June
2002
June 26, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 24, 2002)Conspiracy theorists could be right
Conspiracy theorists, gather 'round, because we Railsters believe we've seen the first nuance of an institutional effort to raise taxes again next year.
We're asking conspiracy theorists together, specially, because it looks like taxes are going to have to be raised anyway, due to the way that the state budget is shaking out for the (state) new year that begins July 1. So this is a good time for those who believe that one, big, secret politically powerful club is in charge of everything from the weather to strategically placing frost right over the instructions on frozen microwave dinners.
This might be the time that you are right.
What's the tipoff?
The Kansas Department of Revenue's division of motor vehicles is closing a dozen driver license examination stations. The reason: "budget reductions resulting from weak state revenues."
Well, we all knew that the budget is in dire straits. The state is delaying payments to school districts because there isn't enough money in the general fund to just write the checks and put them in the mail. And the State Finance Council voted last week to borrow up to $450 million from its own idle funds to make payroll and pay bills in the year that starts July 1.
But those actions don't really make for dinner table conversation.
Having to drive to the next town to get a new driver's license just might rise to the level of family concern...especially if there's a youngster on the cusp of his or her 16th birthday at the table.
This, you see, is bringing to the general public an abstract problem that otherwise only a handful of people who hang out at the Statehouse--and fret about whether they'll get their work done between breaks to watch the digging for the new $15 million two-story underground parking garage--worry about.
Yes, this is ramping up the budget crisis issue to the level where people in Smith Center, Belleville, Leoti, Ness City, Larned, Hugoton, Greensburg, Kingman, Fort Scott, Coffeyville and Baxter Springs will notice it. Oh, Revenue is going to inconvenience, too, some people in Wichita, but only to the point of requiring them to walk across town to get new driver's licenses.
Some county treasurers are now, and more will be, renewing driver's licenses, but they're not going to be taking sweaty, anxious 16-year-olds out in cars to see how well they parallel park or merge with traffic. You need certified examiners for that sort of stuff.
Will this be a big deal? We'll have much of the summer to consider it while candidates for governor and the House of Representatives campaign for our votes. There will other people campaigning too, but the attorney general, for example, generally only knows about the budget what he or she reads in the newspapers.
But, you conspiracy theorists will be able to point to the day--June 20--that you got the first tipoff that something is afoot in Topeka that is going to inconvenience you for the simple reason that the secret plotters are setting an elaborate stage for tax increases against next year.
What about everyone else? Like the regular Kansans who don't believe, for example, that those delicious, hand-sized $4 quarts of ice cream that say on the nutrition label they will feed 12 people all isn't part of a plot by manufacturers of belts to increase sales?
Well, the blunt fact is that this year's $252 million in state tax increases didn't really buy the state anything new, it just kept the doors open, the schools on a starvation diet, the universities at a little below break-even, and most of the state's poor and elderly cared for.
Yes, unless something miraculous happens, look for a tax increase next year.
And for the conspiracy crowd, you can say you saw it coming first.
June 20, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 17, 2002)It's all about timing
Now it finally comes clear: with the state's brand new congressional reapportionment map before a three-judge federal panel the real issue is going to be mostly about time, not geography.
Huh? This map is about what land territory and which voters will be in which congressional district...at least on the surface. Yet except for a handful of candidates who actually want to be U.S. Representatives from the state's four congressional districts, for nearly everyone else running for office the real prize here is delay of the state's primary election from the now-scheduled Aug. 6 to later in the month...or maybe even early September.
The judges have already delayed the filing deadline for Congress until July 9, and there is just one more shoe to fall...if it will fall...and that is delaying the primary election to expand the pool of voters who may take part.
Why is delay of the primary election--one of the region's earliest--a raging political issue? It is because the earlier the primary election, the smaller the number of Kansans who vote. At an Aug. 6 primary, there are still going to be families on vacation or shuttling between baseball and soccer games, or just otherwise in the throes of summertime activities that tend to take up the time of the vast majority of Kansans who aren't absolute political junkies.
For the Republican primary election voting pool, it means that the diehards, the fiscal and social conservatives who are a key voter block for conservative candidates, will make up a larger share of the total number of voters than at any time during the year. That benefits conservative candidates. That conservative voter pool--and older voters who probably aren't shuttling youngsters to the pool--have their biggest clout at an early primary election.
