May 2005
May 26, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 23, 2005)A back story
The headlines were about the House and Senate, meeting for sine die on the last day of the 2005 session, agreeing to pass a bill that provides a $250,000 death benefit for survivors of Kansas National Guard soldiers who are killed in the line of duty after having been sent to a combat area.
That made it pretty simple. Nobody wants the families of Kansas Guardsmen, killed while deployed to Iraq or other hot spots, to add economic problems to the suffering they feel through the loss of a spouse or parent or child.
But there was a lot more going on than just the 36-0 Senate vote and the 103-8 vote in the House on the last bill of the legislative session.
There were some relatively recent scores settled between the House and the Senate, and at least for a brief moment in May, the scales of power on the 3rd floor of the Kansas Statehouse where the legislative chambers are located swung back to equilibrium.
It’s under-the-Dome stuff that isn’t important to the final outcome of the bill that increases from the $125,000 death benefit that the governor approved when she Monday (May 16) signed the Omnibus appropriations bill until Friday (May 20) when the death benefit was hiked to $250,000. But it’s an interesting back story.
Start with the Senate’s Republicans alone, no Democrats, cosponsoring a bill early in the session that created a $250,000 death benefit. Democrats would have liked to have been on the bill as cosponsors. Reproducing the first page of a bill–showing its topic, its number and its sponsors–is popular in campaign literature. These reproductions are almost always tilted slightly, so recipients have to handle the brochure a little longer to read it. Democrats would have liked some Democratic names on that sponsor list.
Well, that bill was introduced and debated. It was pretty narrowly crafted to apply only to Kansas Guard members who also received the Purple Heart medal, for those who are killed or injured "by an instrument of war in the hands of the enemy." It was a Democrat, Sen. Jim Barone of Frontenac, who offered up an amendment deleting the Purple Heart language, figuring that Kansans who are ordered to duty go to an inherently dangerous place put their lives at risk, with or without qualification for the Purple Heart. Senators of both parties could hardly vote against that amendment, and it became part of the bill, which languished in the House, whose members ultimately agreed to a $125,000 death benefit as part of the Omnibus appropriations bill.
Senators passed the Omnibus at a little after 2 a.m. May 1, the House about 30 minutes later with some concern in the Senate, none in the House, about the shrunken-to $125,000 benefit.
The Senate was also that Omnibus night "dissed" by the House when an agreement that was key to the Senate’s consideration of the last bill of the veto session–a promise by the House to take an up or down vote on whether the state should buy the Circle K Ranch in far western Kansas– was sidestepped when a procedural vote to consider the issue failed. That sparked angst, reason for the Senate to not consider the Omnibus bill after lawmakers had been at work for hours. But it was late, people were tired, many had checked out of their hotels and were ready to drive home. The Senate accepted the Omnibus bill.
That insult to the Senate, and the Senate’s realization that it had been deceived, didn’t set well in the next week’s ruminations about the legislative session.
So the Senate decided to do at sine die what it had always planned to do anyway, provide the $250,000 death benefit. That not only was right for the Senate, but sent the House scrambling to make sure it would on short notice show up and be able to consider the bill. It was the Senate calling the tune, which was not only the right thing to do but politically a great leveler.
That’s part of the background on why the final vote for the $250,000 death benefit last week evened-up the House-Senate balance of power.
The Senate’s action forced the House to vote the bill at sine die. It would have been a political nightmare for the Senate to have passed the bill and the House either not able to pass it because it didn’t have enough members in Topeka or the House voting against the bill in a political era when American flags are waving furiously.
May 19, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 16, 2005)What kind of gap?
It’s not that far from the Statehouse where the Legislature works to the Kansas Judicial Center where the Kansas Supreme Court makes its living. The buildings face each other across the street. But there’s either a cultural gap between the two or one is plainly just not paying attention.
That’s what you’d think, after hearing the Kansas Supreme Court worry lawyers in the state’s school finance lawsuit over the precision with which the Legislature concluded that about $142 million in new state money is about what it takes to suitably finance public education in Kansas.
The high court’s justices during the big, and long, hearing on school finance last week continued to pound away at whether the Legislature had any hard figures, accurate figures, on what it costs to educate a Kansas school child. You got the feeling that once the court had elicited that accurate figure, it would do some quick multiplication and figure out what the state ought to be spending, and announce the figure at the end of the hearing.
