May 2004
May 27, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 24, 2004)Reasonable on crime?
A woman got out of prison last week who had been sentenced to life in prison for carrying about $40 worth of dope.
She spent 12 years in prison and if the jails hadn’t been crowded, she’d probably still be there. Does that sound weird to anyone else? Life in prison for $40 worth of dope?
Of course it does. What if instead of sentencing the woman to prison, a judge had sentenced her to be handcuffed for life to you so you could make sure that she didn’t ever carry any dope again? Think it would take 12 years for you to decide that she’s been punished enough? Probably not.
That would make the crime of possession of a pretty small amount of a controlled substance (which is what the law calls dope) pretty personal to you.
But that sort of thing, the possibility of life sentences for small amounts of drugs, never really gets explained to voters by politicians. Instead, legislators are most generally willing to spend any amount of your money to get tough on crime. And because it is drugs, and nobody really wants anyone to be using drugs or at least using drugs in a manner that is dangerous to our lifestyle, we usually go along with the politicians.
Who wants to be "soft on crime"–nobody we know. But there’s probably a middle ground somewhere between life sentences for small amounts of dope, no matter how many times a person has been caught with a small amount, and just taking the dope away, levying a fine, and telling people to try to do better.
Kansas has a middle ground for first-time, nonviolent drug offenders with a program that includes intensive counseling and testing and inconvenience so that drug users don’t generally have to spend much time in jail.
And, there’s a new committee that was just approved by the Legislature and the governor that may be able to find a middle ground on more offenses, sort of a "reasonable on crime" to put in between "tough" and "soft."
It was an idea of State Rep. Ward Loyd, R-Garden City, this Kansas Criminal Recodification, Rehabilitation and Restoration Project.
What this commission is targeted to do is to look at about everything having to do with the criminal justice system in Kansas, look at some other states and figure out whether our system of punishment for crime is too hot or too cold or just about right.
Evidence so far is that Kansas may be too tough with sentences for some crimes and too lenient on others but our prisons are full and nobody wants to spend money on new prisons when there are other things that the state needs. But, every time someone wants to get "tough on crime" and lengthen sentences for something, however justifiable, the argument in House and Senate debate is more about the prison bed space shortage than about the new crime. Oh, bed space is the new, gentler term for what used to be prison space or cell space. Older folks talk about prison cells, younger people tend to talk "beds."
Now, what would happen if the committee came back to the Legislature with a recommendation that the state is punishing some criminals too severely and some not severely enough? What if there was a middle ground worked out? What if it is time to let some people out of prison and keep some for a little longer? What if we let enough out for good reason that we didn’t need to build or lease any new prison cells (or beds, if you prefer) for the people that we really, really want in prison for a very long time? Would that make sense? To you and me? Probably.
We’ll see what this new committee comes up with. It may turn out that it finds just that middle ground, where we punish firmly but briefly people who don’t need to spend the rest of their lives in prison, rehabilitate some criminals so chances are exceedingly slim that they’ll ever cause problems again, and really sock it to folks that hurt or kill people and whom we never want to stand in line with at the grocery store.
It will be interesting if the committee comes up with that new middle ground. It will be interesting because most legislators believe, politically, that "tough on crime" is a safer vote than "reasonable on crime." It will be interesting because the legislators essentially will be voting on whether they think their constituents are smart enough to know the difference...
May 20, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 17, 2004)No trust fund babies here
Ask any county, heck, ask any Kansan, and among the things that would shoot to the top of any "really, really want" list is a trust fund.
Practically, what would be nicer? A nice source of revenue. It makes a perfect gift, comes in all sizes and the color really doesn’t matter–as long as it is green.
Well, 14 southwestern Kansas counties nearly had a trust fund, filled with money from the State General Fund, until Gov. Kathleen Sebelius vetoed the bill.
The story behind the bill is fairly interesting as an example of how far things can get in the Legislature and how if you push the cost of the measure out a few fiscal years–past where anyone is computing state revenues and budgets and out to a time when the economy greens up and the state will presumably be about ankle deep in money–you can pretty much get a bill passed to do about anything.
