’t the right people to talk to about this, but most voters should be able to get a very clear indication of what a candidate is for or against on most issues by this time in the election cycle.

If a candidate can’t express in a way you can clearly understand positions on basic issues, then, again, sadly, that candidate is probably not a good choice.

It means that the candidate either hasn’t really kept up with current events, or more dangerously, can’t or doesn’t bother to. If the candidate is a first-timer, an “amateur,” then you can quickly tell whether he or she is playing way out of their league. It’s the simple truth that if you know enough about an issue to pose an intelligent question, you can probably tell in your gut whether the answer you get back is a good faith attempt to answer it.

Get the feeling in your gut that you really didn’t get an answer? Then why would you vote for that person? It means either that at least on this issue, the candidate wouldn’t tell you something that he or she doesn’t think you want to hear, or that the candidate just doesn’t know the issue. It’s getting late to not know issues.

Is that the one you want to send to Topeka?

Everyone likes a fast learner, but by this time, a candidate ought to have learned enough about the most frequently asked questions to have some basis for answering questions. But, elect a candidate who is either lazy about learning issues, or just not communicative, and you get what you deserve. Look for your district to be sliced and diced in reapportionment.
***
Last, don’t be the least bit supportive of candidates who don’t have a primary election and expect you to believe that they don’t need to have positions on issues before the results of the Aug. 1 primary election are known. That leads to the presumption that the candidate doesn’t know what he or she thinks about issues now. And, even sillier, it logically leads to the presumption that just believing the opposite of what the winner of the other party’s primary election believes is a reason to vote for them.

That’s just dumb.