March 2007

March 29, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 26, 2007)

It’s not firing clay, but…

Over the course of maybe eight hours of a 14-plus hour legislative debate on a bill that would expand gaming in Kansas and bring slot machines to race tracks and casinos to three or maybe four counties, a new political art form was perfected.

It wasn’t quite like being present when man first learned how to fire clay or mix paint or create a photograph, but there was this “we’re seeing the dawn of a new era” perception that one doesn’t often associate with debate on the floor of the Kansas House of Representatives—even at 2 a.m.
That new era? It is the mass production of amendments designed to make political or issue-specific opponents have to vote on the public record against a lot of nice things that they ordinarily wouldn’t vote against in order to preserve their mission.

In last week’s debate, the mission by supporters of expanded gambling in Kansas was to produce a bill that could pass the Senate and be sent to the governor for her all-but-assured signature.

To do that, gambling proponents had to deliver a bill that creates a sustainable, workable and well-regulated system of expanded gambling in the state for the Senate to consider. The whole issue of whether more gaming is good or not, well, that’s worth a lot of breast-beating by proponents and opponents but the mission last week was to produce a bill that would at least work in real life.
For opponents? The mission was to either disable the bill with clever amendments or to clutter the bill with extraneous issues that might make some legislators unlikely to vote to pass it.

That’s where nearly three dozen amendments by gaming opponents blossomed. Figuring that the bill had the votes to pass and that gaming proponents were going to try to preserve the basic bill, opponents unleashed amendments that are more campaign-related than gaming-related.

Because gaming is expected to raise money for the state, the obvious strategy for opponents is to propose specific ways to spend the money that some legislators won’t like—and therefore not support the bill.

Among those spending proposals that gaming proponents had to vote against were some that leave an ugly record in the House’s public records. Like, voting against $2,000 bonuses for the state’s 30,000 schoolteachers or all-day kindergarten or health insurance coverage for poor children between birth and age 5.

Those are not issues that many legislators like to have to vote against, but they did in recorded rollcall votes that may well wind up in a campaign ad by their opponents in 2008. 
The assault by amendment is a legitimate tactic. If you don’t like a bill you expect will pass, it’s just prudent to muss it up so that even its supporters will abandon it; so that maybe the details and not the principal topic of the bill become so objectionable it fails.

It works. If you’re going to rustle cattle, you’d probably steal the nice ones, not the sick ones, and the principle is about the same in legislation. Gambling proponents had to vote against amendments that would have made the heifer look better.

The new wrinkle was the sheer number. Most of the proposed amendments were losers at their inception, but if you oppose the bill and are going to vote against it anyway, why not muck it up.
It’s an interesting strategy that didn’t work, but it did yield lots of votes that unless the background is explained—and political opponents won’t explain the circumstances—make for pretty damning campaign brochures.

Now, we’ll just have to watch where those votes against, say, children and schoolteachers wind up in the 2008 campaign.

March 22, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 19, 2007)

What’s it worth?

The Kansas Legislature is considering whether Kansas should have a presidential preference primary next year. The issue so far: Will the Legislature appropriate the roughly $2 million that it will cost?
Well, $2 million in the great scheme of things in the Kansas budget really isn’t much money. Under many circumstances it would be a rounding error.

For a statewide event, $2 million actually is pretty cheap entertainment. But then the question comes down to just what sort of entertainment Kansas is willing to pay for or whether there’s money for entertaining events until everyone in the state is cared for.

On a closer examination level, you can make a decent case that $2 million is a lot to spend when there are so many other things that the state could spend $2 million on. Take, for example, domestic violence centers or health care for the poor or something that is just nice and sensible, like after-school activities for youngsters who might otherwise walk home to a house where parents are still at work.

There are many things costing about $2 million that many Kansans would feel better about doing. But then, don’t forget that “something nice” might be something that the Legislature just isn’t going to pass into law anyway. So, this tradeoff of $2 million for a primary vs. something that isn’t going to pass the Legislature anyway really isn’t much of a trade, is it?

One of the key arguments for allowing Kansans to decide who they want to be the presidential nominees is that it is a direct participation in national politics. It’s a hands-on experience that may or may not determine the nominee of each political party. After all, whoever carries Kansas in the primary might not get the party’s nomination. There are other states than Kansas which are holding preference primaries, too. But it’s a chance to vote, to get into the game, and that’s not all bad. Win or lose, each voter at least gets to make his/her point.

There’s also talk that if Kansas chooses the right day to hold its primary, maybe candidates for the nomination of their party will darken the skies over Kansas as their jets arrive for press conferences, rallies, marches. Thought here is that the candidates will spend enough money in Kansas—or the people who come to watch them will spend enough money somewhere they wouldn’t normally spend their money—that it’s an economic development deal.

