IGI 1305 - 2023 Kansas Legislative Session Review

Coming up on IGI.

Kansas legislators have wrapped up the 2023 regular session and our panel of experts is here to break down everything that happened and didn't happen.

So stay with us.

This program is brought to you with support from a Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust and from the Friends of KTWU.

(♪) Hello and welcome to IGI.

I'm your host, Washburn University Professor of Political Science, Bob Beatty.

In the 2022 fall elections Kansas voters did an interesting thing.

For governor, they elected Democrat Laura Kelly to a second term but for the state legislature they voted for a Republican majority that was even more conservative than before.

Now there is a classic mixed message in democracy.

The up and down legislative session that ensued was therefore not unexpected, with the governor issuing over 20 vetoes and the legislature overriding half of them.

There were certainly, as some people say, a lot going on.

Here to talk about the specifics of the session.

Our three kansas politics experts from the Kansas Reflector, Senior Reporter Tim Carpenter and someone who spent a lot of time in the statehouse the past three months.

KSNT Kansas Capital Bureau Reporter Rebecca Chung.

And joining us via Zoom is Wichita State University Assistant Professor of Political Science, Dr. Alexandra Middlewood.

Thank you all for joining us.

And I was reading somewhere someone wrote, oh, you know, not not a lot happened in this legislative session.

And in terms of some of the some big things getting passed.

But, boy, it sure seemed like there was a lot going on.

And I wanted to be positive and start with some bipartisan issues that actually got passed where the two parties were not yelling at each other.

And so we'll start with Tim.

And Kansas actually passed a water plan that the governor signed.

And this had been talked about for years, actually, and it actually got done.

Tell us about that.

So, right.

It's a bipartisan bill.

The governor signed it with a big smile on her face.

It provided $35 million a year increase in funding of water projects, and that's to be sustained over five years.

It dropped about $50 million into eliminating the debt from the creation of Milford and Perry Lakes.

So a lot of that money that the 35 money is supposed to help cities, counties, municipalities with their unmet needs in terms of water lines and this and such.

So it's a big deal for small communities out there that really don't have the the tax base to handle those big expenses.

And, you know, obviously, if Kansas doesn't have an adequate water supply, it's catastrophic.

So but it's it's not an exciting issue.

And so many years it was sort of neglected.

So we wanted to start with something that's good news for the state.

Another bipartisan issue that was passed that Democrats and Republicans voted for and the governor signed was a sort of an interesting one as a presidential primary.

Rebecca And normally Kansas has has had caucuses run by the parties.

And in this case, this legislation was passed that will have a 2024 primary.

Right.

Yes.

And that would be set for March 19th of next year.

This, I think, was a bit controversial, actually, because you did have some Republicans who were like, hey, what are you doing taking money from taxpayers to kind of bail out the parties from having to pay for this primary to be put on?

I think with this legislation, you're going to get a lot of mixed reviews on both sides, but you also have some people that are leaning more in favor, I think, in the parties toward having something like this, usually saying that, okay, this could increase voter participation.

And I know you have a lot to say about that, where it's not necessarily unaffiliated voters that would be allowed to vote, but more so registered Democrats and Republicans.

They would have to unaffiliated register as a Democrat or Republican and then also some people who were supporting it saying that this would draw out more people that are potential candidates to coming to Kansas.

I just spoke with the secretary of state about this and something that he said was that this was not necessarily something he would have supported.

But so there's the tea there.

But it sounds like something that, you know, maybe the legislature may have seen differently than most.

And so they may have seen something there that this may have been a good opportunity.

We have had a presidential primary in the past.

So here it is, coming back again for 2024.

Alex, you want to chime in on this before?

Before I do.

I mean, from your political science angle, is is this just hey, this is a great thing for the state to have a presidential primary.

What are your thoughts on this?

I agree that I think the reviews on this are going to be mixed.

So on the one hand, it does kind of broaden who participates in those primaries.

Caucusing can be a little bit intense for your non strong base supporters and so this allows them to participate a little bit more.

They don't have to go and go through the whole caucus process.

