October 2003
Oct. 30, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 27, 2003)Sure bets
When the subject is expanded gambling in Kansas, you can count on some sure things.
You can count on people who are seeing their business slow down–such as the people who own pari-mutuel racing tracks–looking for ways to expand their business and figuring that slots-at-tracks are a sure-fire business-builder.
Those are the folks who are willing to give up a lot of their slots revenues to the state just to get their traffic up. But those are also the people who have a need to increase the amount of money that they pay horse owners and dog owners so that they’ll not only have a brisk racing business, but also slot machines for people to pump quarters into between races.
You can count on folks with a small tourist stream wanting something else to offer to keep the locals and tourists hanging around long enough for lunch. Look at cities like, well, Dodge City with its wild west stuff going on. Add Junction City with a lake where a lot of people go fishing, but unfortunately a lot of people who like to fish are married to people who don’t like to get their hands wet and would rather do a little gambling while the angler is out there getting wet and cold and getting his or her hands wet messing around with bait or fish.
Don’t forget those who are Indians. They got kicked around the country extensively during frontier days, being relocated by pony soldiers to land where most European-descended Americans didn’t want to live anyway. The Indians, at least those who can claim part of Kansas as their newly assigned lands, jump through a lot of hoops and build casinos. Oh, and the Indians don’t have to split their winnings with the state under the compacts they’ve entered into for operation of their casinos.
The tribes already have four casinos and a bingo parlor that looks a lot like a casino already in operation. Unfortunately, none of those is close to Wichita, which means that the state’s biggest city is a 2½-hour drive on the Turnpike from the closest slot machine, which must be troubling to people who want to gamble but find themselves living in Wichita or its environs.
Now, the governor has appointed a gaming investigatory committee that is trying to think up ways to expand gaming in Kansas and make a little money for the state at the same time and it is just learning that there’s not a lot of big-think business going on in the industry. The natural idea, the governor’s task force believes, is for all the Indian tribes to gather together and put up one or two really big, really nice casinos and hand the state a share of the winnings.
Unfortunately, the governor’s team hasn’t yet tumbled to the concept that Indians aren’t really one big happy family or they wouldn’t have been fighting among themselves for hundreds of years and now that they’re wearing suits and ties instead of war paint that all didn’t end. So, melding the tribes into one monolithic "Indians Inc." isn’t going to work.
What’s the committee going to recommend to the governor? Well, don’t look for a neat, workable package. And don’t look for the state to put together its own casino operations because if there’s one thing we’ve learned from standing in line to get our car tags is that government isn’t very good in the hospitality business. It’s not that state employees are all crabby or mean or distant, it’s just that you can count on your civil service Cocktail Waitperson III to be a little slow of foot. And managing those people is an art, not a section of a procedures manual put together by senior state officials who are unfamiliar with the concept of trading a customer up to a top-shelf liquor instead of what comes out of the tap.
What do we look for in this great gaming investigation? Well, in the upcoming legislative session look for–at most–allowing a new two-tribe resort-casino in Wyandotte County. The folks there have their own money, a promise to use union labor, and crowds drawn by NASCAR and a furniture store and an outdoors outfitter.
What else? Probably nothing, except possibly a handful of slot machines at the State Fair in Hutchinson.
Oh, and a complicated final report of the gambling committee that will probably not be read by very many people.
Oct. 23, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 20, 2003)Building intelligent candidates
We’re more than a year out from the real elections next November, but already the politicians and their workers are puzzling out how to win, if not your heart and mind, at least your vote for legislative candidates.
Perennially outnumbered Democrats are pretty flush with money, having one of their own sitting in the governor’s office as an asset at fund-raising while the Republican Party, with tons of adherents, is making payroll at its headquarters and wondering how to jump-start contributions.
Democrats are putting together a plan to spend some real money on their upcoming legislative campaigns, assistance for candidates who traditionally have to be a little smarter and a little cleverer than their Republican opponents to get elected to the Legislature.