Here’s the key: the bill would establish a trust fund for 14 southwest Kansas counties that just happen to rest atop the Hugoton natural gas field. These are counties that for decades have had it all... big valuations on natural gas that would support just about anything that the counties wanted to spend money on and low tax levies because, well, they were taxing billions of cubic feet of natural gas.
But the Hugoton field is depleting. We’ve taken natural gas out of the field for decades and where we used to get gulps of natural gas, we’re now getting sips.
With the depletion of the Hugoton field, those 14 counties are looking at reduced revenue from the gas. That’s not a good thing, of course, for the people who live out there and for their property tax bills, which inevitably are going to have to rise to support the same services they enjoy now.
The solution? Well, it was brought to the Legislature by Sen. Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, of all places.
His trust fund proposal sailed through the Senate 28-8. Oh, did we mention that Morris is the chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee that says yes or no to every dime the state spends on, well, everything?
The bill then went to the House, where it was directed to the House Appropriations Committee chaired by Rep. Melvin Neufeld, R-Ingalls, whose legislative district includes Meade County, one of the 14 beneficiary counties of the trust fund. Oh, did we mention that Neufeld’s committee similarly passes on every dime of state spending?
The bill picked up a little amendment that would let nine southwestern Kansas counties create a state university out west, but the House nonetheless passed the bill 77-47, and the Senate then concurred, on a little weaker vote, but passed it anyway.
And that’s where the governor decided to slow down this train with a veto.
Well, she probably did more than slow down the train. She probably derailed it, flipped it over, set fire to it and then buried the ashes.
Nope, it won’t be coming back for a potential veto override attempt later this month.
But, for a time, well, it was a pretty good ride for those southwest Kansas counties. Nobody was paying much attention to the bill. Its cost to the state, which would have risen from about $2.7 million in 2007 to nearly $6 million in 2010, might have gone almost unnoticed for a year or two until it kicked into effect. There was the little Regent university provision, but that likely would have fallen off in the next legislative session, anyway.
So, what happens to the trust fund that won’t be funded?
We’re betting that the idea doesn’t just go away. After all, the Legislature meets every year.
May 13, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 10, 2004)Tough decisions ahead
While not appropriating any new money–from any source–for Kansas elementary and secondary schools has been at the top of Page 1 for most Kansas newspapers and has led the news reports on television and radio, there’s a flip side to the school funding issue that should be even scarier for local school boards and the legislators who represent them.
What’s the flip side?
It’s that every school district got just what it got in the way of state assistance last year, adjusted for new pupils who will be coming to school next fall.
It’s called "hold harmless." Every legislator can return home and say that while nothing got much better for school funding, nothing got worse.
That’s "hold harmless" and for many Kansans who figure that the state is spending enough money for K-12 schools, that might be as good as it gets for quite some time. Next year, or at a special session that might be called if the Kansas Supreme Court issues a decision in time for it to do any good for the next year’s budgets for schools, the concept of holding harmless individual districts probably will be gone. And it will be gone for a pretty good reason: That it never made any sense except political sense for legislators.
The gist of Shawnee County District Court Judge Terry Bullock’s preliminary decision that the state’s school finance formula is unconstitutional is that the state isn’t spending enough money in some school districts to offer the programs that will help the pupils who have learned English as a second language (the acronym is ESL) or who are at-risk for not succeeding because of poverty and the likely social disadvantages that brings (called at-risk in the Statehouse hallways).
Now, if Bullock is right, and he is likely to be at least mostly right, then the state has a responsibility under its "suitable education" doctrine to provide those districts without enough money for those programs more money and for those with more than enough money to provide a suitable education less money.
The Legislature, which is notoriously tight with money anyway, faces a decision to spend more money on the "have nots" and probably less money on the "haves." Or, politically, it could just spend more money on the have nots, but that’s not a politically attractive proposition. If some district is getting more money, then every district is going to want some. Does anyone know a school district administrator or board of education or high school sports fan or teacher union bargaining team willing to say that it has more money than it really needs?
Nope, none here.
