End-of-Session Report
In the original Jurassic Park, the Jeff Goldblum character famously says that the scientists “were so preoccupied with whether or not they could, they didn’t stop to think if they should.” And I think we could say the same about Kansas’ legislative leadership this year.
The right-wing supermajority gaining seats in last year’s election meant that there were no longer any guardrails against anything leadership wanted to do, and they took advantage. The session was artificially shortened, so the pace was breakneck; we were often testifying on three or four bills in a week. Process and debate went by the wayside as bills were rushed through with a minimum of discussion and the same 84, 85 votes in the House and 30 in the Senate on every important bill. Leadership’s arrogance was exemplified by Senate President Masterson rolling the overrides of 30 (count ‘em) of Gov. Kelly’s line-item vetoes on the budget into a single override vote – no debate is necessary when you know in advance what the outcome will be.
The damage this is causing to the state is incalculable, but here are the outcomes we see a the most damaging to Kansans:
SB 63 – The gender-affirming care ban for transgender minors. As our colleague Melissa Stiehler of Loud Light said at the time, “We are heartbroken about the pain and chaos that this ban will cause for Kansas families.”
SB 4 – The repeal of the three-day grace period for return of mail ballots. House Elections Committee chair Rep. Pat Proctor of Leavenworth has made it very clear that this is just the first step in rolling back all advance voting.
SCR 1611 – The constitutional amendment to elect Supreme Court justices. Conservatives have been trying to pass this for 10 years at least and this year they finally had the votes to push it through by a single vote. This is particularly aimed at both reproductive choice and school funding, both areas where the Kansas Supreme Court has refused to let the far-right have its way.
HB 2311 – Forbids DCF from denying a license to potential foster or adoptive parents based on their anti-LGBT religious beliefs. This is a Christian Nationalist bill, writing a preference for Rightist Christians into law over the well-being of foster children, who will now be in danger of conversion therapy and other anti-queer pressure.
Each and every one of these bills was passed by veto override.
Perhaps the best example is SB 269, the flat tax. Here is what Gov. Kelly said about her veto of the bill:
The income tax cuts made possible by this bill could cost the state up to $1.3 billion annually. The triggers for those tax cuts are such that as soon as the state sees an uptick in revenue, taxes will be automatically cut regardless of any other economic factors or policy and budgetary considerations. We’ve been down this road before, and we can’t afford to go back to failed tax experiments and policies that will stifle economic opportunity for everyday Kansans.
The Republican senators who last year opposed the flat tax and helped sustain the governor’s veto of it are gone, so leadership dutifully ran it through this year, despite its potential to cause massive deficits in Kansas’ budget right away, and despite ongoing uncertainty about federal funding cuts and what their effect on the state budget might be.
In terms of the role Christian Nationalism played in this, I couldn’t put it better than what Laurel Birchfield, Advocacy Director of Mainstream Coalition wrote in the Kansas Reflector this week:
When our elected officials spend hours fighting for legislation aimed to erase transgender identities, prioritize tax relief for fetuses over working Kansans, divert millions of public dollars to private schools and Crisis Pregnancy Centers, or force a last-minute religious exemption for childhood vaccinations, they’re not doing the work of protecting the rights or pocketbooks of everyday Kansans. They are abusing their power as elected officials to force their narrow religious beliefs onto all Kansans.
Laurel is completely correct that a major priority this session for leadership was enacting the Christianist wish list of Kansans for Life, Kansas Family Voice and Kansas Catholic Conference.
The other main tendency, both in Kansas and in the federal government, is obeisance to billionaires. What I call the Kochfrastructure – the interrelated web of right-wing think tanks and advocacy organizations, primarily Americans for Prosperity and the Kansas Policy Institute in Kansas, plus other Koch-funded out-of-state organizations like Opportunity Solutions Project and the Heritage Foundation – has spent millions of dollars to remake the Kansas legislature in their image, purging moderates and slowly-but-surely implementing their legislative agenda, particularly this year the flat tax, the Supreme Court elections amendment, and further restrictions on SNAP benefits.
There were several bills we opposed that didn’t pass, including SB 76 (the “pronoun bill”), SB 87 (expansion of private and religious school scholarship tax breaks), and SB 254, which would have removed in-state tuition from undocumented students. While we’re relieved these didn’t pass, it’s hard to be sanguine given the dynamics of this year’s session.
In particular, although “school choice” (ie public money for private schools) didn’t advance this year, there’s no question they’re preparing for a more amenable governor after the next election, when they will only need 62 votes in the House and 21 votes in the Senate to pass a bill and not 84 and 27 to override a veto. We can look at the example of Texas, which finally passed vouchers this year, after years of trying, because the rural Republicans who had resisted them – because they knew vouchers would destroy rural school districts – were primaried by their rightwing billionaire. It’s very hard to stand up against endless money and endless patience. If they fail this year they’ll just come back next year, and the year after that and the year after that, and leadership will keep twisting arms until they win, as the flat tax debacle proves.
KIFA said at the beginning of the session that we expect this year to be more about bearing witness than about passing or stopping particular legislation, which we knew we had limited capacity to do – and so it turned out. We know that we and our coalition partners left it all on the field, as the sports metaphor goes. We learned a lot this year, and we’ll continue to build our movement and develop our tactics so that we can slow down or reverse the tyranny of a legislature that serves only the interests of billionaires and radical Christianists – and we’ll do it with your help, and with God’s.