The voter registration and the general conservative bent of Kansans tend to yield the equation that when all things are equal, go ahead and vote for the Republican. At least the Republican will find friends to follow in the Legislature.
Democrats are hoping to un-equalize that equation and they are going to do it in two ways.
First, the one that voters have no reason to care about, is to spend $100,000 to assemble a deadly accurate mailing list for Democratic legislative candidates to use. It won’t matter at the mailbox, but there’s nothing quite so disappointing as sending out a dynamite mass mailing to Kansans and having 40 percent of them returned by the post office as being undeliverable. That’s heartbreaking, especially in the last days of a campaign when a candidate needs to get his or her face and name before the voters.
That’s a big undertaking, and while most voters either get the letter or don’t, those letters coming back to the candidate undelivered to voters are emotionally tough. Democrats are going to spend the money to make sure that doesn’t happen in the 2004 election cycle.
The second major effort is spending more than $70,000 statewide on building "intelligent candidates."
Now, they’re not talking learn-French-while-you-sleep. They’re talking research that most candidates don’t have the time and maybe not the expertise to do.
That research, ultimately, is what is going to spare Democratic candidates the agony that all first-time candidates have...not knowing what’s going on in Topeka. The candidates will learn how their opponents voted on issues important to the district. The candidates will learn not only the basic issues, but some of the back-story of the issues, the industries involved, the proponents and opponents of issues, and background that most people can’t pick up from their daily newspapers.
Oh, and if an opponent hasn’t, say, paid his or her property taxes, well, that would be something interesting to know, or if the opponent’s dog has bitten the neighbor’s kid, or there are a number of speeding-in-school-zone tickets out there, well, that’s what’s called opposition research and someone ought to do it.
We’ve all heard candidates who while being pleasant and eager clearly don’t know what is involved in the legislative process. Everyone likes a cute puppy, but we’d feel better voting for a representative with some House (or Senate) training so they don’t burn up a year of their term getting up to speed.
That’s where the "if all things are equal, vote for the Republican" maxim will–Democrats hope–fall apart. If the Republican and the Democratic candidates are both likable, but one is clearly smarter and more informed about issues and how they effect voters, and it turns out that both pretty much agree with a voter’s concerns, why would anyone vote for the less-informed candidate?
Will the Democrats’ "intelligent candidate" support plan work? It’s a lot of time, a lot of money being spent by the state party organization to put it together. Money that Democrats, with a sitting governor to help fund-raise, can generate.
It might put a new spin on an old maxim...
Oct. 16, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 13, 2003)Proposal has heart
The 2003 Kansas Silver Haired Legislature has come and gone and it’s leaving behind for the next session of the Kansas Legislature a little bill that shows a lot of heart, and probably a lot of good public policy, too.
The Silver Haired Legislature is a group of senior citizens who have interest in public policy, and tend to be a conscience for the state.
What has it proposed? Simply, that if for some reason grandchildren are candidates for foster care, that their grandparents be given consideration to provide that foster care and that the grandparents receive at least 75 percent of whatever the state would be spending anyway for foster care.
It’s a stipend that might allow grandparents who are out of the workforce and probably living on whatever pensions they have to be able to afford to care for their grandchildren.
The whole idea is, of course, based on the heartbreaking situation where your adult children are for some reason unable to care for their children. The reasons range from death to imprisonment to drug addiction to doing violence to the grandkids. The situation is every aging grandparent’s nightmare. Imagine raising your children the best that you can, with all the principles and love that you can pass on, and then having those children unable to do the same for your grandchildren.
Now, this isn’t about those adult children being down on their luck. This is about those adult children being unable or unwilling to take care of their children. Of course, grandparents are going to want to step in to care for those grandchildren.
But, can you imagine a grandparent who wants to take care of those grandchildren not being able to afford to do so? Of course, that grandparent is going to do without whatever is necessary to be able to provide for his or her grandchildren, but the point to the Silver Haired Legislature’s bill is that the children are going to be taken care of anyway by foster parents, and the foster parents are going to be paid some amount for the care of those children.
