March 2009

March 26, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on March23, 2009)

And now, the back-story…

Buckle up and we’ll take you briefly into the world of heavy-duty, full-contact insider politics of the Kansas Statehouse—the stuff the general public never hears about.

Let’s take that little resolution that would call for an amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would guarantee the right of Kansans in almost every situation to own firearms.

Now, that sounds pretty uncontroversial, doesn’t it? And isn’t there a 2nd Amendment to the U.S. Constitution that guarantees the right to keep and bear arms? Sure there is. But, the state constitution doesn’t have a similar amendment, and well, doggone it, why not?

The fix? A proposed Kansas constitutional amendment that voters could consider at an election next year:
“A person has the right to keep and bear arms for the defense of self, family, home and state, for lawful hunting and recreational use, and for any other lawful purpose.”
It sounds pretty harmless. Can’t hurt to double-up on those constitutional rights, can it?

***

Now, the back-story.

The resolution calls for the amendment, if it passes the Legislature (and the governor doesn’t have any role in this at all), to wind up on the 2010 general election ballot…for now.

But what insiders are watching is whether the amendment stays on the general election ballot or is shuffled to the primary election ballot, where it becomes an explosive political issue that ignites massive voter turnout.

If conservatives in the Legislature manage to move the vote to the primary election in 2010, it becomes a rallying issue that draws floods of conservatives to the polls, likely ousting any GOP candidate who has ever voted against a gun-rights bill (think concealed-carry).

Based on a primary election gun-rights voter surge, moderate Republicans lose at the primary election, conservatives win, and well, in Republican-heavy Kansas, more Republicans and more conservative Republicans get elected in November 2010. The general philosophical tilt of the Kansas House moves to the right—on not just guns but a raft of other social/fiscal issues. For House conservative Republicans, it also weeds out those pesky GOP moderates who tend to vote with Democrats.

It’s using one issue to change the face of the Kansas House. (The Senate isn’t up for election in 2010).

That’s the back story. Whether the amendment makes it through the Legislature, well, nobody knows yet. And which ballot the question would be printed on isn’t decided yet.

But political insiders are watching…

 

March 19, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers March 16, 2009)

Like navigating a restaurant menu

One piece of political lore has proven to be true—or at least true enough that few canny legislators will defy it. That lore: “You never go wrong being tough on crime.”

And that’s a problem this year, when members of the Legislature are considering some fairly dramatic changes in the state’s charts for sentencing criminals.

Yes, charts. It was more than a decade ago that the concept of a “sentencing grid” was thought up as an almost-always use chart of minimum, median and maximum sentenced for hundreds of crimes. That grid, for better or worse, was a legislative attempt to let constituents know they were serious about crime, had pondered deeply the nature of crimes, and set up a grid that any judge who can navigate a restaurant menu can use.

There were departures, of course, for those special circumstances when a penalty seemed too tough or too soft, and judges had to explain why they went off-grid.

But this year, a House committee is considering, and even sent to the full House for debate only to have it returned for more work, a massive change in the sentencing grid for drug crimes, violent crimes and property crimes.

The real problem seems to be that the massive—we’re talking 235 pages—bill raises some penalties and lowers others. Now, of course, you never go wrong with the general public by raising sentences for criminals. But lowering some penalties presents a political problem that experts in criminal justice who worked two years to put together the bill just don’t have a handle on.

The political problems that lowering sentences causes is just one campaign cycle away.

Any incumbent out there want his/her constituents to get a postcard complaining that you lowered the penalty for any crime? And that is part of the problem. Lower even one sentence and you wear the “soft on crime” label that is a political bull’s eye.

Oh, and don’t forget that even while juggling sentences, some higher, some lower, the bill still would require more prison beds and more expense in a tight economy.

This effort has all the earmarks of probably good public policy that is a political ticking time bomb.

We’re waiting to see if there is a way out…

March 12, 2009
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers March 9, 2009)

Death penalty: What’s next, and why?

A political/emotional/financial whirlwind is brewing in the Kansas Senate over a bill that would repeal the state’s death penalty law.

The issue is one most Kansans—and politicians—haven’t had reason to consider for about 15 years.

Former Gov. Joan Finney—a pro-life Catholic—allowed the death penalty to become law because the Legislature passed it, but without her signature because she didn’t believe in taking a life under any circumstances. Not once in 15 years, though there have been many murders committed in Kansas that met the criteria for a sentence of death, has Kansas executed anyone.

Among the uglier issues swirling around the repeal bill is just plain politics.
The bill was nearly sent to a summer study committee to emerge into the spotlight of debate next year. That’s an election year.

A vote to keep Kansas’ death penalty statute sounds pretty tough on crime, doesn’t it? That’s why the issue could be a key to a campaign for attorney general or by a legislator in a district made uneasy and fearful by a recent murder.

Along with the politics is the raw emotion of a capital murder trial. Loved ones of murder victims become prominent and our hearts go out to them. But, capital punishment isn’t about bringing comfort or closure to survivors.

Murder is a crime against the state. Kansas law includes a death penalty because the state—on behalf of all of us—won’t stand for anyone killing a Kansan. It sounds ironic, but murder is a crime against all the people of the state of Kansas, not specifically the victim or his/her family.

Government doesn’t do individual “get even” punishment. You wouldn’t want it to.
Oh, and the peg on which the repeal of the death penalty hangs this session is its cost. It’s cheaper to lock an already-convicted murderer away for the rest of his/her life than pay for the high-cost defense on the single issue of the possibility of execution.

Not an especially noble issue with which to frame the debate, but in tight budget times, it is at least worth considering.

The whole issue is at once unpleasant, emotional, political, and intriguing in a “drive slowly past the wreck” way.

You gotta wonder what happens next…and why.

March 5, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on March 2, 2009)

The fire in the burning barn

Starting on General Election Day 2008, before the ballots were counted, Kansas became essentially a barn afire. That was when the state’s group of fiscal gurus predicted state revenues would drop by hundreds of millions of dollars.

For a governor in the last two years of her second term, it means that those last two years are virtually absent of those “coasting” moments, when a governor can spend State General Funds on nice things, get into pictures with clean-scrubbed children, and essentially create a memory book of her governorship.

On Nov. 4, Gov. Kathleen Sebelius wasn’t even on the ballot as the first official recognition of the state’s financial problems was pronounced.

Then, and probably through last Friday, any noticeable effort by the governor to land a Cabinet position with President Barack Obama, for whom she campaigned and was apparently considered as a potential vice presidential runningmate, would clearly have been viewed as the governor running out of a burning barn, leaving Kansans inside.

Imagine the outrage. Things go south in Kansas—a monumental fiscal crisis—and that governor goes house-hunting in Washington. Somewhere in Kansas, someone would have taken a silvery gray crayon and drawn in some flyaway locks of hair on her picture.

But, Friday the governor did something that at least technically and probably practically put out the fire.
Friday, Sebelius sent to the Legislature what’s called a governor’s budget amendment—we Statehouse regulars call it a GBA—for the upcoming Fiscal Year 2010, which starts July 1, that appears to put out the fire.

She’s blending in some of the federal recovery money that is in a bill already passed into law by Congress and signed by Obama that would give the state maybe $400 million in the bank at the end of next fiscal year.

Practically, don’t expect that full $400 million balance to show up; the economy and state revenues are likely to fall further. But it appears that Sebelius and the Kansas Legislature have not only taken care of finances for the current fiscal year, but that she’s issued a GBA that stands a better-than-even chance of getting the state through the next fiscal year.

What’s it look like? That Sebelius said OK to being nominated as Secretary of Health and Human Services…after she put out the fire in the barn…