September 1999

Sept. 27, 1999
     There are times when you need a hard hat to walk the halls of the Statehouse.
     Railsters have observed, though, there are more times when just a bit of mousse will ward off damage from falling pieces of sky. Last week, we figured that maybe a little dab would do it. ...this notion that a 1 percent reduction in state general fund spending will make the borders vulnerable to marauding Nebraskans and Oklahomans looking for conquest, or that school districts are going to have to cancel new football uniforms, which everyone knows are vital, while the band uniforms are probably good for another year ...preposterous.
     Think anyone would notice if you lost 1 percent of your weight? Ate 1 percent less? Drove 1 percent less? Nope.
     And, that's probably what Kansans need to look carefully at. You see, at this point, lame duck Gov. Bill Graves has told his cabinet secretaries--folks he's chosen to manage multimillion dollar agencies--to make cuts. And while he didn't say it out loud, we're hoping that somewhere in his Cabinet discussion, he threw in "and try not to wreck the state when you make the cuts."
     It's that simple.
     Now, it would be easy for a cabinet secretary to decide, hey, let's find the 1 percent of people who use our programs who, say, own newspapers or television or radio stations. Let's cut their 1 percent, and see if anyone notices.
     Or, the cabinet secretaries may cut a penny here, a penny there, maybe providing a few less donuts at important staff meetings, maybe deciding that the 40 or 50 separate toll-free numbers that each get maybe seven calls a year probably could all be combined into one number that someone
could just send where it really needs to go.
     Yep, we're betting there are lots of ways for cabinet secretaries to figure out how to pare the general fund portion of their budgets (that's not fees or federal funds and grants) without making a big deal out of it.
     Oh, and the State Department of Education? Which isn't headed by a Cabinet secretary appointed by the governor, and who had to wait until the next day's papers to see what all the excitement was about?
     Well, we're figuring that somewhere, there's 1 percent that can be shaved off the price of the science standard test when a bunch of questions about the big bang theory are left off. Though, we understand, Graves believes that if they just quit paying the mileage and per diem to at least, well, at least six, board members, that it's probably possible to make the budget come out all right.
***
     Well, it's starting to look like all we think we know about retiring state House and Senate members may turn out to be either wrong or premature. Because, there are some senators and some House members who really don't want to run again, but who don't want to be succeeded by someone with...well... politically incorrect inclinations.
     This isn't a sure thing, but there are some legislators who are convinced enough that they want their voting philosophy carried on intact, that they could probably bully their way through a relatively easy primary election, and then see a successor candidate nominated...
     So, it might be time for some folks out there who would like a job where you don't have to carry lunch money to work, to start talking to their senators and representatives, if you think you have at least a chance to get their approval. Because there's this election deal, but then, if you get the support of the outgoing legislator, that's a help...
     Unless, of course, you're already campaigning against the incumbent...