So, for about 75 percent of the cost of foster care by non-relatives, it would appear that the state saves some money, the grandparents get to care for their grandchildren and life goes on.
There isn’t anything easy or pleasant about children being removed from their parents’ homes. At the point that the decision is made by professional social workers and approved by a judge, a lot of things have already gone very wrong. But if grandparents are willing and able to care for their grandchildren, there aren’t a lot of good reasons not to let them do it. Money certainly shouldn’t be a reason.
There probably are some good reasons why a grandparent isn’t the best choice to provide foster care. There may be siblings of the unfit adult children who might be better choices to care for their nieces and nephews. There may be distance, physical or psychological handicaps, or just the stamina to care for the grandchildren to be considered.
But if grandparents are able to care for their grandchildren, and after a court has examined every other possibility and finds that the grandparents represent the best situation for care of grandchildren, then the possibility of the state subsidizing that care is sure worth considering.
Oh, the Silver Haired Legislature also will recommend to the Legislature that 5 percent of Internet sales taxes be spent on the Department of Aging, and that the maximum Homestead Property Tax Refund be increased to $1,000 from $600. But those aren’t where their hearts are, and probably aren’t where the Legislature’s heart is going to be next session, either.
But the grandparenting bill...well, that hits an emotional home run.
Oct. 9, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 6, 2003)Two roads to prosperity?
Well, it is starting to look like another of those business vs. balance-of-world legislative sessions about to open in the Statehouse in 2004, and the theme appears to be what’s good for business is good for Kansas...or else.
Nobody’s strongly arguing that Kansas businesses shouldn’t be successful.
But not a lot of Kansans are arguing that they’re willing to do whatever Kansas business wants the state to do just to ensure that businesses are successful.
In fact, the report from the 2003 Kansas Prosperity Summit, which is the road map for juicing up the state’s economy that was distilled from hundreds of Kansans across the state, many of them Chamber members, doesn’t mention a word about changes in the state’s legal system, hammering down unemployment insurance premiums or even major changes in Kansas’ worker compensation benefits to drive down work comp premiums–all tenets of the Chamber’s prosperity program.
We guess there is a possibility that it was just rogue Chamber members who served on regional prosperity task forces.
The governor’s Prosperity Summit plan? To capitalize on the state’s highway system by luring travelers off the windows-up, doors-locked fast four-lanes onto side roads. "Until we can deliver the majority of Interstate travelers to the rest of Kansas, we should bring the rest of Kansas to the Interstate," is a key for the "Ad Astra" facet of the prosperity blueprint.
Sounds like a frontage road bonanza. The prosperity plan that Lt. Gov. John Moore–he’s also secretary of Commerce–is going to try to wrangle into legislation also will include new investment in small and existing businesses, rural economic development, value-added agriculture and rationalization of the state’s dozens of workforce training programs.
The key question may be whether the administration, which has already won a significant buy-in from business and eco devo leaders across the state, will show any interest in nuts-and-bolts proposals to drive down the cost of doing business in Kansas which is the key so far to the state Chamber’s program.
And the real political question may be whether Gov. Kathleen Sebelius is going to force the Chamber to decide whether it is for her prosperity plan or is going to be characterized as a bunch of anti-worker owners of the means of production who can’t see a big picture but instead focus on shaving payments to laid-off or injured workers.
The differences between approaches to economic recovery can almost be split that neatly. On one hand, there are efforts to soup up the state’s economy by growing it, and on the other (Chamber’s) hand, there is paring away the cost of doing business so that even bad economic times yield higher profit margins.
It would be a bold, and maybe risky, move for the governor to marginalize the Chamber of Commerce, but the possibility is there: Grow the state by plucking travelers off the Interstates vs. grow the state by reducing benefits to Kansans who work here.