It also moves up the timeline, which I think for the election, for the primary, which I think is going to be a benefit in this case, as some of us know.

Right, in 2020, it was especially the Democratic primary in Kansas.

It was so late that it really didn't matter.

So this kind of puts us up in at least a competitive area of time with other states.

But I think for the most part, the reviews on this are going to be mixed.

It's going to be good.

People are going to have issues with this because it's going to cost $45 million.

That's not an insignificant amount of money.

Maybe by then it's a two person race.

It's a trump-biden race.

It could be over.

I think the other thing that's being missed here is that it could be that the Republicans were concerned about who would win a Kansas Republican caucus.

Donald Trump did not win the caucus when he ran the first time Ted Cruz did.

And so how embarrassing would it be for Donald Trump, the presumptive nominee to lose in Kansas, but win the nomination or maybe win the election?

That would be odd.

So I think the Republicans are willing to spend about $4 million to make that not be a possibility.

What's also interesting because, Rebecca, you talked to the secretary of state and there were some Republicans in some polls show as many as 30 to 40% who essentially say that elections are rigged and they're not correct.

And now here is the Republican Party handing over their party's delegate selection process to the secretary of state.

And, you know, the ballot boxes and the counties that all do this stuff.

Just a few months after sort of saying, I don't know if we can trust these results.

That seems a little ironic.

Did the secretary of state mention anything about that to you?

He did.

I mean, oh, how the tables have turned, right?

It kind of seems like what he is saying is right now.

You know, when he was hearing a lot of this pushback regarding election security, he wanted to make it clear that it wasn't something.

Yes, you are criticizing me, but really who you're criticizing are the election workers that are in your local counties, in your districts.

And these are your neighbors.

These are people that you know you know personally or may know personally.

So, you know, to criticize security or how secure an election is is not necessarily an affront to him or anything like that, but more so to your neighbors.

And that's something that he was trying to drive home.

But I also think what he wanted to drive home is that Kansas elections are secure, and that's not necessarily something we have to worry about moving forward in 2024.

Well, here's the other thing, is that Kansas in 2024 will have two primaries.

They have a presidential primary, they'll have a party primary.

And neither case can unaffiliated vote.

Voters vote.

And they'll be in separate dates.

So they cost possibly from 3 to 5 million each when they could have been combined in some fashion.

So those are all the complaints.

Unaffiliated voters, you're out again.

A lot of states have open primaries, not Kansas.

So finally, the last thing I'll add, you're right.

I had a lot to say about it was an email was sent out by the Kansas Republican Party telling its party members, oh, great, this will free everybody up to go campaign and win elections.

And you know, that is that the quiet part said out loud, hey, great.

We don't let the let the suckers of Kansas vote pay for this while we get to do more politics.

But so that's that's my little piece unaffiliated have certainly bent my ear on this.

They're not happy.

Tim Moore, bipartisan legislation has passed.

One was on foster care.

Another was on the statute of limitations for for sexual passed sexual crimes.

Those actually passed by wide margins.

That's a good thing, right?

When we have bipartisan.

What about the foster care bill of rights?

Right.

So there was a foster care bill of rights that basically set forth the rights that somebody, a child under 18, would have in the foster care system, the rights of the parent or another caregiver just established in writing.

And it's going to put those that document in people's hands, because I think there were some lack of clarity about what somebody in foster care might be able to expect from the state when you're a ward of the state.

There were some other ancillary elements to that bill, but I think that's the big one.

And the bill itself was named for the late representative Gail Finney, who was a big advocate for children in her Wichita district before passing away.

And okay, so those are all you know, we're going to start with bipartisan bills, but how about the opposite?

A couple issues where there's bipartisan support among the people of Kansas.

But the legislature does not want anything to do with it.

That's sort of the bizarro universe.

Right.

And Alex, what about Medicaid expansion?

I mean, we've had whole shows on Medicaid expansion, but why has again.

Is that not a nonstarter when some polls show 70% of Kansas, including number of Republicans, would like to see it?

Yeah, Medicaid expansion has huge support in the state, has for many years.

