September 2002

Sept. 26, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 23, 2002)

Tackling the pile of bills

Ever have one of those times when you see the family's bills piling up and wish you could just make it to the end of the month?

Well, on a grander scale, that's going to happen to whomever Kansans elect as governor in November. That person is going to be thinking short-range for the first five months that represent the rest of Fiscal Year 2003.

That's the fiscal year we're in now that looks like it is going to require a brand new governor to cut maybe $100 million from state spending that he or she had nothing to do with.

Oh, and once that's done, the new governor is going to have to put together a budget for the fiscal year that starts July 1, 2003, that will require either what the press keeps talking about--$600 million or so in either cuts or new revenues--or a less hysterical and more reasoned maybe $200 million in new taxes or additional spending reductions.

Lobbyists are already sizing up the challenges for their clients next year. Railsters tend to pay more attention to lobbyists than we do to government officials and cabinet secretaries right now, because, frankly, most of the government officials and cabinet secretaries are starting to clean out their desks and sort their house plants according to the ones they'll take home and the ones they'll leave for their successors.

First, we'll deal with the easy spending cut, one that will occur without any great protest. State law requires the governor and Legislature configure spending so there is a 7.5 percent ending balance in the state treasury.

There wasn't any ending balance on June 30, when there should have been, and there won't be any on June 30, 2003, because we're spending all that money, and there is virtually no chance that there will be a $350 million or $360 million ending balance on June 30, 2004, when Fiscal Year 2004 ends.

State law will be re-jiggered to eliminate that ending balance, and guess what? There are no lobbyists for the ending balance. It's not a good way to live, with no spare change at the end of the fiscal year, but it's happened before and it will happen again, at least twice.

What else looks dead in the water? Well, the state is supposed to return about $130 million to the Kansas Department of Transportation for its road-building program. That's just not going to happen. The road lobbyists are already on notice of that and so road-builders are likely to make do with that year-old dump truck or roadbed grader or asphalt laydown machine.

Moribund? How about roughly $30 million that the Legislature several years ago pledged to the state's four-year colleges and community colleges to create a seamless, coordinated higher education system? Nope, don't look for that to happen next year.

There is probably another, say, $20 million on the table for things like not paying back to agencies money that the Legislature swept into the state's bank account last session, and there are still some big-ticket items left to finance.

So, for the first full budget year the new governor gets to preside over, with more than $540 million in spending that just isn't going to be done by the Legislature, we have a new office holder with still maybe $200 million more in cuts to be made--or taxes to be raised.

And people are actually spending money to run for the job of governor? When they know they have to make massive cuts before they get to the nice stuff?

Before they get to spend a new dime on elementary and secondary education?

Give state employees their first raise in two years? Toss more money to the State Board of Regents?

Yep.

The shortfall isn't as bad as it's being portrayed for the general public, but it isn't good for next year and probably for the year after.

Oh, we forgot. Governors serve a four-year term, don't they? If either candidate can survive one or two bad years, things are likely to turn a little rosier for year three, and probably nicer still in year four. Which, as we recall, is election year again.

Sept. 19, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 16, 2002)

Figuring out the grand plan

Now, let's pretend for a couple minutes, depending on reading speed, that we are big-time campaign managers. No, not the guy in charge of the signs, or the groundling who makes sure that there are enough bumper stickers.

Nope, we're the strategists. We are the ones in charge of figuring out the grand plan for the campaign of, say, GOP attorney general candidate Phill Kline, the former state legislator who lost a bid for 3rd District Congress two years ago, who more than a decade ago lost a bid for 2nd District Congress, and who hasn't done much serious lawyering that anyone has heard about. Oh, he's been a lawyer off-and-on for a number of years, but he's one now.

Now, let's pretend that we're running Kline's campaign against Democratic attorney general nominee Chris Biggs, who is now Geary County prosecutor, and from what we can tell is pretty good at it, but whose office staff is several people shy of the number you'd need to run a 24-hour donut store.

There are more than 100 employees in the attorney general's office now.

Factor in again that Kline is an excellent public speaker, but tends to ramble on a little and get himself into trouble. And consider that Biggs isn't a bad speaker, but tends to wander off himself, into a bunch of philosophical stuff about rewarding good behavior and correcting bad behavior that stops being interesting about halfway through.

So, what do we do to manage Kline's campaign to put him in a situation where he really needs a clean shirt on inauguration day?

