June 2000

June 29, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 26, 2000)

You may recall press accounts of passage of a lobbying "reform" bill that was popularly believed to require lobbyists to commit the names of legislators whose meals they bought to a permanent, official, politically charged record.

This was supposed to "clean up the mess in Topeka," or some such.

It was widely hailed by some as a groundbreaking step by the Legislature, and somehow, as a comfort to constituencies from Johnson County to Johnson City whose own legislators, certainly, couldn't be corrupted by a meal and a drink, or a round of golf or tickets to a concert, but who had a suspicion that those "other" legislators maybe could.

Now, frankly, us Railsters, who hang out at the Statehouse as a vocation, weren't much impressed with this hair-shirt mentality. But, 108 House members and 31 senators thought it was either a good idea, or would look good on a brochure, so they passed it. We Statehouse denizens don't believe that more than a handful of votes in the past quarter-century have been much influenced by a meal or a drink.

But, the concept, remember, was to put lids on how much lobbyists can spend and make them produce records of who got it, so the bill was passed and signed into law.

So, along a line of opinions issued by the Governmental Ethics Commission, we're starting to get a handle on just what's possible under the new ethics "lobbyists-meals" law.

Now, remember that no matter how loudly they complain about it, legislators really don't mind a nice meal or a drink or a round of golf. They would just prefer that their constituents not know who is paying for it. Nobody wants to show up on a public document that will, in just two or four short years, wind up in a campaign opponent's brochure.

So, there's No. 1. Keep the legislator's name off the public record. (Oh, and those records were never going to show, for example, whether a legislator drank single-malt Scotch, or just bar Scotch, or even just iced tea. That isn't going to happen.)

No. 2, of course, is still find a way for lobbyists to be sociable, friendly, and ready to spring for a dinner tab, while of course, observing rule No. 1.

Two issues come into play here. First, if a lobbyist doesn't spend more than $100 per lobbyist reporting period (that's monthly during the legislative session when lawmakers are not only hungry, but all milling around the Statehouse) then nothing substantial has to be reported to anyone. Just "$95 on hospitality" or something like that.

Now, if a lobbyist spends more than $100 per reporting period per client, then the lobbyist has to report on whom they spent the money. Once the $100 threshold is reached, everything has to be reported. So, if a legislator had a $12 lunch with a lobbyist on, say, Jan. 1, and by Jan. 31, the lobbyist had spent more than $100 on legislators, everything gets reported. Even the poor schmuck who figured that the one little lunch wouldn't show up anywhere.

But remember, a lobbyist is just someone who represents a client. And it is the client for whom the lobbyist is spending the money on the legislator.

So, one client, $101 spent in a month during the legislative session, and everything gets listed. But, if that lobbyist has, say, five clients, and keeps the bookwork straight and apportions the cost across all clients in a reasonable manner, the lobbyist can spend up to $500 a month without having to report any individuals' names. Because, of course, it's the client's money the lobbyist is spending. And, if a lobbyist has, say, five clients, then the $100 per legislator per year ceiling on hospitality (food, drinks, entertainment with the lobbyist present) becomes $500 per legislator, and the $40 a year limit on gifts becomes, let's see, $200.

So, how does this work. Well, if a lobbyist represents, say, a telephone company with five subsidiary divisions which are individual legal entities, then, by registering on behalf of each of the subsidiaries, the lobbyist can spend up to $500 per reporting period while observing Rule 1.

Which, we suspect, probably won't end representative government as we know it.

June 22, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 19, 2000)

OK, it’s been a whole week since filing deadline and we’re already tired of hearing folks at newspapers and on the TV lament that there isn’t a House or Senate race in each district.

And we’re also tired of hearing the behind-the-scenes folks brag about getting as many candidates as they did for this year’s legislative elections.

That’s because we Railsters, who hang out at the Statehouse year-round and watch whatever’s possible to watch, have finally figured out that there are some perfectly good legislators out there who really don’t need the expense and the exercise of running for reelection. There is always that chance, remember, that a legislative district has the right person there.

But there is this ethic about the Kansas Legislature that says the more races there are, the better democracy we’re going to have. There are probably at least a dozen more races in the House and Senate than are actually needed for the Legislature to work.

And, there are some candidates who frankly, unless they get some remedial work quickly, aren’t going to have a good time, are going to be embarrassed when they face off with their opponents before the local Lion’s Club or Rotary, and are going to become pretty bitter pretty quick about the whole government enterprise, when maybe they just got slotted at the wrong level. You can tell in your stomach when you’re out of your depth.

It’s sort of having the right car for your needs. It’s tough that mine isn’t a Jaguar convertible, for example. I’d like to think that I really needed a sexy, low, wide convertible, but the ugly truth is that the little four-door something-or-other works fine since I didn’t even find out how fast the last four cars I’ve had can go.