It's bipartisan support.

It really just keeps coming down to this game of partizan politics.

The Republican legislature doesn't want to give a Democratic governor a win on Medicaid expansion.

This is an issue she has ran on in her last two elections, even though it would benefit a lot of low income Kansans.

And you know, the part that we don't talk about all that much or maybe not enough is that 90% of Medicaid expansion would be paid for by the federal government under the Affordable Care Act.

And so it really just keeps getting caught in this game of partizan politics in the legislature.

Neither party wants to give the other the win.

In this case, the last several years, the Republican legislature really doesn't want to give Laura Kelly a win here on Medicaid expansion, even though it really would do a lot of good for the citizens of the state and North Carolina.

Just just is the latest state.

So which I think brings it to 40.

I may be off a little bit, 40 states that have it.

The other one, Rebecca, is medical marijuana and I looked up the numbers on that.

There's only five states left that don't have some form of medical marijuana.

Kansas being one of them.

Idaho is another.

I can't remember the rest, but there's a small number of states.

You watch this throughout the session.

That one got a little closer and then Medicaid expansion, but not really that close.

Medical marijuana can poll as high as 70% in some polls.

Again, bipartisan.

What happened to that?

We don't know what happened.

I would have to piggyback off of what Alex was saying about, you know, Republicans maybe not wanting to give the governor a when I know there are some marijuana advocates that would think the same, that, you know, perhaps this wouldn't be the year that they want to take action on that, because Governor Kelly is in office.

But then there are some that also say that, you know, there is a lot of strong support on it for this legislation on the House side, however, when it comes to the Senate, it keeps hitting a roadblock.

I don't think that this is something that they are going to get past a hurdle.

They're going to get passed in 2024.

This is actually probably something they're going to pick back up in 2025, getting out of an election year.

So even though we may see another bill come up next year, the likelihood of them taking action on it, I think is, you know, few and far between.

But I'd say both of these issues really point to the power of Republican leadership in the House and the Senate.

They don't want Medicaid expansion.

They don't want medicinal or recreational marijuana.

And so they'll block the bills.

They'll keep the bills off the floor, out of committee, no debate.

And so the leadership itself has put their foot down and block these things that are popular among the people.

It's interesting.

This could be a whole episode.

We don't do it.

But in Alex, it's particular political science professor.

But a number of issues, especially when COVID hit, were the Republican majority saying we want Kansans to make their own decisions, let let Kansans decide about vaccines or, you know, all that sort of stuff.

And yet, when it gets to medical marijuana, it's like, well, the government knows best about this, you know, so you could go back to the abortion amendment that passed by a clear margin.

You know, you would think that that vote said Kansans support regulated abortion rights.

Legislators who oppose abortion would say, we're really not sure what they were saying in that vote.

We're going to kind of sort through it and we'll continue to tinker around the edges of abortion rights.

So sometimes when you're in politics and you're the elected one, you want to be the decider.

But it sounds really good to say let the people decide whenever you want to whip that out of your hat.

But Alex, of apparently the voters don't ask for consistency because a voter may say, thank you for standing up for our individual liberties and, you know, maybe these COVID regulations, but thank you for, you know, what about medical marijuana?

So apparently it's the voters who aren't actually asking for the accountability, consistency, I should say, on these issues.

Yeah, we have a tendency to think certain parties are the party of small government or big government when in reality they pick and choose what they're going to be, small government or big government on based on what's convenient for them at the time.

So in this case, right, they're talking about, well, the state knows better when it comes to the legalization of marijuana and voters may support that.

But we're going to go with what these politicians who are elected to represent them want.

It's also a case where parties have to deal with and encompass a lot of different issues because we have a two party system.

And so voters are forced to make concessions on which issues they are going to deem most important when deciding who to vote for and really when they're voting for a candidate, they're really voting for the party.

And so voters have to make these choices.

And for some of them, things like Medicaid expansion or the legalization of marijuana are not going to be their priority compared to some of these other issues that maybe the Republican Party speaks better to their opinions, their attitudes on different issues rather than these, too.