We'll look at Kline's assets and Biggs' assets.

No. 1 asset that Kline has in his campaign for Kansas attorney general is the letter "R" behind his name. He's the Republican nominee, and there are more Republicans than anything else in Kansas, and chances are excellent that if the ballot just said, "Do you want some Republican or a Democrat to be your attorney general?" that in Kansas, the nameless Republican would be ordering up letterhead for his office.

What's Biggs' best asset? Well, remember that actually prosecuting criminals is nice, but not key; the best asset he has is that the more Kline talks to Kansans, the more chance Kline has to wander off into talking about abortions and Microsoft and stuff like that. That's stuff that no matter what side of it Kline takes, just chips off Republicans who would be inclined to vote for the Republican anyhow unless the Republican ticks them off about something.

Now, this becomes interesting, strategically.

Kline's best asset is being a Republican and Biggs' best asset is Kline being a Republican who can only lose Republican votes every time he opens his mouth at a rally or campaign stop or press conference.

What do we tell Kline? How about: Either leave the state until about 6:30 p.m. on election day, when you ought to show up to vote for yourself, or just stop talking to anyone who isn't working on your campaign.

That eliminates the chance of Kline talking himself out of any Republican votes, we believe.

The result? Well, probably that Biggs has to shadowbox for the rest of the campaign, telling people not only who he, Biggs, is, but what he thinks and why that's better than what Kline thinks. And, no matter how that's done, it means that Biggs is talking about Kline at least half the time, and any audience with enough intelligence to assemble in one place is going to be wondering whether Kline could really be as bad as Biggs says he is.

It makes the campaign very difficult for Biggs, and if it works right (remember, we're strategizing for Kline) it makes Biggs look like he's beating up someone who isn't there to defend himself.

Shadowboxing is expensive, too, in a race where there isn't going to be a lot of money to spend. And, at some point, politics being politics, Biggs is going to say something that some Democrats won't like, costing Biggs votes.

Complicated? Devious? Cold-blooded? Yes.

But, it's one way to go.

Yet what candidate who has already spent this much time getting his party's nomination doesn't think he wins hearts and votes with every utterance?

Maybe that's why we aren't big-time campaign strategists.

Sept. 12, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 9, 2002)

Feeding the watchdog? Negative campaigning?

The campaign for Kansas Insurance Commissioner may be more about the campaign for insurance commissioner than about what an insurance commissioner actually does.

Huh?

Yes, the major issue so far in the race between Democrat House Minority Leader Jim Garner, D-Coffeyville, and Senate Vice President Sandy Praeger, R-Lawrence, is who is financing their campaigns.

Praeger is running a traditional campaign, taking money from whomever will offer it up, and that includes a lot of insurance companies, insurance lobbyists, insurance agents and...just friends of Praeger.

Garner is running what has become a traditional Democratic campaign for insurance commissioner, taking money from everyone but insurance companies and agents.

Key here, at least the key that Garner is trying to turn, is that because the insurance commissioner regulates insurance companies and agents, it is, ahem...unseemly...to accept money from those people. His best quote on the subject is "You can't be a good watchdog if you are fed by the people you're supposed to be watching."

Not a bad quote, really.

Praeger has a pretty good quote of her own on the subject. "I am extremely disappointed that the Minority Leader will be focusing on negative campaigning." Best part of her quote is that she's observed the decades-old campaign maxim not to mention an opponent by name. No, it really doesn't deal with the issue, but it might send people over to the neighbor's house to ask who is this "Leader" guy and what mother would name a child "Minority" instead of Kyle.

Praeger says that campaign contributions from the insurance industry wouldn't impact her work as insurance commissioner. As legislators--who try to regulate everything--both Praeger and Garner took money from about anybody whose checks would clear.

So, is the source of campaign money enough to base a campaign on? Well, it just might be.

See, nobody really knows what an insurance commissioner does for a living.

It is something about regulating the insurance industry in Kansas. It's about making sure that insurance agents and companies actually cover the "occurrences" of "perils" that they probably describe in great detail somewhere in the thick policies that they mail us after our first premium check clears but which we never read.

There are a lot of words --"occurrences" is a favorite, along with "peril"-- in insurance policies we buy and nearly every one of them has been the subject of a lawsuit that has specifically defined those words. And the insurance commissioner has staff, often bifocal-wearers, who read all those policies to make sure that the policies actually define a peril and that there's enough language in there to make sure that if there is an occurrence of that peril, us policyholders get paid off.

