September 2005
Sept. 29, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 26, 2005)A catchy phrase, but...
A handful of Kansas legislators are learning this fall that what sounded like a good idea back in the hot special legislative session on school finance in July might not be a bad idea, but probably isn’t as good as they’d hoped.
The idea was that catchy phrase "65 percent in the classroom." Simply, and it was very simply stated in the now-state-law that school districts should spend at least 65 percent of the money they get from the state on stuff that is in the classroom.
Sounds OK, and it even gave some conservative Republicans a way to pander to schoolteachers, who after all, make their livings in the classroom. It probably doesn’t hurt that schoolteachers outnumber administrators, so if you are going to try to make a bloc of potential voters friendly to a legislator, you might as well pander to the largest bloc out there.
But that 65 percent jargon, which is now officially the policy of the state of Kansas, is pretty squishy.
Legislators are learning that nobody bothered to define "classroom." Is it just the amount that school districts spend in classroom supplies and gear and teacher salaries? That’s a good place to start, of course, but many small districts can’t actually spend that money in the classroom until they bus their pupils to school and get them in their rooms.
And some districts, with high percentages of pupils who don’t speak English well or at all, need to spend money getting those pupils fluent in English so they can actually learn in the classroom. Some pupils come from poor families, where there may not be a book or a magazine or even a newspaper in the home and they need access to a library which provides them with basic sources of information. Or, they might be sick and need a school nurse, or have problems at home or in their behavior that require counseling.
All of those expenditures may or may not be "in the classroom" or necessary to get the pupil into the classroom. And who knows whether lights or heating or bathrooms or kitchens or principal’s offices or even playgrounds are counted as "in the classroom?"
See where this "65 percent in the classroom" gets a little tricky?
While the plain, simple meaning of that 65 percent is to improve the salaries of schoolteachers, you can’t forget that in some counties, schoolteachers are already among the highest paid public employees. That makes it difficult to get overwhelming buy-in to spending more money in the classroom when teachers are driving Buicks and the districts’s taxpaying patrons are driving old Chevies.
It’s early yet in the examination of the 65 percent rule, but there doesn’t appear to be a hard and fast correlation between 65 percent and how well pupils do in school, based on matching-up test results with whatever a district believes is "in the classroom."
But, it sure sounds grand, you gotta give the Legislature that. It makes a great sound bite on radio or television and it looks good as a quote in the newspapers.
There are a few little problems, though. Start with the state telling your locally elected school boards how to spend their budgets. That’s something that local officials get a little fussy about... because, of course, you elected them to educate the district’s children and to figure out how to spend the district’s money most efficiently to do that. No one minds a little suggestion from "on high" but school boards like suggestions, not marching orders. There are local customs and conditions to consider, and if managing the schools wasn’t up to locally elected school boards, well, then legislators or someone could just do it from Topeka. Nobody seems very excited about that...
This 65 percent business? Sounds good if you don’t look too hard at it. Maybe that’s the best way...
Sept. 22, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 19, 2005)No seats to spare
Just about a year out from the 2006 general election, there’s a chilling statistic out there for Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius to consider–she has no seats to spare in the Kansas House if she wants to make certain that her gubernatorial vetoes are sustained by the Legislature.
There are 42 Democrats in the House, and that’s the minimum needed to make a veto stick. It can be a long four years in office if every time she vetoes a bill Republicans can override her, and the bill becomes law nonetheless.
So, while most of the ink and most of the TV footage is going to be about the gubernatorial battle next year–whom Republicans select to challenge Sebelius and the ensuing battle for the governor’s office–Sebelius needs not only to win but to make sure that she doesn’t lose a single Democratic seat in the House.
Next year is one of those key years–when the entire House of Representatives stands for reelection–that what might have been charitable assistance on vetoes from moderate-to-liberal Republican probably won’t be there. Why? Because in the increasingly bitter intra-party battles among Republicans, the 2006 Legislature is going to be a battleground in which Republican support for a Democratic governor is very likely to generate a very conservative Republican to challenge one who may have given "aid and comfort to the enemy"–Sebelius.
Now, the governor doesn’t choose who wants to run for the Kansas House, of course, but because she will be at the "top of the ticker" next election cycle, she’ll have the chance to campaign for herself and to lend support to Democratic legislative candidates.
When President George Bush topped the ticket in 2004, his Republican win had a "shirt-tail" effect. Folks voted for Bush, figured they’re going to put Republicans in office to assist him at least indirectly, and Republicans picked up three seats in the Kansas House. That pulled the Democratic/Republican split in the House to its current 42-83 balance.
Real key for the upcoming election cycle is going to see whether Sebelius has a "skirt-tail" effect, that voters who choose her for governor will similarly decide to vote for some Democrats in the House to bolster her possibilities for governance.
That "skirt-tail" effect saw Democrats lose only one House seat in the 2002 elections. In 2004, with Bush at the top of the ballot, Republicans picked up three seats.