While we’re sure the court’s intentions were good, it became obvious early in the hearing–that stretched nearly three hours–that there is a sharp difference between life for those who wear a black robe to work and those who wear street clothes.
The court seems like its justices must lead pretty sheltered lives when it presumes that there is some "right" number for the cost of a suitable education. And that is going to be the problem when the court tries to figure out whether the Legislature’s effort to finance elementary and secondary education this year was adequate.
Realistically, there just isn’t any place to go, anyone to talk to, any calculation that is suitable to figure out just how much money the state ought to be spending on public education. There’s a widespread feeling that we’re not spending enough, and it may be accurate, or not.
The real issue that the court doesn’t appear to be understanding and that the Legislature appears to understand but not be able to quantify is just what it should cost to educate every single pupil to the highest achievement level of that pupil.
How one learns that is the real key. It might be possible to audit a school district with generally high levels of pupil performance and figure out what it costs per head of student to achieve that performance and then try to impose that level of funding on other districts. It sounds pretty simple but of course isn’t because every pupil is different, and some are more different than others, having disabilities, problems with communicating in English, even home problems that the pupils bring to school with them.
If it is possible to come close to computing the cost of educating every pupil, how do you decide whether the football or basketball or band or debate club expenses are part of that equation?
None of this is going to be as simple for the court as a clear-cut case of a cropduster spraying a playground instead of the field he was hired to treat, or computing the difference between what it costs to repair your roof and what your insurance company says it should cost to repair your roof.
That’s why last week’s Supreme Court hearing on school finance was some how unsettling. The court wants a dollar figure and nobody has one to offer. The Legislature’s offer may be high, may be low, but there’s no way to know for sure.
We keep hearing about political decisions being made in the Legislature, like that’s a bad thing, and the court keeps talking about political decisions like they are a bad thing, and actually, they’re not in most cases. Political decisions are made when there’s not an absolutely right, calculable decision possible. When the decisions are made by people who have to stand for popular election every now and again, voters get to grade their work.
That’s going to make the court’s decision on whether the new school finance law is constitutional interesting, measuring the court’s perception against the Legislature’s on what is right.
We’ll see how that comes out..
May 12, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 9, 2005)The next target?
What? The Legislature has just left town and already people are wondering who or what gets raided next session—next election-year session, by the way—to balance the state budget without raising taxes next year.
Did we mention that next year the entire House of Representatives, which pretty much ran the 2005 Legislature although the state Senate was on duty, too, stands for reelection? The governor and the other statewide officers also will be on the ballot for your consideration in just a short 18 months.
There’s only one thing better for legislators than a session in which no tax increases can be directly blamed on them, and that’s a session when they give away money through tax cuts. Cuts were out of the picture, of course, but going home and reminding voters that they didn’t raise taxes is always a good thing. None of that "barely in office, just getting their letterhead picked out and they’re raising our taxes" stuff in 2005. No sir, no ma’am.
Which brings us to next session, already.
The real demand for the Legislature to spend more money next year comes from the school finance bill that slides money around within the complicated formula in which about $2.5 billion is spent on kindergarten-12th grade public education. See, the Legislature this session, without raising taxes, increased spending on schools by about $142 million. A sizable amount, of course, not as much as the K-12 industry or its lawyers had hoped, but it’s still quite a bit of money.
But the bill that the Legislature passed, that the governor allowed to become law without her signature, calls for that $142 million to be repeated next year, plus about $70 million.
The state treasury doesn’t have that much money in it and isn’t expected to have that much for the next several years unless the economy blasts off in a big way, meaning more income taxes and more sales taxes pour in like they did in the late 1990’s when even the state’s sharpest revenue estimators couldn’t keep up with the state’s prosperity.
Don’t look for the state to "grow" its way out of the money problem.
So, if legislators don’t want to have to sneak back into their hometowns next year under cover of darkness–and yet stand for reelection—they’re going to have to cut spending next year.
So, where are the cuts going to come from?
