May 2009

May 28, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers May 25, 2009)

Click it or ticket? Really?

Remember all the things your parents didn’t want you to do—probably stuff you shouldn’t have done, anyway—that they said if you did it, the goblins would get you?

Looking back, that worked out pretty well. Most of us, apparently, weren’t “gotten” by goblins.

But it’s a little different when state government tells you to wear a seat belt, and promises that goblins, er… law enforcement officers…will “get you” if you don’t.
Now, it would be great if all Kansans buckled up before they move their cars or trucks out of park and into motion, and state law is pretty clear that if you are under age 16 or if you have an infant or children in the car, well, you better buckle them up.

It’s the law, and even if it wasn’t the law, well, it just makes good common sense. Goblins probably ought to “get” people who don’t buckle up little children.

But the latest of the state’s TV ads about “click it or ticket,” while meaning well, is just flat wrong and it’s a little disappointing.

You’ve probably seen it: A couple old guys in an old pickup driving out of a small town, being followed by cop cars with flashing lights, a helicopter following it. You’d have thought the pair had fraudulently sold a chicken that wasn’t “free range.”

Nope. They were followed and surrounded by police because they weren’t wearing their seat belts. They should have and you wonder how they got that old being that dumb, but the two old guys are exactly the people that the Legislature this session didn’t pass a law to require to wear seat belts.

The Senate passed a seat belt bill, the House didn’t, and there is now no state law requiring adults to wear seat belts when they drive. If they get pulled over for something else, they can get a ticket for whatever else they were stopped for and then an additional ticket for not wearing a seat belt. For adults, not wearing a seat belt is a “secondary” offense. There has to be a primary offense (maybe no license tag, speeding, weaving or something else) for that “click it or ticket” to be true.

If a cop just wants to stop grownups to scold them for not wearing a seat belt—and there’s probably an upside and a downside to that—that can happen.

But, at least in the latest TV ad, the old guys in fact aren’t going to get a ticket.

And, you probably have to wonder, if it turned out that you knew for sure that “goblins weren’t gonna get you,” just what you’d have done.

Everyone ought to wear seat belts, but the ad is wrong.

 

May 21, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on May 18, 2009)

Politics as we’ve known it

It’s hard to be certain, but there is a decent chance that Gov. Mark Parkinson and his new Lt. Gov. sidekick and chief of staff Troy Findley have essentially upended Kansas gubernatorial politics as we have known it for years,.
Neither will seek the governorship in 2010, they say. Just that simply, they have become the first almost non-political leadership that the state has seen in recent memory, possibly ever.

It’s subtle.

They are billing themselves as “problem-solvers”-not-“politicians” and if they manage to act that way for the next year and a half, they may create the most dramatic political shift Kansas has seen.

They are Democrats, of course, but if in the next year or so they can help turn around the Kansas economy, show some sensible policy that benefits all Kansans, the party identification will largely drop away.

If they can manage a still-serious budget situation without appearing too political, they will have diminished the cachet of “Democratic solutions” or “Republican solutions” and essentially point Kansas voters in November of 2010 toward just solutions, which most Kansans want.

Possibly, the import of being on the ballot as a Republican or a Democrat drops away. It’s just one leadership plan vs. another leadership plan for voters to consider. And, at some point, the traditional frenetic appeals to party loyalty just seem…well, rather parochial.

It would make partisan appeals as senseless as, well, trying to appeal to tall or short, blessed-with-hair or balding, or fat or skinny voters. And those are silly ways to choose a governor, aren’t they?

Probably not accidentally, that shift away from party labels at the top of the ballot benefits Democrats because this is a generally Republican state. For all the “big government,” “big spending” baggage of Democrats, a race focused on just management skills as demonstrated by Parkinson and Findley sinks those traditional GOP rallying cries. Makes them seem a little simplistic to the voters.