It is gritty, grizzly work that most of us are very happy that the insurance commissioner does, because we'd never read the policies ourselves.

And the commissioner regulates insurance agents, too. So, for example, if we want insurance to cover us if our pipes freeze at home, and our agent says he has such a policy at a good price, but neglects to tell us that it only covers occurrences of that peril in months without an "r" in their names, the insurance commissioner is supposed to make that agent's life ugly for quite a while.

Of course, taking money from people you are supposed to regulate does sound a little icky. It's like a defendant kicking in on the judge's birthday present.

Remember that Insurance Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius made a big deal out of not taking campaign contributions from the insurance industry she regulates...and remember that she was twice elected insurance commissioner.

Oh, and remember that Democrats including Garner have offered up bills that would prohibit Insurance Commissioner candidates from taking campaign money from the insurance industry so many times that we think they finally had the bill laminated so they could still read it after Republicans killed it so many times.

So, on one hand, taking money from the insurance industry is not against the law. That's good for Praeger. And, on the other hand, taking money from the insurance industry is not against the law. That gives Garner something to campaign about. Because, frankly, the rest of what the insurance commissioner does is too complicated to put into a 30-second commercial.

And if you wrote out what the insurance commissioner does and put it on a bumper sticker, it would wrap around the car so many times that you couldn't get the doors open.

So, we'll watch the campaign about the campaign.

Sept. 5, 2002
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 2, 2002)

Seeing government's abs

We are just days from the real start of the Kansas general election season.

And for all the fervor of Republicans and Democrats for their candidates, for both parties' efforts to woo unaffiliated voters, this doesn't look to be a very happy campaign season.

For everything you hear about Labor Day, in the rest of the country, the Kansas campaign season really kicks off with the debate between Democrat Insurance Commissioner Kathleen Sebelius and Republican State Treasurer Tim Shallenburger at the State Fair in Hutchinson Sept. 7. Once they leave the stage, generally to be replaced by a country-western band, we start the grind toward Nov. 5's general election.

Why the long face? Well, because once we're off the fairgrounds in Hutchinson, and have to settle for the microwave version of Pronto Pups, we're looking at a campaign season where there isn't anything very intriguing, fanciful or upbeat about the job ahead for either candidate.

It's the economy, of course. We're going to be hearing candidates talk about new priorities, about trimming waste, about paring the size of state government to where we can see its abs.

Not even Railsters can get excited about a campaign in which the minutiae of state government...adjusting employee turnover rates, or contracting with a new prescription drug manager for some agency...becomes important news.

We might be surprised, but the early machinations of the campaigns don't talk about much that is exciting. Don't look for more money for schools in the next fiscal year. Don't look for snazzier state cars that we can bid on once they come off-lease. Don't look for more restrooms or fish-cleaning stations at state parks.

The economy has robbed both campaigns of the neatest part of running for office, the chance to promise to do something nice for voters. Instead, count on campaigns based on figuring out ways to move a few bucks from one program to another, literally, slicing the meat thinner.

Amid the relative gloom, is there good news from either campaign?

Well, it's hard to go wrong with Shallenburger's pledge not to raise taxes.

That implies a pretty ugly couple of years until the national economy improves. But then, the state economy bootstraps on that movement and suddenly, the taxes that we levy now start to produce more money than the state absolutely, positively needs, and we get some money to spend on neat things.

And, Sebelius' pledge to put together a bunch of smart people to see, first, where the state is spending its money and whether it is being spent in the right place, sounds like a pretty good idea, too. Who knows? We could be spending money on things that aren't really the state's business, but we've been doing it for so long that we haven't noticed. That could happen.

So, with a backdrop of an economy in which neither candidate can offer a chicken in every pot...or even a pot...what do we watch for? We watch for virtually anything clever, anything that shows insights into state government and its operations that we hadn't really thought of. Both candidates have spent a lot of time in state government, have seen things that most Kansans haven't, and probably have noticed programs that could be combined, programs that could be simpler, programs that would do more good if they were just tweaked a little.

It's going to be a little like shopping for a convertible in the rain.

We know that whichever candidate we choose, we're going to have to drive it with the top up for a year or so, but someday we get to roll it back and take it for a spin in good weather.

For most of you, that spin will be fun. Some of us will be looking for a hat.