Moderate-to-liberal Republicans are hoping for a delay. Sometime in early September would be fine with them, when the kids are back in school, vacations are over, and the circadian cycle of life during the school year headed into fall gets under way. It would also help if some school districts which have been complaining about lack of state funds have had time to distribute to parents a list of increased student fees for activities, school books and such, and maybe to make parents aware that the school nurse or security guard or counselor isn't going to be there this year because of budget cuts.
Those moderates voting in a delayed primary, who generally show up to vote only in November after their choices have been whittled down by a GOP primary, may mean that some moderate candidates make it through the GOP primary.
That's why delay of the primary is important to moderate Republicans, and why not moving the voting date is important to conservative Republicans.
What's in it for Democrats? Well, frankly, in most legislative districts, the smallest party on the ballot is Democrats. Democrats depend on not only getting all the registered Democrats in the general election, but most of the unaffiliated voters and a share of Republican registered voters. And Democrats generally have the best chance--against the odds--when the conservative GOP primary voters select a Republican who is way too conservative for most Republicans. In many districts, even conservative Kansas Democrats have an even shot at defeating a way-too-conservative Republican.
So Democrats have an interest in the primary election day, too. Only they'd like to see the Aug. 6 primary election frozen right then. They'd like to run against candidates who the most conservative of Republicans select for the general election because there will be a handful of them that Democrats, even with lower numbers of registered Democrats in those districts, have a decent chance to defeat.
Starting to see why the reapportionment wrangle has another layer of interest?
Where's the state's chief election officer in all of this? Well, Republican Ron Thornburgh wants the election on Aug. 6, because, well, because that's when it is scheduled and that's the target date for getting ballots printed and voting stations set up and poll workers hired. Oh, and county clerks who supervise elections in most counties, bless their hearts, are not known for being very flexible about how and when they perform their duties. Tell them to change the primary election date? That would be like talking a cat into give up its favoring sleeping chair.
So, sure, watch where the lines are drawn and watch for those "communities of interest" that most officials are publicly talking about in the congressional reapportionment fray...but watch the calendar, too.
That's where the real action is.
June 13, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 10, 2002)Mapping it out
Railsters have read the Kansas congressional reapportionment bill a time or two and absolutely no place does it say that between any two congressional districts there is going to be erected at great--or at any--public expense, a wall to separate, say, Fort Riley and Junction City.
No checkpoints. No need to pass through a metal detector. We understand that money earned at Fort Riley, in what is likely to be the 2nd Congressional District, will be legal tender for all purposes in Junction City, which may wind up in the 1st Congressional District under a reapportionment map being considered by a panel of federal judges this week.
Similarly, though the city of Lawrence is split by the map that was passed--fairly haphazardly, we'll admit, but passed--by the Legislature and signed into law by Gov. Bill Graves, 2nd District west Lawrencers will be given free access to 3rd District Downtown Lawrence. And vice-versa.
Yes, we're having a really hard time figuring out just what the beef is on the map.
But Attorney General Carla Stovall maintains that it is unconstitutional, that it dissects a "community of interests" that is held in common by Fort Riley and the nearby town where many soldiers and dependents live and spend their paychecks.
When congressional reapportionment started heating up in Kansas--and that was just over a year ago--there appeared to be one widely held principle that guided the public hearings and Statehouse wrangling: Kansas' two Army forts were going to be located in the same congressional district--the 2nd.
Now, that may make some sense for some fairly unintuitive reasons. The 2nd District U.S. Representative, it's now Jim Ryun from Lawrence, but for most purposes, it is immaterial who holds the post, instantly becomes the congressional delegation's expert on military affairs. Not big-picture stuff, like do we buy tanks or do we buy submarines, but things like whether the barracks need a new roof, or whether there is sufficient on-base housing. Simple, down-to-earth stuff like that.
And, the generals who run Fort Riley and Fort Leavenworth--the other Army base--generally put their U.S. Congressman on speed-dial. If there's a problem, they call the 2nd District representative, and whoever it is at the time picks up the phone and talks to him or her.
Simply, once the 2nd District guy is on the job, he or she tells the other Kansas members of Congress what the problem is, and they all vote to fix it.
Not every congressman has to know about every crack in the sidewalk or every flagpole that needs painting on either military base.
The system works.
Military bases are important economic institutions in Kansas, and every congressman in Kansas will vote to maintain those institutions.