Sept. 20, 1999
     OK, let's look at some politics around the state.
     You know, there's just about nothing as exciting as a candidate making his or her announcement tour. It's a little like a wedding. The candidate is dressed up about as good as he or she is likely to be able to be dressed up, and is grinning as broadly as possible, and most have at least someone in their corner who will tell them if, for example, they have something in their teeth that is going to look icky on TV.
     And there's a certain protocol for these announcement speeches. First, it's a little background about the candidate, his or her family, some old politician who impressed them, and then, the heart of the announcement. It goes like this: "And responding to the urging of friends, family and big numbers of potential voters, I have decided to become a candidate for the office of (insert office here)." Now, when that announcement is made, the crowd is supposed to go mildly wild, clapping and cheering and generally carrying on like this is just one less than the Rapture.
     All that is why it was sorta uncomfortable in the old Lawrence railroad depot last week, when a nice young guy, Greg Musil, an Overland Park city commissioner and a moderate Republican, did the third of his four announcement speeches, got to the line of "I have decided to become..." and then, well, nobody clapped or cheered or screamed or fainted dead away at the possibility of Musil fighting his way to be one of 435 members of the U.S. House of Representatives.
     Uncomfortable? Yes. Ever show up a little too early for a party, and as you get near the door, you hear the hosts fighting with each other? Well, it's that sorta embarrassment. Only thing worse than nobody clapping was that it looked like at least a couple of people in the crowd were paid by Musil to be there...and they didn't even clap, which indicates that there probably needs to be some renegotiation of their contracts...
     Oh, Musil will recover, and before this got printed here, only about the 45 people who were at the railway station knew about the silence of Musil's lambs... So, if we don't tell anyone else, it won't have any effect, will it?
***
     OK, now we get it.
     About halfway through an explanation by Gov. Bill Graves this past weekend about the series of qualifications he built into an answer to the question of whether he would be willing to take a slot in a George W. Bush cabinet, we hear another twist on the story.
     Graves, while leaving a banquet honoring former State Rep., State GOP Chair and now retiring Social and Rehabilitation Services Secretary Rochelle Chronister, said, "Now the whole question (from a reporter a week ago) was whether, if this happened, and that happened, and everything else happened, and we're down to a really hypothetical longshot, would I take a job?"
     His answer, of course, was, if everything lined up right, sure, he'd take a hard look at it... and might be inclined to take a federal job. But then, up walks current Kansas Republican Chairman Mark Parkinson, an Olathe moderate and Graves buddy (who has all his hair and teeth and didn't gain weight and might, possibly, figure into the equation of helping to fill the gubernatorial partial vacuum).
     It's Parkinson who notes that in every state where there's a popular Republican anything, there's talk about that Republican taking some high post in a Bush administration. Seems, from Parkinson's comments, if everyone being talked about for a Cabinet post is indeed hired, we're going to have to create some new federal cabinet level agencies...
***
     No protest, please...
     Democrats at their semi-annual meeting learned last weekend that their delegation to the Democratic National Convention must not discriminate against delegates based on sexual orientation.
     Nope, the state committee wouldn't change the rules based on complaints of three pro-life Democrats who just didn't like the idea of having to learn any new orientations... Result of eliminating the sexual orientation language: the entire Kansas delegation to the DNC would not be admitted to the convention hall next summer.

Sept. 13, 1999
     Taxes in Kansas are about like the best idea we ever had for a Lottery commercial that they refuse to run.
     Us Railsters have figured for years that chance of winning the lottery is 50-50. There are just two results, either you win or you don't. If someone else wins, you still don't win. If nobody wins, you still don't win. If you know someone who wins and they don't give you a big share of the money, you still don't win.
     See, there are really just two ways to go on the Lottery. You win or you don't.
     Well, the chances are only a little worse for taxes than they are for the Lottery. Either taxes go down or they don't. But unless taxes go way down, who cares because we'll never notice. And if you don't notice, did your taxes really go down far enough to commend anyone for it?
     And if they go up, well, unless they go way up, you won't notice.
     Actually unless you notice, is it really worth throwing anyone out of office over? Probably not.
(Unless, of course, you're one of those people who just gripe all the time about taxes because you're on a fixed income and if they didn't keep raising taxes, you could have retired earlier while you had more hair and teeth.)
     So, with little likely to happen on the tax front for any significant amount of people, which generally means just you, it's likely to be a dull Legislature, and you might as well just vote for state legislators based on weight or something next summer at the primary elections, anyway.
     Well, there are some legislators working on that problem. Er...the problem of not having any big amounts of money available to use to cut your taxes, not their weight. See, they want to have something dramatic to say about taxes on their brochures next summer.
     So here's a three-point plan for the Year 2000 session that's being kicked around by some legislators:
1. No, we won't cut your taxes.
2. No, we won't raise your taxes, either.
Oh, that's just two points. Even House members have better memories than that, but they like to hold their plans to no more than three points, just so nobody wanders off.
Well, the final point is:
3. We'll make it harder for us to raise your taxes in the future.
     Now, us Railsters actually figure that at least in the House, it's a pretty good plan. Not cutting taxes, we can live with. Not raising taxes, we can live with.
But nobody gets extra credit for just that, though we're considering some special credits that we could give to legislators who through either poor attendance or inattention manage to do nothing good or bad
to us at all.
     So, making it tougher for legislators to raise taxes in the future might be a decent way to go. No, the Kansas Legislature as a whole won't pass such a bill, and the governor as a grown-up won't sign such a bill into law, but it might make interesting stuff to watch and talk about later, and we can almost read the campaign brochures now:
     "Susie wanted to make it real icky to raise taxes."
     "Send Joe back to the Legislature. He voted to make raising taxes really hard."
     Nope, they're really looking at this.
     We'll get back to you on this one, because Railsters figure that watching House members line up on this one should be interesting. We think the technical term is shadow-boxing which really doesn't sound very exciting. But then, say you don't call it shadow-boxing, say you call it tai-bo or something vaguely exotic. It could turn out to be at least entertaining.
***
     The question might have been too simple, the one tossed to the $50-million campaign of George W. Bush in Kansas City last week.
     The question: "Is there any amount of money, say, $75 million or even $100 million, that you could say, that's all I need. If I spend this much and they still don't elect me, then they just don't like me."
There was the question, just hanging out there, a concept pretty simple to understand.
     Answer. No, there was no answer...
     So, we're just guessing that at some point, when there are so many George W. Bush ads on the TV next year that we can't tell what the new Fords look like, maybe, just maybe, he'll start putting congressional and U.S. Senate candidates into his ads, sorta like a governmental ensemble.

