March 2000

March 30, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 27, 2000)

OK, maybe you’ve noticed that Railsters are not big fans of campaign finance changes that most people call reform as if they somehow make things better and not merely different.

One reason is that there’s still some faith even under the Statehouse dome where the air is thin that there are relatively honest candidates out there who spend what it takes to get their message across, and once they reach some threshold amount (usually all they have), they either win or they don’t.

See, at some level, Statehouse habitues believe that raising enough money to make your campaign known is a test in itself. And there’s this little commonality that tends to run through or near the generally well-dressed people who complain about “expensive campaigns, paid for by special interest groups.”

First, those people tend to believe that they have some message for us great unwashed pool of registered voters that is just a bit nobler than anyone else’s message. Now, they might be right, but it’s irksome that they’re not willing to do, or find unpleasant, the work of raising enough money so that their message gets heard and evaluated.

Now, we’re not saying that those people who believe that their messages are better than everyone else’s might not be right, but because most of us Railsters can find enough people with nobler instincts than ours, we’re not inclined to need any more pushing their views on us.

Ever notice how most people sorta edge away from people who believe they are the truth and the light and the way for the Kansas Legislature? As if the Kansas Legislature would know what to do if it had the truth or the way.

And there’s also this little bone we have to pick with folks who keep pointing at “special interest” groups like they represent a clear and present danger to the state.

Now, interests are interests. That’s pretty simple.

But “special interests” that everyone keeps whining about are just interests that people are willing to write checks to support.

What makes “special interests” so easy for those with just general, low-level interests to complain about is that complainers generally want their issue heard because they just believe it is right. It must be right, they say, so there’s no need to chip in to the campaigns of those who share the view.

More of that “our idea is so good, we shouldn’t have to spend any money on it.”

Enough of that, now.

But we do get intrigued, though, by legislators’ reactions to assertions that they shouldn’t take campaign money from anyone who is likely to agree with them on specific issues. Why would anyone support any candidate who they don’t agree with on at least some issues? That doesn’t sound smart, does it?

But because legislators, like some mistreated dogs, tend to gnaw their own limbs, they keep finding ways to make sure they don’t have enough money to campaign with, reasons to outlaw contributions.

This is wholly dumb, but they keep hearing from people who aren’t going to contribute to their campaigns anyway that they should not accept contributions from most people who offer them. Ironically, so do the newspapers and television and radio stations which believe people don’t know that there is a fee for campaign advertising.
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Big issue in debate last week on a campaign finance bill: how to “level the playing field” for challengers against incumbent legislators, who had better access to political contributions.

Best answer that the House didn’t consider: requiring incumbent legislators to seek reelection under a false name.

 

March 23, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 20, 2000)

Now, it might not mean much to the rest of the citizens of Kansas, except, maybe in the way we all feel a very simple pleasure at seeing children play nicely together, but an era is passing in Kansas Statehouse-based politics.

It's the likely end of the Land of Blahs Charity Show, a poke-fun-at-yourself comedy show that has raised tens of thousands of dollars for charities in the past 11 years.

It was actually a pretty bold idea, to raise money by poking good-natured fun at each other.

And surprisingly, it is lobbyists, who are widely reported to be the kowtowing savants of legislators, who make fun of lawmakers, and legislators who make fun of themselves. Yes, a lot like children playing together nicely.

The format is jokes separated by relatively popular music, with the lyrics replaced to make a point.
For example, the Platters' hit "The Great Pretender," with just the right rewording of the lyrics, became "Oh, yes, we're the great big winners...Yes, our firm is doing well well... Tobacco's pain is our big gain, just how big we won't really tell."

Nope, it didn't take more than 400 attending the Land of Blahs show to figure out that the winners were the Entz & Chanay law firm that got the contract to represent Kansas in the tobacco settlement... and will pocket some $27 million for its work...

Between the songs, it takes an emcee to sew the show together, and for more than a decade, that stitcher of gags and songs has been Jim Maag, executive vice president of the Kansas Bankers Association.

Now, the sober-sided chief lobbyist for bankers as a comedy show emcee?