Now it is easy to understand that residents of towns near military bases have great interest about what happens inside the fort fences. And, so will their congressmen. Always have, always will. That's politics.
Oh, and we're still a little confused over the issue of "voter confusion" when a city is split or a town moved from one district to another.
You see, there really isn't any confusion. Anyone who is interested can find out quickly which congressional district they live in. Failing any pre-election day interest, voters will quickly learn who their choices are when they go to vote.
Handily, each voter is given one ballot that corresponds to the lawful candidate in their place of residence. Folks in Junction City aren't going to get to chose from two piles of ballots, one with candidates for the 1st District and one with candidates for the 2nd District. This isn't a ballot salad bar.
Although there's not a whole lot of reason to get excited about the map, we're still going to be watching with interest what happens in Federal District Court in Topeka. We'll be watching to see whether a panel of three federal judges is much exercised about the fates of Fort Riley and Junction City and the rest of Geary County.
Somehow, we doubt that the excitement is going to rise to the level of interest in...say, World Cup Soccer.
June 6, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers June 3, 2002)The palm card dilemma
Palm cards, those postcard-or-bigger stiff paper handouts that legislative candidates press into your hand on the street or slide between the screen and the door jam if you aren't at home, are going to be interesting this year for what they don't say.
Some are going to say that the incumbent candidate "voted for a responsible tax package to rescue K-12 education."
Some are going to say that the incumbent candidate voted against "a flawed tax package that punishes the poor and handed millions of dollars of tax breaks to corporations."
We're betting that no real candidate seeking re-election is going to pay for printing of a card that says "voted for too small a tax package, one that cost you $252 million but didn't really fix anything you are likely to notice."
Problem is, that last slogan is probably as close to the truth--maybe even a little closer to the truth--than the other two.
That's the reason that a lot of Kansas House members (the Senate, with its four-year terms, doesn't stand for re-election this year) are a little unsure just how they're going to play this tax business when it comes time to asking voters to send them back to Topeka next winter.
For at least the last decade, the Legislature hasn't raised taxes for anything that didn't produce a tangible result. Say, a highway or a bridge as in a highway bill. Now, it's rifle-shot an industry or two that maybe got a bigger tax break than the Legislature intended, but generally, if taxes do go up, there's something, somewhere that legislators can point toward and say, "that's what the tax increase bought you."
The $252 million tax package? Well, it basically kept the doors to state government open and it maybe held distributions to the state's school districts even but that isn't a sure thing yet. And it took care of the state's poor and frail and while that's laudable, many Kansans don't really see the poor and frail that often.
So, what do legislators who are seeking re-election talk about? Well, maybe restraint.
The Legislature didn't really pass any more taxes than absolutely necessary to keep the ship of state government barely afloat.
Now, that's not exactly the stuff of torchlight parades, is it? Would the ship have sunk without the taxes? Probably not, but it would have meant that local units of government would have had to raise taxes more than they're going to do this summer anyway. Unless you smoke, most of the tax increases are going to be relatively painless.
If the Legislature had passed a really ambitious package of new taxes, say, $400 million or $500 million, a lot of things would be different. Schools would be sending out for new Suburbans to haul around the debate squad. Your favorite restaurant would be inspected a few more times each year and you'd wonder fewer times what that hard thing in the salad really is. You might just want to buy some land near that highway project planned for 2006 or 2007.
And, if the Legislature had passed that really ambitious package of taxes, the new governor would actually have some money to work with, House members wouldn't have to worry about the need to pass more taxes next year, and by the time senators ran for re-election, many voters would have forgotten about the taxes they supported.
That big tax package would have given legislators seeking re-election something to point at, to say, sure, I voted for this, but look what we get for it.
But, the 2002 Kansas Legislature didn't do that.
So, what do challengers to incumbents put on their palm cards?
How about my opponent "Raised your taxes!" Maybe, where applicable, but the taxes really don't amount to much inconvenience to most Kansans. So what's the point.
How about my opponent "Didn't vote to raise taxes!" Now, it's going to take some explaining to illustrate why not raising taxes is a bad thing. Imagine that? A legislator who refused to raise taxes, better throw the bum out. It can be done, we suppose, but that's still going to be a hard sell to most Kansans.
So what do candidates print on those palm cards? We're betting incumbents say something about passing a telemarketing no-call bill. And there might be room on the card for a bigger picture of their family. Maybe one with the dog in it.
We're curious. And we'll find out in a few weeks.