That’s not a pretty choice. Nobody, especially legislators who are seeking reelection next year, and that’s all of them who want to come back in 2005, wants to make the Chamber of Commerce mad at them. But if an incumbent candidate managed to get the votes of every Chamber of Commerce member in his or her district and a challenger had to settle for just the workers, well, the latter would be earning mileage coming to Topeka for the Legislature while the former would be drinking coffee with Chamber members at the local coffee shop wondering what happened.
We may be seeing the politically correct, hurt-no-voter Prosperity Summit approach doing significant battle with the drive-down-the-cost-of-doing-business tactic. And it will be an even-up fight, right up until vetoes start flying.
Yes, this might be a good one to watch.
Oct. 2, 2003
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 29, 2003)Of casinos and windmills...
Have you noticed a couple things going on in Kansas that don’t seem quite right? No big deal, just some of the "we don’t do it that way here" stuff?
Well, a couple of them popped up last week.
One is that Attorney General Phill Kline is trying to shut down an Indian bingo parlor in Kansas City, Kan., based on...get this...violation of the historic preservation act.
The other is what appears to be a concerted effort by people who own prairie land in the Flint Hills to prevent other people who own prairie land in the Flint Hills from putting giant windmills on their property.
The bingo parlor issue is one that is a big deal in Kansas City, and one that gets littler and littler as the distance from downtown KCK increases.
What’s happened is that an Indian tribe that owns some land has started a little casino, essentially an electronic bingo parlor. KCK officials and the state, which are hoping to create a money-making deal for other casinos in Wyandotte County, are upset about that.
Well, it turns out that the games at the downtown casino are not illegal, and really not a lot different, save for the electronic machines aspect, than bingo that is being played in church basements and Moose Lodges and in commercial bingo parlors across the state.
It is downtown, though, and it seems to be drawing steady crowds on a strictly voluntary basis, and that is apparently upsetting to a lot of folks.
If there was something patently illegal going on there, we’d just send in the police or the sheriff or the Highway Patrol or the National Guard to shut the casino down. But there doesn’t appear to be any major lawbreaking going on, and so it is just a nuisance.
Does violation of an historic preservation law seem like the way to get this casino shut down, or does that seem a little lame to anyone else? Just checking.
***
Item No. 2: The windmills in the Flint Hills. There are a bunch of sites in east-central Kansas where farmers are seriously considering allowing contractors to build giant energy farms, erecting windmills that are maybe 300 feet tall on their land.
And there are some neighboring landowners and some people who probably are apartment dwellers who just like scenic vistas, who want those wind farms prohibited. The in-town version of this little scrap may be turf wars, where the people who plant bluegrass and fescue look down on those folks who plant their yards to Bermuda grass with its little plugs and the tendency to green up late and go brown early in the fall. It’s a cultural thing, probably, but the bottom line is that whatever legal lawn a neighbor wants to plant is probably OK.
Some of the same thing is happening in the Flint Hills, where a group of landowners not only don’t want windmills on their land, but they don’t want to see them in the skies above their neighbor’s land, either.
It used to be if you didn’t want windmills on your farm, it was real simple. You just didn’t put them up. And if you don’t want windmills on your neighbor’s land, you bought your neighbor’s land and didn’t put windmills on it. It was a problem that solved itself.
But don’t look for that simple property use solution to work its magic in the Flint Hills. Look for the Legislature to get lobbied to somehow stop people from putting windmills on land that they own. Typically, these wind farms, which churn out electricity for city folks’ TVs and hot tubs and electric shavers, aren’t built along the property lines. If a windmill fell over, it wouldn’t hang across the fence like a tree limb.
Will the Legislature find a way to prevent windmills? It’ll get that chance in the upcoming session. But is that right? We’re going to have to hear a lot of persuasive arguments to make it sound like the American Way. Maybe there is some over-arching moral imperative to prohibit folks from doing something legal on their own land, even if some neighbors don’t believe it to be in good taste.