Well, they’re back among us now, members of the Kansas Legislature who finally managed to gavel to a close the election-year 2020 session with angst, argument, and sometimes not particularly good manners.
It was nearly a round-the-clock (twice) prize fight, and it was unlike any closing-day session we’ve seen in the past 40-plus years, and one that clearly pitted a Republican-dominated Legislature against a Democrat governor in the Statehouse, a building that was closed to the public in the midst of a pandemic.
Oh, and don’t forget, it was held just days before the filing deadline for members of the Legislature who want to return to life under the Dome. And those lawmakers -- some social-distancing, some wearing masks, but none shaking hands – are going to have an interesting number of choices ahead as they campaign on their experience and power in shaping the state for their constituents.
While the session stuttered from conference committees to the floor for debates, back to conference committees, and again to the floor, most Kansans are going to be confused and bewildered by the session and its effects on their lives.
What was interesting? Well, it could have been that instead of a three-day session which Senate leaders sought with time for committees to consider bills and make sure they knew what they did, instead it was a one-day session. The House’s insistence on a one-day session meant cramming a handful of bills that at least one chamber might – or might not – have considered good public policy and passed into one bill for consideration by both chambers.
Oh, and that means that once a conference committee report is assembled by a panel of three House and three Senate members (by the way, the GOP tilt in the Legislature means each of those legislative assembly lines has four Republicans and two Democrats, the full Legislature then votes yes or no, no amendments possible.
That’s why there were just a dozen of those bulk measures considered, and practically if four bills were assembled into one package, and one of them contains provisions that aren’t what your constituents want, well, legislators gulp and vote for the measure with issues they favor while trying not to dwell on those they don’t.
Makes passing bills simple. Put provisions that Democrats oppose into a conference committee report that contains some important provisions, and, well, it passes to the governor.
Best example, of course, is the COVID-19 response bill, which restricts the governor’s authority to take the extreme step of closing down businesses and bars and swimming pools and cancelling sporting events and gatherings of more than 15 people…with social-distancing, of course, to deter the spread of the fatal disease through the state.
Now, there are counties with no reported cases of coronavirus, and they don’t want the governor stepping into their way of life, closing their restaurants and swimming pools. And, they don’t want the same restrictions that heavily populated counties, with many coronavirus cases – and deaths – have under the same rules.
It was the conference committee system that made it possible for lawmakers to send the governor a bill that produces more local control and reduces her authority for restrictions…spiced with provisions that everyone likes, such as support for tele-medicine, increased testing, maintaining expanded unemployment compensation provisions, and allowing you to get important documents notarized over the Internet so you can actually sell that car or finance that house. Nice mix? Hmmm…
But that was the procedure, and we’re going to see the other side…will the governor sign into law a bill with provisions she doesn’t like in order to get provisions she wants or needs?
Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver's Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com