By BECKY KISER
Hays Post
Just four weeks into the 2023 Kansas legislative session, a lot of bills have been introduced in Topeka that will likely not get any traction or they may change.
Other bills involve situations that remain at the forefront of lawmakers' constituents' concerns.
Barb Wasinger, R-Hays, is serving her third two-year term as the 111th District state representative.
She chairs the Legislative Modernization Committee and the Joint Committee on Administrative Rules and Regulations. Wasinger is in her fifth year of the Higher Education Budget Committee and also serves on the Taxation Committee and the interim Joint Committee on Information Technology.
"After going through every agency and department in the capitol, we've come to realize we can't really do much to modernize our work until we take care of IT," she said.
There are "big contracts coming up for the state," according to Wasinger.
In his eighth year, Rep. Ken Rahjes, R-Agra, 110th Dist., also is also serving on the Higher Education Budget Committee for a fifth year, as well on as Appropriations. He again chairs the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. New for him this year is appointment to the Joint Committee on Special Claims Against the State.
Rick Billinger, R-Goodland, 40th Dist., has been a senator since 2017 and was in the Kansas House before that. Billinger chairs the Senate Ways and Means Committee which primarily deals with the state budget. Although he serves on some interim committees, during the session it's the only committee he serves.
Committee assignments were just handed out Friday for Congressional leaders. In his third year as a U.S. Senator for Kansas, Roger Marshall, R-Great Bend, will serve on two new committees this year, Homeland Security and Government Affairs.
"We'll be looking at border security and national security," said his Garden City district director, Rebecca Swender. "The senator has a great concern how open our southern border is."
Marshall will continue on the Committees on Agriculture, Nutrition, and Forestry, on Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions, and on Budget.
Wasinger pointed out to the crowd at Saturday's Hays Chamber Legislative Coffee at the Hays Public Library, that the three state legislators all chair committees.
"We have a voice ... and we make sure we advocate for rural Kansas and our area out here... We do have some pull. We do have the ability to get things on the table."
The first question of all three state legislators was about expanding mental health care facilities in northwest Kansas for juveniles.
The week before, the trio had attended the ribbon cutting for Camber Children's Mental Health for its new youth acute and residential mental health treatment facility in Hays, "unbelievably necessary for our area," said Wasinger, "but we do need to spend more for more relief for all of us in western Kansas."
House Bill 2033 would change the criteria used to refer and admit juveniles to a juvenile crisis intervention center such as Camber.
"I do support any type intervention that we can do to change these lives," said Billinger. "For western Kansas kids to have to go all the way to Kansas City for mental health is ridiculous."
Rahjes cautioned the bill may change but "I think you'll find all of us are advocates for whatever we can do for western Kansas. ... I get constituent calls all the time saying they only place they can go is Leavenworth. That's not right, putting a young person in a jail cell because that's the best we have."
Swender was asked about feedback from Kansas farmers to Sen. Marshall in this federal farm bill year.
In last week's first Senate ag committee hearing for the farm bill, Marshall raised a couple concerns, said Swender, including foreign investment of farm land and U.S. corn not being sold to Mexico.
"We're [also] definitely going to be looking at crop insurance, and CRP and the number and price of acres."
Marshall plans a farm bill tour similar to what he did five years ago to meet with farmers and agricultural producers across Kansas.
Questions quickly turned to talk of taxes.
At least one senate bill is proposing to exempt all social security benefits from Kansas income tax.
"We've been trying to do this for a long, long, time," Billinger said. He believes it's important now because of record inflation. "It's putting a real strain on our senior citizens.
"This past year, home appraisals went up about 25 percent. ... People who worked their whole lives, ... we're gonna tax them out of their homes.
"The number one concern for me is property tax. It's not grocery or any other tax. If we can do away with our state income tax on social security or the pension, I think that's a good way to help them so they can stay in their homes.
"I do support it and have ever since I've [been in the legislature.]"
Billinger thinks this may be the year it happens.
"We're getting some momentum. I feel pretty comfortable that is one that will happen this year."
Billinger also supports a back to school tax holiday.
Rahjes agrees to a back to school tax holiday, but it's complicated.
"Part of this is because of what Missouri did [implementing a back to school tax holiday.] ... Kansans crossed the border to shop in Missouri."
But "it's not just a school tax holiday," Wasinger said. "You know everyone is going to be allowed to buy things. That's what they've seen in Missouri."
She also doesn't want corporations and businesses to be allowed to buy huge amounts of computer hardware and software, for example, and be eligible for the back to school tax holiday.
Rahjes points to the huge amount of shopping - for everything - that is now done online.
"In the discussions I've been in with this on the sidelines, while this is good, this is about 20 years too late."
He says the bill should include internet sales.
"So many people do all this online - from pencils to shoes to whatever.
"That's one thing that is continuing to grow, is the tax that we're collecting from online [purchases.] It exploded during COVID."
Rahjes was reluctant to predict whether a back to school sales tax holiday would happen this year.
"I think there's going to be a lot of discussion of how to do that break and then to be sure we don't use fuzzy math.
He thinks some version of the proposal will work but added that there are a lot of other sales tax exemptions under consideration.
Rahjes was critical of how last year's tax bill was passed.
"No tax bills were passed until the end. Twenty-nine different pieces in the tax bill. Absolutely crazy.
"I'm hoping with new leadership now in the House this year that we don't do what we did last year."