Look at the four Senate races were there are no contest, and tell us that there’s been a miscarriage of justice.

There’s Sen. Rip Gooch, D-Wichita, who is going after his third term in a district where his first time out, he won by more than a 2-1 margin and four years ago, he bettered that to about 2 1/2-to-1. Is there a strong democratic principle to be served by a guy who hasn’t made a significant mistake in eight years having to mount a big campaign again?

We’re not finding it.

And, then there’s Sen. Steve Morris, R-Hugoton. His 38th Senate District is way out southwest, and well, his first race, he won about 2 1/2-to-1, and if he had pressed the campaign against an overmatched opponent four years ago, he’d have had an even 4-1 majority in his reelection bid. Now, does that sound like dissatisfaction? Probably not.

Who else gets to rest? How about Sen. Greta Goodwin, D-Winfield? Margins were just about 6-to-5 last time out, after a long House career, but it’s a district where she hasn’t done much wrong in the past four years... Nope, check around, and there really isn’t anyone out there who is seriously proposing that she let the district down .

Last senator to get a walk? Sen. Lana Oleen, R-Manhattan, who is after her fourth term, who wins by generally 2-1 margins, relentlessly boosts Kansas State University and figures we’ve got all the gambling we can handle now.

What’s to be served by pressing those four people to mount campaigns? Well, there’s always the chance, we guess, that one or more of them could be indicted for something or other. But we doubt it. Or maybe Gooch, Morris, Goodwin or Oleen could slip in the shower, forget who they are, and maybe due to an injury speak only French from here on out.

Are those the sort of longshots that make it reasonable to recruit a candidate from the district who has generally been served well by the incumbent, and sic that constituent on the officeholder? Probably not. And you gotta wonder what happens to candidates who are pretty much thrust into a race there they have no chance of winning. The enthusiasm level drops sharply by the 4th of July. By Labor Day, the candidate knows absolutely that he or she isn’t going to Topeka, and when the situation is bad enough, some snotty reporter will call late in the campaign and ask the candidate if he or she wasn’t smart enough last spring to know that they were doomed.

Now, that’s the tough one, because, say, even if your incumbent was caught with a pound of dope, it’s going to take weeks for everyone to find out about it, and even if there’s an arrest in mid-October, there’s a good chance that a popular official will be reelected. Boy, talk about a self-esteem bummer for the candidate who shouldn’t be running anyway.

Nope, there are districts where there ought to be a spirited debate, primary election fights, and a general election race with community forums, news coverage, probably even some dirty tricks. Nothing serious, but maybe painting mustaches on yard signs, or something.

Now, those are the good races, where an incumbent has done something wrong that gets reported and talked about in the community. Or, when an incumbent has just voted wrong on an issue that is important to the community. Now, that’s the time for a race.

But it doesn’t make a lot of sense to grind up an otherwise nice, responsible, upright person for a race that he or she has no chance of winning, and that people who run campaigns know they have no chance of winning. That falls a little short of democracy with a heart.

June 15, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 12, 2000)

Well, we Railsters, that group who hangs around the Statehouse, catching politicians and would-be politicians on the fly, are just flat curious about how little in the way of campaign issues voters are willing to accept.

Like, what if a candidate promised, outright, flatly, put-in-writing, not to ride in Fords if elected? Or, guaranteed the electorate that, if elected, or in the chase to become elected, a candidate promised never to eat a Three Musketeers in less than five bites?

Would that sway any portion of the voter base? What if the candidate could get his or her opponent to swear in blood to observe the same high standards on personal transportation or consumption of snack foods?

Would it make any difference? Is the promise just so picayune as to be laughable? Or does it sound like something that maybe the public might want, if it wasn't pretty much a fraud?

We don't know, but we've got about that deal in the race for the State Senate from Wichita's 25th District.

The promise this time? Well, it's something that sounds, maybe, progressive, but actually doesn't amount to much. It's the probable candidates for the seat, each vowing not to accept any campaign money from lobbyists.

Democrat Douglas Johnston, D-Wichita, who is trying to make the jump from the House to the Senate, had the idea, and in a series of press releases pounded away at...not taking money from lobbyists and hoping that Republican Jean Schodorf, fresh from the $285-million Wichita schools bond issue success, would join him.

Well. H'mmm. Not taking money from lobbyists is a relatively loose term. It conjures up not taking any PAC money, doesn't it? Lobbyists, of course, work for a living, and don't generally spend their own money for campaign contributions. They encourage the political action committees run by their client organizations to make contributions that would help a friendly candidate get elected, so that friendship would continue when it comes time to vote on issues that the lobbyists' clients want passed or defeated.