It's a perfect fit. He's insider enough to have read the egg bill of the 2000 session (which actually requires eggs to be held at lower temperatures as a public health improvement), but clever enough to quip in good fun: "Conservatives opposed candling of eggs as an invasion of privacy..."

Blahs is the big show that some reporters used to use as a boogeyman for all their fears and social skills shortcomings... painting it as an unholy alliance of comedy, legislators, lobbyists, liquor, and Statehouse denizens making fun of each other in a relaxed atmosphere that well, almost certainly was rife with ethical problems... Except that Ethics Commission employees attended without misgivings, and generally everyone buys his/her own drinks.

And with more than 1,000 people moving in and out of the Statehouse during the legislative session, it would make a pretty strong city of the 3rd Class, with its own culture, government, social activities and such.

Emcee Maag poked fun at the events of the day, including the publicity uproar after House Appropriations Chairman David Adkins, R-Leawood, was "trapped less than two hours" on an airliner in Chicago... There was also a song poking fun at Adkins' displeasure... rendered only more humorous by being sung by Adkins himself, a well-practiced community theater player.

Lobbyists even poked fun at themselves with a remake of "Bye, Bye Birdie" in which they impersonated legislators, who at one point disguised themselves with those eyeglasses with noses attached, looking for "pigeons" to buy them dinner. The partial lyric: "Take us from this awful plight... feed us free yet tonight... pigeons please buy!"

Over the decade, Blahs has poked fun at governors, U.S. senators and congressmen, every holder of statewide public office, legislators collectively and sometimes individually, all in good fun.

There was even a year when, after election of several socially conservative Republicans to the House and Senate, sponsors (remember, these are generally lobbyists) were unsure how their sometimes-irreverant comedy would be taken. But, it turned out, after a year's hiatus, they found that even the most socially conservative legislators enjoyed poking good-natured fun at everyone, in relatively equal portions...

Now, it looks like it's gone for good, a victim of too little time and too much required preparation.

 

March 16, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 13, 2000)

The final weeks of the 2000 legislative session may see the most intense environmental fights in recent years...depending on the tone of an attorney general’s opinion requested by Rep. Laura McClure, D-Osborne.

The request, simply, is to learn the authority that Health and Environment Secretary Clyde Graeber has to protect groundwater...and whether he can be forced to use his authority in new ways to protect groundwater that many Kansans either don’t think is terribly threatened or can't agree on the specific threat.

McClure has asked Attorney General Carla Stovall to literally determine whether Graeber is aware of all the authority he has to protect groundwater.

“People look at HB 2950 (the 1998 session hog farming/environmental protection bill) and think that’s all we have because we were concentrating on large hog operations in that session. But a number of us believe that the secretary has more authority than is just in that bill, and that he can order all sorts of remediation, all sorts of pollution avoidance measures on all sizes of hog operations, not just the mega-hog farms,” McClure said.

The 1998 session was the "hog wars" session, and the battleground was big hog farms. The mantra of that session was "corporate hog farms vs. friendly family farms which happen to have some hogs running around on them."

“We might get some answers that some people don’t want to hear... answers that say essentially that the secretary has authority to order test wells, plastic liners, all sorts of measures on farms of any size, on hog herds of 50 or 100,” McClure said.

The answer to the question that McClure posed may be political dynamite because it holds the possibility of demonstrating that there is no real line between "big" and "small" hog farms when it comes to the authority of the Secretary of Health and Environment to order cleanups, to order new methods of treatment of swine waste, and generally to treat small hog operations the same as big hog operations and hold them to the same standards for sewage control and treatment.

That might be a sobering thought for small farmers who work under the "family farm" banner and believe that their small size protects them from regulation. In fact, those small farmers who complain that big, factory farms are putting them out of business by controlling markets might find that they are put out of business by the friendly fire from environmentalists who have used family farmers as a tool with which to beat large-scale hog producers.

Graeber says there are many sections of law that hand him authority for protection of the environment, and that he is aware of them. “I have lawyers, too,” he notes.