The most obvious target is the Kansas Department of Transportation. Remember when the Legislature borrowed about $100 million from K-DOT a couple years back, with the solemn promise that lawmakers would pay the money back? Well, that’s of course on the table. You gotta figure that the Legislature is going to pay off the bonds used to build highways, or the state’s credit goes into the Dumpster, so that money is safe but there’s about $83 million that the Legislature might not repay K-DOT.
That, of course, sends Secretary of Transportation Deb Miller out barnstorming the state with easels on which she’ll put maps of local highway projects that the Legislature (under a Republican administration) promised to build that won’t be built because the Legislature has taken the money. K-DOT folks tend to put on a good show, so figure every town she visits will be one that isn’t getting the bypass or bridge or just repair that was promised. Look for charts showing how many jobs disappear from the community, how many times that money paid to construction workers circulates through the local grocery stores and department stores and restaurants and probably not bars but Dairy Queens and the like.
There aren’t many state agencies that can put on a show like K-DOT–virtually get dozens of local chambers of commerce scared straight.
And, we’re not certain, of course, but it sounds like someone over at K-DOT is dusting off the easels and putting those maps of bypasses and the like on poster boards so that you can read them from the 10th or 12th row of seats.
Yes, K-DOT is one of those "targets of opportunity" but it won’t be a push-over, so this goes onto the ever-expanding watch list of issues in 2006.
May 5, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers May 2, 2005)Who's calling please?
The Kansas House did an interesting thing in the few hours before it adjourned early Sunday; it refused–by a narrow vote–to saddle up the Trojan horse of the campaign finance world.
It was late, there had been plenty of work done, but the House wouldn’t buy a campaign finance bill that sounded pretty good on paper and would have accomplished several second-tier campaign finance reforms, but clearly missed the major target.
It was a measure that would have done some of those things that even the most casual of voters would have noticed. It required those last-minute telephone ad campaigns for and against candidates to mention who or what organization paid for the effort. It also would have required campaigns within the current 11-day-before-the-election blackout period to report within two days receipt of contributions of more than $350.
Those are both pretty high-minded "openness in campaign" items that would have sounded good at the next Rotary luncheon or business round-table or TV story about elections and the just-adjourned session.
But the House saw that one big issue that wasn’t included in the package that conservative Republicans were offering, and spit out the hook.
What was missing? Those "educational" issue ads that don’t specifically ask for a vote for or against a candidate, but set out a premise... maybe not raising taxes... and then mention some who did vote to raise taxes and some who didn’t, or presumably, won’t.
Those educational ads are, of course, the ones that tip general and primary elections. Right now, you don’t have a way to know, besides a patriotic name, who is actually running the ads, where the money comes from and in what amounts–what is spent essentially "off the books" of the candidate’s personal campaign.
That was fairly complicated stuff to be considering at midnight on a Saturday, but chances are excellent that had the campaign package not been stopped in the House, it would have sailed through the Senate.
Then, it would have been up to Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to sign or veto the measure. Signing it would have meant the Legislature could claim it had cleaned up elections–with the governor apparently agreeing–and no further action is needed next session.
Vetoing the bill would have put the governor in the position of defending herself for rejecting a bill that sounded pretty progressive to most with even casual interest in campaigns. Vetoing the bill because it represented a cup half-full, instead of one that contained everything she wanted makes a governor look picky, fussy and unreasonable. For most Kansans, half a loaf is a start, even though it practically would have been all the loaf they’d ever get as the state goes into a campaign year.
Why would passage of the partial campaign reform have shut the door to significant legislation next session that would have required more information about who is behind and financing those slick postcard campaigns? Because conservatives who are the major beneficiary of those third-party campaigns will be in an election year when only the foolish–or those prodded by the sharp stick of public opinion–would unilaterally disarm themselves and their friends.
Rejecting the quick if incomplete campaign finance bill last weekend means that the issue is joined in an election cycle when regulating those third-party campaigns becomes a campaign issue for those who want the regulation. The postcards which generally indicate support for one candidate become an issue themselves and may wind up smearing their intended beneficiaries.
Campaign law changes in an election year are always tough. Legislators are counting their campaign funds and their campaign friends and making tough political decisions, but it is only in an election year that the most politically charged decisions can be turned into powerful issues.
That’s why this Legislature’s delay ultimately is likely to bear fruit—next year..