So when Bullock’s final order is released, it ought to give us a clue whether all districts are not getting enough money or whether just a few are not getting enough money or whether individual programs such as ESL or at-risk are uniformly not getting enough money.
The best outcome here is a decision that just one or two programs need more money and it can be handled with just a small check from the Statehouse. Worse outcome is that so many districts need so much more money that the state can’t find the cash and has to raise taxes or borrow from some obscure area of government to pay the bill.
Even worse than that would be a decision that so much money is needed that the entire school finance plan has to be recalculated, with some districts getting more money and some giving up money. That’s the end of hold-harmless, and that’s when legislators return to those districts that have lost state aid and have to explain either that their districts were getting too much money for years or, more likely, that the courts have made a terrible decision and are meddling with the time-honored tradition of hold-harmless and that if patrons of their districts are really interested in keeping things as they are, they’re going to have to levy new property taxes to do it.
The tough decisions are about to start.
May 6, 2004
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 3, 2004)A decisive month
There is an interesting month coming up, between now and June 10, noon of that day, specifically, which is the deadline for Kansans to file as candidates for the Kansas House, Senate and Board of Education.
This is the month when a member of the Legislature or State Board is presumed by most people to be seeking reelection if they haven’t made a big fuss about quitting. Some have. It’s easier for incumbents seeking reelection to raise money, it’s easier for them to campaign and they probably have some signs in the back of the garage that, if the roof hasn’t leaked, are still probably in good enough condition to trot out and use again.
The power of being an incumbent is dramatic, and the second term probably is the real breakwater for Kansas legislators. Abraham Lincoln said something about fooling "all of the people some of the time" and occasionally that happens. But by the end of a two-year term in the House or a four-year term in the Senate, or a four-year stint on the State Board of Education, most members have left tracks. If you’re interested it’s fairly easy to determine whether they are voting the way you want so you can decide whether to send them back, or send them home.
The June 10-watch started in earnest four years ago, when in 2000, State Rep. Mike Farmer, R-Wichita, who had served several terms in the House and was by all accounts popular in his district, winning with nice-sized victories when any Democrat even bothered to try to unseat him, showed up at the Secretary of State’s office with Bonnie Huy. Minutes before noon–before anyone in a car could start in Wichita, drive to Topeka and find a place to park–Farmer resigned his seat and Huy, a retired Boeing employee, filed for the office.
There was already a little-known Democrat in the race, but Huy got not only the mantle of the incumbent, and the only Republican candidacy, she got a major head start on the campaign by being personally vouched-for by Farmer, whose years of service had earned him considerable respect among his constituents.
And that swap of an expected candidate for a "sponsored" successor started a trend that makes June 10 all the more interesting and which makes the run-up to that filing deadline all the more dramatic.
The same ploy was used in a Johnson County race, though not so artfully, when in 2002, Rep. Lisa Benlon, R-Shawnee, announced the weekend before the filing deadline of that year that she wouldn’t seek reelection and introduced now-State Rep. Stephanie Sharp, R-Lenexa, as the best choice to succeed her. The couple days’ notice provided time for another Republican to enter the race, but Sharp defeated the Republican primary challenger for the open seat handily. That experience sent canny politicians to school. They learned that the closer to the filing deadline an incumbent bows out and an apprenticed is introduced, the less chance for a primary election battle.
The primary election is the real key to succession in the Legislature. In most districts in the state, with a definite voter registration advantage to one party or another, the election is essentially over at the primary. The dominant party’s candidate generally goes on to victory unless there is something very philosophically haywire with the majority-by-registration party’s candidate.
And, don’t forget that there are dozens of districts in which just one candidate files for office. Those candidates, without opposition, may not get the business cards and letterhead printed up until after the general election in November, but essentially are in office unless they do something exceedingly foolish to draw a write-in opponent. Those lucky only-name-on-the-ballot candidates can start ironing shirts and blouses for the start of the 2005 legislative session.
So the last month of the pre-election race is officially on. Those who aren’t talking much about reelection may be not filing and those who are talking about it just enough to scare off challengers may have a change of heart, or a plan afoot.
It’s what makes the business interesting.