In Statehouse talk, McClure isn’t sure that Graeber has run to the end of the leash to enforce environmental protection laws ...while Graeber says he thinks he’s pretty close to the end of the leash. “I don’t think we’re missing much in the way of enforcing our laws and protecting our
groundwater,” Graeber says.

But the effect of the McClure request will be to bring into political arm’s reach anti-pollution measures that small farmers generally were believed to be somehow exempt from. “Most of the Legislature is just familiar with the last hog bill we passed,” says McClure. “We have decades of law on the books that many of us aren’t familiar with."

Upshot of an attorney general’s opinion that says Graeber has a lot more tools to protect the environment?

Look for small farmers, who have allied themselves with environmentalists to beat up large-scale hog farming operations, to reconsider that link when they realize that small size isn’t a protection from regulation.

“I think we might find that there is quite a bit of problem in northeast Kansas, where farms are smaller,” McClure said. Northeast Kansas generally hasn’t been considered likely for large-scale hog operations because of population density. But it has been a source of anti big-farm protest that mega hog farm operators are tired of hearing.

The big hog operators’ mantra “hogs are hogs” no matter who owns them, or how many are owned, might sink in on small farmers with small numbers of animals who, in the end, are just hog farmers regardless of the emotional tug of the “family farm” label.

Large-scale hog operations have already tweaked some urban legislators’ noses with bills in both the House and Senate that called for a ban on any discharge of any sewage into the land above the Equus Beds aquifer, bills drawn so tightly that they would prohibit septic tanks on new homes. While those bills aren’t being taken seriously, they do indicate that at some point--and frustrated large scale hog operators are near that point--big agriculture is tired of being kicked around.

 

March 9, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 6, 2000)

Well, we hope you're seeing the differences between money and, well, money, as it is portrayed in the Kansas Legislature this year when the Legislature actually doesn't have a whole lot of new money to play with.

Now, the Legislature being a body of basic meddlers, and because it doesn't have a lot of money to play with, it's playing with your money in interesting ways.

One interesting way legislators are considering playing with your money, or at least someone's money, is by securitizing some or all of the $1.7 billion that Kansas is supposed to receive over at least the next 25 years from tobacco companies.

Now, there's of course some confusion over whose money it is. Seems like the people who smoked all those cigarettes over all those years are due some of the money, but they're cut out of the deal, and instead, the state has decided to spend the money on children, and urging children not to smoke so once the existing smokers die out...well, we're not sure where the $1.7 billion is going to come from.

Which is why some legislators, the more fiscally sharp ones, are considering "securitizing" some or all of the tobacco money.

Securitizing sounds harmless enough. Probably, it is, at least for Kansas.

Here's what it is: trading to some big bank the state's promised-but-not-guaranteed stream of revenue from the tobacco companies in return for cold, hard cash right now.

What that does is first, give the state cold, hard cash right now.

That's generally considered the best type of cash there is by those who are good judges of cash. The "right now" is a distinguishing feature that gives the cash extra cachet, they say.

Now, in return for that "right now" cash, the bankers get a revenue flow that they will use to pay off bond-buyers who come up with Kansas' "right now" cash in return for a high probability but-no-guarantee that tobacco companies will be around 25 years. The banks are betting that either the big tobacco companies themselves, or at least someone with authority to cut checks on their accounts, will be around to pay the banks to pay the bond-buyers about whom Kansas will actually care very little because we've already got "cold hard cash right now."

This securitizing has the effect of not only bringing to Kansas the ever-popular cold hard cash right now, but means that state officials won't have to spend valuable time over the next 25 years worrying about the health of tobacco companies, praying for their continued profitability and at the same time trying to discourage kids from smoking.
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Now, that's one way to play with other people's money.
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Here's another way to play with people's money that, well, Railsters are unsure about, but which is popular among Democrats, anyway.

Their play is a constitutional amendment that says basically: Kansas is required to pay every penny into the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System on behalf of state employees that some actuary that KPERS hires says we have to.

Gov. Bill Graves has proposed what most of us would liken to missing a house payment. The state won't pay about $12 million it planned to pay into KPERS in the year starting July 1, and therefore it will take a couple years longer to accumulate all the money KPERS needs to pay off retirees if someone would say that, for example, as of Tuesday, KPERS is going to close down and needs to pay off everyone in cash right then.