Now, some Republican voters will break over at the top of the ticket, but remain steadfast Republicans down-ballot. Want an example? How about House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, who is seeking the GOP nomination for governor and eventually would like to live in Cedar Crest, the governor’s mansion? In 2002, Sebelius carried the vote in Mays’ Topeka district by a bigger margin than Mays defeated his Democratic opponent, Cyndy Cain. In that 2002 election, Sebelius polled 60 percent of the vote to Republican gubernatorial candidate Tim Shallenburger’s 40 percent. There was a "skirt-tail" effect in that race, but the skirt just wasn’t long enough to help Cain.
Overall, Sebelius in 2002 received a majority of the vote in 73 districts, to Shallenburger’s 52.
What’s it come down to? Sebelius may have to split her campaign energies between her own race and that of incumbent House Democrats to make sure she holds the 42 seats for her party. But she also probably needs to redouble efforts to increase that narrow veto-sustaining lead for the coming four years... the last two of which will come after the 2008 elections in which she’s not going to top the ballot and may not be able to maintain Democratic House numbers.
This election cycle is going to be critical for the governor. Unless, of course, a Republican is elected governor, in which case it’s not likely that a Republican governor is going to feel moved to veto much in the way of legislation passed by a Republican-dominated Legislature...
Sept. 15, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 12, 2005)Another gasoline price hit
Much of Kansas government is holding its breath to see, probably in early October, whether the state's brightening revenue picture might be dimmed by high gasoline prices, and later this fall, by rising natural gas prices.
What do gasoline prices have to do with the revenues to state government?
Admittedly, it's tough to see as a state revenue problem the amount of money that might a year or two ago have paid for a nice anniversary dinner, or a high school graduation present, go into the tanks of our cars and trucks with gasoline around the $3 a gallon level.
But the real behind-the-scenes concern of state revenue and budget officials is that those dollars spent at the pump on which gasoline taxes are being collected are dollars that aren't being spent at the grocery store or the home center or the clothing store where state and local option sales taxes are collected.
The 23-cents-a-gallon that you are paying in state gasoline tax was a pretty high percentage of the price of gasoline a year or two ago, when gas cost maybe $1.50 a gallon and the levy penciled out to nearly 16 percent of the pump price. But now, at $3 a gallon, the motor fuels tax is a more reasonable 8 percent or so. It's the same 23 cents a gallon, no matter the price of the fuel. If gasoline cost 50 cents a gallon, you'd still pay 23 cents in state gasoline tax.
Here are the issues: demand for gasoline is relatively steady, or in the language of economists, inelastic. Gripe about the price, but you have to drive to work and school and the store, and while you might cut down on unnecessary trips as best you can you are going to use about the same amount of gasoline whether it costs $1 a gallon or $3 a gallon. When you gotta go, you gotta go...
Now, that's good for the Kansas Department of Transportation, which receives the motor fuels tax automatically. Stable levels of use of gasoline mean that K-DOT can build and repair highways it has planned to build and repair.
But for every additional dollar going to fill your tank, there's one less of your dollars available to spend at the grocery store or the restaurant or the department store, or wherever state sales tax is collected. State sales tax is a major player in the state government's revenue receipts, worth more than $1.6 billion a year to the state, almost one-third of the money that the state spends each year for, well, everything but roads.
What happens when Kansans spend more of their money on gasoline and, by the way, natural gas to heat their homes this winter because there is no sales tax on natural gas or electricity used in homes? Less money is available to be spent on things subject to sales tax.
That squeezing-out of money from your wallet that you could be spending on sales-taxable items is of concern to those who keep track of revenues that flow into the state's all-purpose General Fund from which the state pays for things like aid to public schools, higher education, welfare, prisons, well, everything else.
So, while state government is glad you're still driving around, going to work and to schools and such, state government would also enjoy it if you'd spend your money on things that require state sales tax to be paid.
In the past several months, state sales tax receipts have been slightly better than estimates on which the budgetand on which even the second go-round of state aid to schools is based. Those receipts would be better if gasoline cost less and you bought steak instead of chicken, or painted your home again instead of getting used to the "weathered" look.
October state revenue figures ought to tell the story about whether high gasoline prices have undercut the state's budget. That's the theory around the Statehouse. It's going to be one of those pivotal events, those October numbers, but one you probably won't hear about unless you live near or under the Statehouse dome...
Sept. 8, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Sept. 5, 2005)Watershed event...
This is the week that Kansas watches its attorney general, Phill Kline, defend before the Kansas Supreme Court–where he’s not had a lot of luck in recent months–his decision to open an inquisition into the state’s legal abortion providers.
It looms as a watershed event. Politically, and almost culturally, it will be one of the most divisive lawsuits in a state that is already sharply divided over the issue of abortion.
Kline has sought to subpoena medical records of 89 women, some young girls, medical records that contain the most private of information that anyone would ever have. Asking a rancher how many cattle he or she owns, well, that’s invasive. Asking a stranger on an elevator how much money he or she has, well, that’s invasive.