Yeah.

And Tim gave us the Segway.

So thank you to abortion.

It's very possible.

You're right.

And maybe some other non Kansas universe that that vote in August would have said, okay we're we're done with the abortion issue for a year a couple of years.

It looks like the people have spoken.

That wasn't the case in this session.

So there was four or five, six different bills on abortion.

The several passed pass the governor was overridden by the legislature, including information on the abortion drug that was overridden, $2 million to alternative information on abortion, the so-called born alive bill, that those were all overridden.

What was not overridden was the governor was able to veto some money to information centers.

So any of these that anyone wants to comment on the Born Alive Bill or should we just move on?

Alex, you mentioned you might want to mention something about abortion on the show.

Yeah.

So really what we see by these bills being even introduced is that the legislature here is directly undermining the will of the people.

And this vote that citizens took on the constitutional amendment last August, voters voted and said that A like the status quo on abortion, they don't want the state legislature to be able to regulate it more than they already have.

And despite that, the state legislature has tried to do a lot of these things, including introducing a new abortion amendment that would amend the state constitution so that it provides no right to abortion.

Now that bill did die in committee, though, as you mentioned, Bob, some of these others did pass and then also overrode the governor's veto of them.

And so what we really see in this case is not necessarily these different bills being important, though of course they are.

But if we take them as a package, these have been introduced to the opposition of what citizens voted for last August.

Hmm.

Moving on to another issue that we saw in the governor's race, which is the transgender issue I just wrote down this was even more so than abortion.

It involved numerous bills, some that were passed.

The governor vetoed a number of them.

Most of them were then overridden, but not all of them.

Rebecca, do you want to comment on an issue that for some people was like, well, where did this come from?

And 20, 23 are start us off on the all the transgender bills that came up.

Well, I think the trans athlete role was definitely one, but that didn't come out of nowhere.

That was something that that has been pushed for, you know, years here.

I think that was one that, you know, people weren't sure if they were going to have the numbers this year.

But I think they worked to get those numbers and make sure that people were voting in line.

I think we also saw some Democrats flip their votes on that particular issue in the House.

I'll stop you there.

There was the the trans the so that was a ban on transgender athletes in schools K through women's sports, women's sports, the K through 12 and the governor vetoed it.

And then if I'm correct, wasn't it overridden by the legislature but by one vote?

And that was a Democratic led on the House side?

Yes.

And I think that also goes back to what the omnibus budget bill mean.

We see a little bit of what we're seeing now is some of the pushback from the funding.

I think that one Democratic lawmaker had a project on a certain historical site in Kansas City where currently from the omnibus budget, that line item veto was for money for that historical site.

And what some people are saying is that that could have been linked, you know, to him changing his vote or taking a vote on a stance on that issue that was against his party.

So that's some of the fallout we're seeing there.

The trans athlete role, though, I do think was maybe a shock that it was overridden for some people who were against it.

But I do think that it's something that's been pushed very heavily and it seemed like it was going in that direction this year.

Same with this other bill, though, I think is more surprising.

Is the Women's Bill of Rights or Senate Bill 180 that would define biological sex in all of these different areas like restrooms, locker rooms, but no mechanism of enforcement.

So it also begs the question, what is the reason behind the bill?

And you have some that would say just pure stance for your supporters saying for truth, because this is what's right.

But then obviously there's a whole other side to that where they don't think that's the case.

So the anti-trans legislation is a national phenomenon.

Conservative organizations are pushing this.

This is something that made it into Kansas.

And yeah, there's no trigger mechanism to enforcement, no criminal statute that would charge people.

But the idea is to make life for trans people.

So uncomfortable, so terrible that maybe they'll move to Colorado or something like that.

So, you know, you can't get your birth certificate changed.

You can't have your driver's license reflect the name or gender of something other than what it was where the doctor declared at birth.

So it's a big push back to the will, quote unquote, progress, depending on your political perspective of trans and gay rights, LGBT rights in Kansas.

And Rebecca, you asked me a while back what we were talking about, this bill, and you said, what's the impact of this?