Maybe, that’s a possibility, but you have to wonder whether whatever new money that candidates spend in Kansas is really going to pencil out as paying for the primary, or even seriously boost the state’s economy. It’s not like they’re going to be buying wheat or corn or refrigerators or tires while they’re here.
On a very practical basis, there are six Electoral College votes up for grabs in Kansas, and chances are excellent that the general election is going to be won not on Kansas’ six votes but on the dozens of Electoral College votes that larger states bring to the table.

We remember years ago when now-Democratic nomination candidate Hillary Clinton came to Kansas to visit then-Democratic Gov. Joan Finney to assess Bill Clinton’s chances of winning Kansas. Finney basically told Mrs. Clinton to get out of Kansas, that Kansas wasn’t going to vote for Clinton, and that the campaign would be wasting valuable time and money campaigning here. It probably wasn’t the message Hillary was hoping to take back to her husband’s campaign, but that was Finney’s message. And, outside of once when Bill Clinton’s campaign jet had to refuel in Kansas, he didn’t spend any time in the state campaigning.

Is a presidential preference primary a good deal for Kansas? Would Kansas hold one if it were free? Probably. Will Kansas hold one for $2 million? Hard to say now, but the money angle, well, it’s probably not as important as you’d think. After all, it’s not like the same $2 million the primary costs would necessarily be spent on something you are interested in, anyway…

March 15, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 12, 2007)

Heard about ‘us’ vs. ‘them’?

It looks like one of the most intensive efforts yet mounted by Democrats to split the business community—the mega interstate corporations from “mom and pop Kansas corporations”—for corporate tax purposes has about fizzled out.

The effort was in the House Tax Committee, where Rep. Nile Dillmore, D-Wichita, rooted around in the state’s tax code and found three exemptions that are mostly the domain of multistate corporations that allow them to lower their Kansas income tax liabilities by about $20 million a year.

That’s serious money, and Dillmore wanted to use the revenues from disallowing some fancy corporate income tax deductions to lower the state’s corporate income tax rates by more than a full percentage point, from 7.35 percent to 6.25 percent. That would match the corporate income tax rate in Missouri, and the Kansas Legislature spends much of its time comparing its tax policies to Missouri’s, trying to match or beat the tax policy there in order to lure businesses into Kansas.

So far? Dillmore’s amendment got added to a bill proposed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius that calls for a much smaller corporate income tax cut for the state’s business. Chances frankly don’t look good for Dillmore’s plan. Part of the reason may be that the business lobby in Kansas has so far pretty much kept discussion of the tax wrinkle limited to the Statehouse and Democrats are having trouble getting to smaller businesses that might benefit from the tax cut to let them know of it.

Now, for most Kansans, what happens to corporate taxes isn’t a breakfast-table conversation. But this is a small state, and most people work for corporations of some size, so at least tangentially, there is some reason to be interested in whether a tax bill that would deny some big corporations exemptions and spread that “saved” money for tax breaks for smaller businesses is of some note.

But then, this is pretty much a “kicking under the sheets” deal, where there are just corporations under the sheets, big and small, those who benefit from the tax breaks in place now and those who don’t benefit and would likely appreciate a drop in their tax rates and not be fussy about where the make-up revenue for that tax cut is coming from.

Surprisingly, in one of the most public of buildings in the state, there isn’t a lot of information getting out to the general public or probably even to most corporations about the Dillmore proposal.
But, there are some interesting facets to the whole mini-drama here.

Democrats are making at least a try at shedding a generations-old label as the “tax and spend, anti-business” party by offering some pretty attractive proposals that would likely win favor from some businesses. The corporate tax deal is one of them. They’ve tried to portray it as a “big business” vs. “hometown, we-know-the people, they’re just like us” battle, and that has some appeal. Much of life is “us” vs. “them” and depending on whom the “us” is, there is great political advantage to be had here.

Will this Dillmore proposal become law in Kansas this session? Probably not. But it represents one of the more ambitious efforts by Democrats to appeal to business interests which typically lean Republican, both in campaign contributions and in voting behavior.

And it’s worth recalling that virtually nothing actually dies in the Legislature. This summer and next fall and next session, you can be sure that Democrats are going to be mentioning the Dillmore proposal to their friends and co-workers and to civic and business groups that tend to like to have lawmakers give lunch speeches.

“What? You hadn’t heard about the plan to lower your corporate income taxes?” might be the opening line for some speeches, we’re betting.

Now, we’ll just see this summer how monolithic the business community actually is in Kansas. Democrats are betting that in state tax policy, some businesses will decide that one size doesn’t fit all…

March 8, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 5, 2007)

Got water?

The dust has almost settled by now, but there was an important bill dealing with water—and how to manage its use when underground aquifers are being depleted—that was killed in the House and probably ought to be a heads-up for Kansans from border to border.

Water, you see, used to be just a western Kansas issue, where crops and feedlots and meat packing plants were the heaviest users. No matter how dry it got out west, central and eastern Kansans could still get their lattes at the coffee shop and water their lawns.