But asking–or essentially taking through legal process–information about one’s health both mental and physical, about one’s sex life, by subpoenaing medical records generated during what has to be one of the most emotional, frightening, vulnerable periods of a woman’s life seems like a real stretch for government.
Preventing the holders of those most-sensitive records from alerting their patients about the intrusion seems to multiply the helplessness of women who have already undergone a serious medical event.
There are some good reasons for the attorney general to show interest in the field and in the recipients of abortions. They are tainted in some people’s view by Kline’s strong pro-life beliefs and his using the bully pulpit of his office to deplore abortion and try to stop abortions in Kansas–but they are good reasons, nonetheless.
One of them is that after 22 weeks of gestation, a fetus may be able to live, with help, outside the womb. And, if abortion providers don’t adequately explain a justification for the abortion, generally to preserve the life or health of a patient, they’ve broken a law and in an area as sensitive politically as abortion, providers ought to be held strictly to the law.
Another of the reasons that Kline stresses is that in Kansas and some other states, girls under age 14 can’t legally consent to sex, and therefore whether the girls consented to sex that results in a pregnancy falls away and their impregnation becomes the product of statutory rape. That’s serious, it means that the rape of a child has occurred and must be investigated and the rapist brought to justice.
Reading those medical records would likely bring to light whether a child rape has occurred.
That’s laudable, but the method for that investigation is chillingly intrusive–though there are pro-lifers who maintain that in the big picture the intrusion is a minor problem and abortion clinics that are challenging Kline’s subpoena are somehow complicit in child rape.
What are we left with?
We are left with a case before the Kansas Supreme Court that may be a matter of style and workmanship. Kline chose 89 cases relatively at random from among the more than 5,000 abortions performed in the state nearly every year. He could have directed his subpoenas at just the 79 cases last year that involve girls under age 15 at any stage of pregnancy, because in the case of rape, the 22-week gestation standard for more detailed reporting is not relevant. That would seem to provide the most productive ground if the attorney general is after child rapists.
Alternatively, if Kline is seeking information in medical records that would indicate that abortions were performed unlawfully, the entire batch of 518 post-22-week abortions could have been subpoenaed.
Sept. 1, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Aug. 29, 2005)Consequences?
Sometimes a bill that sounds pretty good at first glance turns out to be not a good policy direction for the state, and sometimes the Legislature sees that and sometimes it doesn’t.
Last week, it did.
The issue is the difference between illegal drugs "in your front pocket" and illegal drugs in your bloodstream. Now, of course, the former is a crime and one that law enforcement, the judiciary and most of us get pretty serious about. The latter, is, well, something else. You can’t pat down a person who is acting strangely and tell whether he or she is high on drugs; that requires a test of some sort that means some bodily fluids have to be checked by laboratories.
A legislator wanted the definition of possession of drugs to include what’s floating around in a user’s bloodstream. A legislative interim committee considered the idea.
The concept, apparently, was that if law enforcement officers could sense that someone is on "something," they should be able to order a person who isn’t causing any real problem to submit to a drug test. If there are drugs in the suspect’s system, well, he or she is "in possession" of drugs and should get whatever penalties there are for that–or at least treatment for a drug problem.
While that sounds pretty fair from a quick glance, there are some real problems.
First, be clear, we’re not talking about driving. That’s separate stuff, and driving under the influence of anything is a crime and dangerous, to boot. But for a pedestrian or someone at a ball game or a movie or a rock concert or even, we guess, a wrestling match, "looking funny" is something pretty subjective. Law enforcement officers demanding that you submit to a test essentially for looking funny or acting funny means that you are being asked, or maybe ordered, to testify against yourself. Yes, submitting to a test is testifying; it produces evidence.
There are some 5th Amendment problems about self-incrimination that probably apply here.
Now, there’s another side to this, of course: we all want people who have drug addictions, or maybe just predilections, to get help. Presumably, a simple "possession" conviction based on a drug test for someone who is not driving would lead to that treatment–if the state had enough facilities and if it didn’t become a criminal conviction that you’d have to live with for the rest of your life.
But there’s this fine line that pops up with law enforcement officers ordering the tests. Police just aren’t in the business of providing social services to Kansans who "look funny" or "act funny." That’s not their job description, and their time is better spent on law enforcement.
Plus, there’s the whole other world of drug testing: parents testing their children to see if they’ve been using drugs or employers randomly testing employees to make sure they aren’t on drugs.
What happens then? If internal possession of drugs is a crime, well, those positive tests either go to the police or prosecutor; otherwise, whoever has the tests conducted–the parent or employer–is an accomplice to the drug user.
Anyone else see a problem with a parent or maybe a school district that requires drug tests for student athletes or debaters or members of the chess club learning of a positive test and having to get the child arrested? Or an employer learning of a positive test result on an employee who maybe smoked some marijuana on vacation but is sober now? An employer can, of course, fire the worker or order him or her into some sort of treatment or... well, suddenly have a powerful personnel management tool at the employer’s disposal.
What happened? The committee last week recommended that the Legislature not consider the bill in the upcoming session. Too many unintended consequences.