And that's the interesting thing is for what, 99%, maybe of all Kansans, the impacts actually nothing.

Their life won't change.

But to your point, to a small number of people, it's not a large number who are going through, you know, transgender process.

It's a massive impact and incredibly powerful impact.

If you have a political base that's hyper conservative, you're talking their language right here.

This is a kind of social warfare activity that a political party can put forward and make use of in future elections.

Yes, I want to make sure we cover a few, few other things.

And so tax cuts or the lack thereof.

So Kansas is sitting on estimates that are close to $3 billion of extra.

I mean, money just money sitting there.

And they expect the 2022 gubernatorial election.

There was a lot of talk about tax cuts.

And Governor Kelly said, here's what I want to do with tax cuts.

And this session produced a number of ideas from Republicans and the governor.

And I guess I'll ask you, I would argue if that each of those ideas had been just packaged as one bill.

It's very possible all of these tax cuts might have passed, but they were all put together.

And so there's therefore no tax cuts.

So, you know, I'll start with Sam and we all can join in on how that the governor vetoed two big tax bills.

One of them, if you spread the tax break out over three years of a billion and a half dollars, you're right.

There's a huge ending balance.

There's a bunch of money in the Treasury.

There's a billion and a half dollars in a rainy day fund.

So there's plenty of money to spend.

And that's what the Republicans thought they could do, is spend it on tax cuts.

So the main element of the first one, the larger one is would have taken us from three individual income tax brackets down to one.

It would be a flat tax at 5.15%.

I think the current top rate is five seven, something like that.

So one of the criticisms that Laura Kelly had about this was that a lot of the tax benefit of that particular bill went to very wealthy people and she connected it to former Governor Sam Brownback and his 2012 2013 tax policies, which she has campaigned on relentlessly over the years to win two elections for governor.

So we can't return to those chaotic days where we spend so much on tax break that it bankrupts the state treasury and damages funding of public education, highways and social services.

So that was her warning about that.

She also vetoed, more recently another bill that was sort of like a Christmas tree for special interests.

It's all the special interests with leverage in the Capitol and all of their great ideas got thrown into a bill.

And, you know, to your point about how some of it might have passed if it was separated out, if you vote on this bill, this bill and this bill, maybe all three of those, but maybe these two provisions don't.

But it was probably 15, 18 different bills rolled into one.

And the idea of bundling like that is to try to get people to vote for legislation they don't like because there's just enough good stuff in there.

It didn't work.

She put her foot down and she said no to both of these bills.

And to me it's you got to question the strategy of the Republicans running the House and Senate because they could have had a bunch of this tax policy, but they got greedy, they packaged it together and they gave her enough reason to veto both of these bills to taxpayers detriment.

Rebecca, we only have 2 minutes, so do you agree with that?

Oh, yeah, I agree.

I think really the main focus for Democrats is the flat tax aspect of this, the single rate tax heading to 5.15.

You would think that's a step up from 4.75.

But I think the big question was, can the state afford this tax cut?

Speaking with Speaker Hawkins, it seems like this is actually something that they may just bring back next year in a different form in another massive tax package.

Will she veto that?

We'll have to wait and see.

Well, and we talk about impact of bills.

The lack of the tax cuts impacts almost every Kansan.

So by them not waiting a year, you know, they did have quite an impact on Kansans.

Alex, I'm sorry to say.

You have 20 seconds.

You can say anything you want about a vote that didn't pass.

Go for it.

I would just say, you know, one of the biggest arguments about not passing these tax cuts was to better fund education.

And then the legislature still did not do that.

And so there are different ways that we can spend this extra money rather than just giving it all the way in a tax cut.

And that's something that the legislature should be looking at.

All right, thanks.

That's all the time we have for this episode of IGI.

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@KTWU.org.

If you would like to view this program again or any previous episodes of IGI, visit us online at watch.ktwu.org, for IGI, I'm Bob Beatty.

Thanks for watching.

(♪) This program is brought to you with support from a Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust and from the Friends of KTWU.