Now, that's not going to happen. Just as most of us couldn't come up with all the money we'd need to pay off our houses or cars on that same Tuesday.

But, it makes a good excuse for a protest rally at the Statehouse. And, the winter's been pretty good up to now, so we'll just have to hope that the retirees who plan to rally at the Statehouse in the next couple weeks choose a nice day and wear a hat, or if not a hat, at least some sunblock.

Because they're not really at risk of losing any money, but nobody likes a painful sunburn, especially as early as March...

 

March 2, 2000
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 28, 2000)

One of the most interesting things about watching Kansas legislators at work is that it is like they think nobody is watching.

Or...if we are watching that surely we'll forget from one week to the next just what happened and why.

Now, here's a good example. We ask that you harken back to the the morning of Jan. 24, 2000, when the Kansas House was voting on the measure that cut about $60 million out of the state budget, because, well, basically because the governor wanted people to.

It was the bill that contained the money for the $1.5 million presidential preference primary election that was going to be held on April 4.

Remember that day? Well, Railsters don't either, specifically, probably light during the day, getting darker toward night, but the real issue here is that the House voted to pass that bill that cut spending and with it deleted the budget for the state's presidential preference primary.

House Speaker pro tem Doug Mays, R-Topeka, voted for the bill to kill the money for the primary. So did House Majority Leader Kent Glasscock, R-Manhattan. And 3rd District congressional candidate Rep. Phill Kline, R-Shawnee, well, he wasn't around and voting that day... That was a Monday, so we can sympathize with Kline for forgetting the Legislature generally meets during the work week, like every other regular job in the state.

Anyhow, these three now have decided that it's safe to come out and spend money again and they want a presidential preference primary this spring. Maybe they could schedule it for May, when nearly everyone else in the country is done voting, and nobody will really care. They could schedule the election for a day when it's nice and warm and many people could wear short pants to the polls to get a start on their summer tans.

They could hold the election too late to do nearly anything but help Kansas political parties figure out who is going to their respective national conventions.

Hey, but let's not criticize this plan by Mays, Glasscock and Kline for being late and a waste of time. Maybe it is just a chance for Mays and Glasscock to change their opinions on the presidential preference primary and vote for a bill that would cause one. And maybe it is a chance for Kline to participate in voting on a bill at a time that's more convenient to his schedule.

With chances zip for Mays and Glasscock and Kline to get a primary up and running again, here's how the choices of delegates will be made by the Republicans and Democrats.

Republicans will get together at a state convention and choose who has the most money left on their American Express cards. It means that Gov. George Bush still gets almost all the Kansas delegates. Not all, but almost all, which is a sticking point for some Republicans, who, if Kansas could have afforded it, wanted a winner-take-all primary that Bush likely would have won.

For Democrats, not having a state-sponsored primary means the party spends about $30,000 for Democrats-only primaries that will be held April 29, and that does a couple things, observers believe.

First, it means that former U.S. Sen. Bill Bradley has a better chance to get more votes, and more delegates to the Los Angeles Democratic National Convention, with this Saturday afternoon voting than he would in a series of caucuses in each county in the state. Vice President Al Gore would likely have cleaned up at caucuses, where the most faithful and loyal of party members would have just outnumbered and outlasted the trendier Bradley delegates, most of whom can't go more than four hours without a cappuccino. So, count on Bradley to do slightly better than he would have in party caucuses across the state, but probably no better than he would have in a statewide primary election.

So, who wins this one? Well, we're saying Bush, but for those who pay attention, it's going to look a lot like an old-fashioned smoke-filled room procedure that selects the GOP delegates. The perception is going to be pretty bad, but the result, well, anyone who can speak at Bob Jones University and not wonder where all the Catholics and minorities are sitting, well, probably won't notice.

And on the Democrat side, we're guessing Bradley is the winner just because he won't lose as badly as he would through caucuses. But he's going to lose anyway, so we guess Gore is actually the winner in delegates, which is what this is all about, anyway. Just not by as much...