The history of lobbyists in Kansas shows that they don't give away a lot of their own money. They give away clients' money.

But for people who don't know many lobbyists, or who don't follow Statehouse politics very closely, a ban on money from lobbyists sounds a lot like a ban on PAC money, doesn't it? After all, aren't the lobbyists and the PACs all hanging around the Statehouse, influencing legislation on behalf of big special interests while most of us are hoping we can put the cat out and the dog in and not worry about our legislators going around the bend on some issue that we're not very clear on?

It's one of those situations where just a little too little information makes a campaign pledge sound like a lot more than it actually is...

Now, both Johnston and Schodorf will take all the PAC money they can get.

And their July 25 interim campaign finance reports are going to show contributions from PACs that are directed on behalf of their clients by lobbyists. But they've promised that neither of their campaign finance reports is going to reflect contributions from the personal checking accounts--the grocery money--of lobbyists.

Does this amount to anything? Probably not, but it sounds pretty pious.

It takes the politically correct slant of demonizing lobbyists, those lunch-buying, back-slapping, golfing buddies of lonely legislators, miles from their family and friends doing public service over here in Topeka.

Will it have any substantial effect on either candidate having enough money to buy yard signs and radio commercials and pamphlets? Nope.

But, then, it sounds as though candidates have put themselves in fiscal straight-jackets, doesn't it, inoculating themselves from sinister influence of Statehouse insiders.

And, Johnston started and Schodorf joined in on an issue that they can flog to demonstrate that they are just a cut above the average political candidate who isn't as picky where the campaign money comes from.

But does it amount to anything substantial? Nope. Now, we just have to sit back and see whether voters in Wichita are much amused by the promise that is actually less than we thought.
***
Oh, and we're wondering what happens to the third candidate in this race. Yes, No. 3. That's Jason Dean, a Democrat who is in a primary race with Johnston for his party's nomination. Dean, a 26-year-old former Census worker, is campaigning on yet another campaign finance issue. He'll take money from anyone, but just $10. He'll take money from you and me and even lobbyists, but just $10.

And we expect that Dean, when Johnston files his campaign money report in late July, is going to be pointing out that the emperor isn't wearing any clothes. Because nobody really cares whether lobbyists put their own money into campaigns, because, well, that really isn't much of an issue, is it?

Nope, Dean is going to be pointing at PAC contributions and asking the Democrats of that district whether the Johnston-Schodorf pledge really amounted to anything, and whether it was really just an effort to make voters think they're getting more than they are going to wind up with in the way of campaign finance reform.
***
Railsters, and probably more than a few of you, are going to be watching...

 

June 8, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 5, 2000)

If you've been looking at new car ads, or maybe truck ads, or maybe just a new swimming suit for the summer, the state of Kansas would encourage you to proceed...this month...to go out and spend your money.

That's because Kansas is now in that no-man's-land of June, when state revenues meet projections, beat projections, or don't. And that means that your spending now is going to have a lot to do with how the 2001 legislative session starts.

Now, ordinarily, that is, five of the last six years, Kansas found its tax revenue sources growing smartly. And that meant that when legislators came back to town, and newly elected legislators came to Topeka for the first time...they had enough money to spend, or at least try to spend, to have a good old time. There were programs to beef up. There were programs to begin. There were new wrinkles to try for old programs, and well, it's easy to try to do good when there's lots of money laying around.

But...that good time depends to a large degree on what you spend on everything from gasoline to cars to cigarettes and liquor.

Last year was that sixth year, when June revenues didn't meet expectations, dragging down the entire fiscal year, and the Legislature had to open its session just this January by cutting more than $50 million in spending that had already been approved.

That put the governor in a foul mood. It's not good when the governor has to do icky stuff like tell state agencies not to spend the money they've already been appropriated. But, on the one bright side, it makes the Legislature's spending easier for the governor to control, because, like a scolding parent, he can say "no, we don't have the money to buy ponies."

Shortfalls in revenue, though, really put the Legislature in a foul mood.

While the governor can look, well, gubernatorial and authoritative, he also isn't running for anything this year. And every member of the Legislature who wants to come back to Topeka for the winter of 2001 will have to do so on the strength of personality, a bright smile, and candy tossed to constituents' children at parades and county fairs this summer. They won't have nice new programs to crow about, or those dandy little special appropriations for arts programs or parks or any of those things that show that a state legislator can produce tangible benefits for his or her constituents.

That's why June, the month when last year's budget was busted, is important this year.

***

Now, back to those cars and trucks and swimming suits.

See, one of the line items that makes up the revenue flow into the state is sales taxes. And, while nobody talks about it much, sales taxes are an indicator of just how Kansans are feeling, about how they are using their money.