Sept. 6, 1999
     Well, it's early yet, but us studious Railsters have already found that sweet spot that Democrats are going to be hitting time and again early this legislative session.
     And, you know, there's something sorta nice about knowing what's going to make Republicans wince, like they accidentally bit down on a sliver of bone in their salmon.
     The issue? Well, confirmed for Railsters at a recent press conference, it's likely going to be the Kansas Presidential Preference Primary election.
     Here's the deal: When Republicans know who's going to get the nomination, and when the right wingtip of the GOP is in control, they don't want presidential preference primary elections, because all the Republicans to the left of them have a say and some electable Republican could sweep all the state's national convention votes. When the moderate wing of the party is in control, Republicans like winner-take-all primaries, because that way, they all vote for the same person, and there's less to remember and more time for receptions at the Republican National Convention.
     Oddly, Democrats don't care much one way or another about presidential preference primaries. It's just not a big deal for them.
     Luckily for Democrats, Kansas is on track for a presidential preference primary election, in April, after the real deciding is going to have been completed in primaries in big states where there are hundreds of delegates at issue.
     Why does this present a problem for Republicans? Because unless it turns out that George W. Bush was with Janis Joplin when she OD'd, he's going to be the Republican nominee.
     But within Kansas, there's a small band of Republicans who aren't going to be for Bush, and if Kansas will reject the primary, and let caucuses of Republicans and Democrats elect national convention delegates, the results are going to be much different than from the primary. That
means Bush won't get all the delegates.
     That means Gov. Bill Graves may have to announce from the floor of the convention hall in Philadelphia in less than a year that "Kansas casts (probably 28) votes for the next president of the United States, George W. Bush, and, er, (probably six) votes for that mongrel of a rabid-dog
Republican ..." who might turn out to be Pat Buchanan if he's still a Republican, or Gary Bauer if he's still in the race, or maybe even Dan Quayle in case nobody's told him that he's not in the running anymore.
     See? A primary means Graves can announce that all the GOP delegates go to Bush. Whether creating the scenario where all Kansas' delegate votes go to Bush is worth $1.5 million, well, that's what Republicans are going to be touchy about.
     (Democrats, of course, don't bind anyone to anything at their conventions, and there's no such thing as winner-take-all. They just don't do business that way, and that's why their delegates tend to look like contents of an urban bus, instead of first-class ticket holders in a preferred customer lounge at an airport.)
     To stop the primary, Graves would have to derail it in his State of the Union speech, or real quick afterwards...or else it goes on and counties pay the roughly $1.5 million tab for counting up the votes. Nobody wants to shunt the cost back to the counties, so fast work could stop the whole deal. Graves says, no, he's not about to do that.
     And while the $1.5 million really isn't much, it's a meaningful amount of money to people who don't spend a lot of time messing around in state government.
     Just the right amount for Democrats to swing around like a political baseball bat...

***
     Background: Graves and reporters at a press conference are talking about the Legislative Post Audit of the Department of Revenue. And about what, 3 percent of calls getting through last year?      Graves says that because of downsizing, lots of state agencies are using those horrible automated
phone systems that punish everyone who actually has or admits to having a touch-tone phone.
Graves: "I'm like everyone else, the last thing I want is to get looped into an automated phone system but (often that's) the choice you get.
     "When I call to get the balance on my checking account at my bank, I do like everyone else does, I punch my way through the number system."
     Reporter: "That happen much when you call across the street (meaning to the Kansas Department of Revenue)? You do get through?"
     Graves: "Usually. Sometimes, though, someone has to run over there first and tell them I'll be calling..."