The tactic might require some Democrats to quiet down their “look what Democrats have done” rhetoric, too, not an easy thing for a traditional minority party understandably eager to cite its accomplishments.

If this plays out, look for a very different election campaign next year.

Oh, but only if things get better in Kansas under the Parkinson/Findley team. Otherwise, it’s back to the usual.

May 14, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on May 11, 2009)

Tax increases next year?

Old-timers at the Statehouse are already wondering, while the echoes of the gavel that adjourned the 2009 Legislature are still faintly ringing in the building, about next year.

We’re especially wondering about the Kansas House, which institutionally looks at life in two-year segments, the length of the term of a state representative.

What we are seeing is a real gamble, some reason for taking that gamble, and the prospects for the 2010 Legislature, all while some just-returned-home lawmakers are reacquainting themselves with their pets.

This was a session of dramatic budget cuts, hundreds of millions of dollars pulled out of state agencies that we expect to do their jobs. Practically, it’s ugly stuff. But, for a new House Speaker, Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, who relentlessly opposed raising taxes or even putting already-in-law tax cuts on hold, the session was just what he proposed.

For a first-year Speaker, he got the end result he was after, and while it wasn’t pretty, it worked, and he and his House followers can say they delivered on their promise. Not a bad start, is it?

But next year, with a projection of $570 million in shortfalls again, including tax boosters that haven’t been approved anywhere, we’re looking at probably $650 million in cuts ahead.

The presumption is that next year turns out to be a year of tax increases. Oh, and did we mention that those tax increases come during a year when House members stand for reelection?

(The Senate? Members aren’t up for reelection until 2012, when it’s very possible that the economy will have rebounded and they’ll be able to base their brochures on recent nice things they’ve done for Kansans.)

Was this the right order? Spending cuts this year, tax increases next year?

Or, you have to wonder, was O’Neal’s no-tax victory this year a necessary step that will give him additional horsepower next year on rejecting or at least minimizing tax increases next year?

That’s what Statehouse old-timers are wondering.

We’ll all see how that comes out…

May 7, 2009
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers on May 4, 2009)

Balance of power

Yes, we’re all reading about the budget tussle at the Statehouse, the $328 million shortfall for the fiscal year that starts on July 1, but there’s an insiders’ political story here that is probably worth knowing about.

That story is the import of what appears to be a major split between the two houses of the Legislature and the governor’s office.

Now, that’s a traditional split. The governor is, well, the governor, and the person who is supposed to make the big decisions. That’s why the governor gets the big bucks.

But the Legislature springs from 40 Senate districts and 125 House districts and when the Legislature is Republican and the governor is a Democrat, well, the Legislature is supposed to gang up on the governor.  That’s just bottom-line politics. And, of course, a governor does best when she/he can split the House and Senate leaders.

Well, before Kathleen Sebelius was confirmed as Secretary of the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services, she kept the House and Senate leaders pretty much at each other’s throats. Politically, that was good for her. But there’s a new governor, former GOP State Chairman Mark Parkinson, who is now a Democrat.

Early in the session, House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, and Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, were pretty tight, forcing a showdown on some big spending issues for the current fiscal year and virtually overpowering the governor. But she vetoed out of that initial spending bill nearly everything that O’Neal wanted badly and not much Morris cared about, starting the split-up of the chambers.

Now, with Sebelius gone, Parkinson is supporting Sebelius’ budget which he inherited, and he is so far having splendid luck in splitting O’Neal and Morris. The Senate is leaning toward the Sebelius-Parkinson approach to fix next year’s budget—some spending cuts, some tax-cut give-backs—which O’Neal opposes.

This will be the week of the veto session where we learn whether Parkinson and Morris are cozier than Morris and O’Neal, based largely on the budget solutions that the leaders can get their chambers to pass and ultimately, after negotiations, which approach is sent to the governor.

It’s an inside-the-tent drama, but changes in the balance of power under the dome are what people under the dome watch.