But that House vote on a bill that would have put a moratorium on designation and regulation of water out west was a message, even if city folks didn’t understand it the first time around.

It was about Intensive Groundwater Use Control Areas. Huh? Even stranger, the acronym, and nearly everything in the Statehouse has an acronym, is IGUCA.

Simply, the bill would have put a moratorium on designating IGUCAs or expanding any of the existing eight IGUCAs. Through IGUCAs, state water officials can control use of water pumped from the ground in order to preserve what water is left and to ration among users the amount of water they can pull from underground with their wells and pumps.

Out west, that’s serious business, messing with one’s authority to harvest underground water for irrigation or businesses or even municipalities. But, the IGUCAs are in central or western Kansas, and why should anyone who isn’t dependent on pumping those underground water supplies care?

It comes down basically to economics. At some point, demand for water in western Kansas, including not just farms or towns or packing plants, but coal-fired power plants and even ethanol production plants, is going to become critical. When business can’t be done out west, people move, those people left behind become more expensive to provide government services to, and eventually tax revenues for local units of government, schools and the state start to dry up.

And…when western Kansas revenues wane, it means everyone else is going to see higher taxes to maintain services to those people out west. Gradually, those problems that we thought were isolated in western Kansas become the entire state’s problems, taxes and all.

Now, did preventing the regulation of underground water use from being put on hold for a year save the state from any calamity? Probably not, and rain and melting ice and snow will ease pressure somewhat on western Kansas’ irrigation needs, and there’s nothing to boost the farm economy like enough rain. The old proverb that when farmers do well, the state of Kansas does well didn’t earn “proverb” status by being incorrect.

But the little legislative dust-up over IGUCAs was a pretty good wake-up call that water isn’t just a western Kansas issue, it’s a statewide issue that needs to be dealt with while there’s water left.
It’s complicated, and there is the doctrine of “first in time, first in right” for water use that has been preserved for decades in Kansas and which might have to be altered—at considerable social and political risk in a state where much of the land is used for agricultural purposes and the right to pump water is virtually the difference between making a living on a farm and seeing it go back to the bank.
But the IGUCA bill was just a start on reexamination of Kansas water use policy that is going to have effects from border to border. And that’s something to think about while you’re ordering that extra-tall latte…

March 1, 2007
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 26, 2007)

What about this puppy?

Every now and again, one of those little niche-sector bills clears one house or another without raising much of a fuss and you have to wonder, “What would happen if this puppy became law?”
The niche bill? It’s called the Taxpayer Transparency Act and it passed the House 102-20. What it does is open a whole lot of state government records on spending to virtually anyone with a computer and an Internet connection.

It would order the Secretary of Administration to create essentially the most available-to-the-public summary of state and local government expenditures that Kansans have ever seen, in a way that citizens could find answers to questions about where their money is going in a fairly straightforward way.
It essentially is putting before the public just what state government does with its money.
Sounds sort of like what we all thought computerization and Internet access were supposed to be all about, doesn’t it?

Now, we’re not sure that many people are going to want to know, for example, what every state employee is paid, or just what that bypass out on the highway costs and who is doing the work and what their subcontractors are making. But if state government knows and made a reasonably workmanlike decision to spend tax dollars for virtually anything, there doesn’t seem to be a good reason why people who support state government with their tax dollars can’t know, too.

This “taxpayer transparency” is, of course, just a hot-button name for the bill that tends to make those who voted for it sound like great fans of making everything the state does and spends available to anyone in the state. It’s probably over-selling the concept a bit, but then that happens in state government.
Along with that vaunted transparency, of course, comes the possibility that at some point, people with too much time or too many axes to grind will dig out the picayune and unimportant and try to turn it into some cause celebre that they’ll bedevil legislators with. It will give opponents of nearly everything some traction, some shard of  information on which to base a complaint, to write the local newspaper about or to hold a press conference to express outrage to the media which either will or won’t deem it news, and then restart the cycle of attacking both state government and the news media.

But the concept of people knowing what their money is being spent for makes some sense, doesn’t it?
In fact, this proposal for broad new access to government financial information –it won’t happen for at least a year because, well, these things take time to organize—may be as much a test of folks who wander to that website as it is for the people who wanted the website created in the first place.
There’s as much chance that some person with too much time on his or her hands and a computer at the ready will find something that just logically doesn’t make sense in the way of spending that nobody else has noticed as that the same person will decide for some reason that there are too many state employees with Hispanic surnames.

The bill is headed to the State Senate, where its fate is unknown. It’s one of those little bills, of course, not one that is likely to take the Legislature into extra days or create a big cultural battle among lawmakers.

But it may be one of those little bills that raises as many questions about just how it will be used as it raises about the relatively noble concept of government transparency…to anyone who cares to take a look…