For the two months since that April 4 consensus revenue estimating meeting, sales taxes are down by about $13 million. Coupled with increases in income taxes paid to the state, one must guess that while Kansans are making more money, they're not spending it on items that are subject to sales taxes.

Now, what does that mean?

Well, it could mean that instead of spending that increasing income on cars and trucks and swimming suits, they are making credit card payments, either keeping themselves even with the credit card issuers' bills, or maybe paying down their balances a little. Or maybe they're just making mortgage and car payments.

But Kansans aren't spending their money as rapidly as the state estimators hoped.

So, play Alan Greenspan at your breakfast table, and figure what it might mean in the future if Kansans are making more money, but spending less.

Does that mean Kansans have all the cars and trucks and swimming suits they want?

We're guessing the answer is no. Does it mean that Kansans are just socking their money away in retirement plans and banks and savings and loans and under their mattresses? We're guessing the answer is no.

We're guessing that Kansans are paying off bills. Which is good for individual Kansans, but overall, not exactly good news for Kansas.

June 1, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 29, 2000)

OK, I'll admit it. I was never a fan of that newspaper-generated push to see a new open records act passed into law during the just-adjourned Legislature.

Call the Railster old-fashioned, but it seemed sorta like a "sting" operation run by a bunch of newspapers, and it showed, at least to my old-fashioned sensibilities, a lack of some basic social skills, ambushing clerks and records keepers and demanding to see records without even some general pleasantries being exchanged first. Now, maybe that is old-fashioned, but it just seems polite.

But put that aside for a minute.

Do you enjoy knowing things first?

Do you enjoy watching how people react to things you already know?

Then, come closer, and listen.

The new Kansas Open Records Act that the Legislature was pretty much stampeded into passing last session is flawed. First, it is contained in a bill that has two subjects, and it might be just unconstitutional from that standpoint, one of form, not of content.

But, second, because of the other bit of law that was lumped in with it in a conference committee report when it was passed, it isn't a law of uniform application. And that means that at least any city that doesn't like the looks or sound of it can pass a charter ordinance, and exempt itself from the act. That means a city could decide as a matter of public policy to make no public records open to public examination, or it could mean that a city could make everything subject to public examination.

Hmmm... Well, now you know, and it might be interesting to see what your city wants to do about it--if anything.

Remember, during last summer's "sting" operation, reporters went into government offices where they generally weren't known and tried not to introduce themselves or tell people what their business was, and request public records. The numbers, we recall, were something like 92 percent of all those encounters resulted in the reporters getting the information they wanted, and in about 7 percent of the cases, they didn't.

From a guy who never broke to the left of the decimal point during his ill-fated college career, 92 percent sounded pretty good. But all we heard about during the session was the 7 percent of times that reporters didn't get the records they wanted. Now, if they'd shown a little courtesy, done some explaining, the score would have been higher, we bet. But that wasn't done.

We're betting that a "civilian," that is, someone who isn't a reporter by trade, would have explained what he or she wanted, why he or she thought they ought to be able to get it, and then have some give-and-take discussion; the civilian would have had better luck than the reporters.

Now, as we recall, the new law really didn't do a whole lot. It requires public agencies to designate someone as the official public records officer, and to read and have available to the public a pamphlet about public records that will be written up sometime this summer probably, and then deal with requests for public records.

We're figuring that some entrepreneur is going to order up ballcaps that say "public information officer" and sell at least one to every public agency in the state, so that the public will easily be able to spot the person who can hand them the descriptive brochure about public records.

What sort of city might want to exempt itself from the open records act?

Well, it could be a city that was found to be in the 7 percent, and felt bad about it. Or it might be a city that decides that most of the public records they have are about the public--which is you, their constituents.

That's a point that the League of Kansas Municipalities kept making, but which nobody paid much attention to. Most of a city's public records are about members of the public.

It would take some ingenuity, of course, to exempt a city from the open records act. But that's the politics of it.

Right now, any person can request and learn, for example, the amount of the water bills you pay, for no good reason, just because they wonder. Now, a requester can't get everyone's water bills unless they ask for 'em by name, but they can get yours.

And, say a city councilman decides that notwithstanding anything else about open records, your water bills ought to be your own business and nobody else's, and so the city is going to formally exempt itself from the KORA, and nobody's ever going to know how much water you drink at your house.

You gonna get upset about that? Probably not. Are you going to "crucify at the polls" next spring the city council that decided your water bills are your business and if someone wants to know about your bills, they can ask you to your face so you can tell them it's none of their business? Probably not.

But maybe the best thing is that you are probably learning about this little wrinkle in the law the same time that your newspaper publisher is learning about it, and that your city councilman is learning about it, and that most of the members of the Kansas Legislature who voted for it are learning it.

You're on the inside of this deal. There when the news breaks. So let's just watch this summer and see what happens...