Legislative Updates

Legislative Update - February 7, 2011

A basic tenet of a healthy democracy is open dialogue and transparency.
Peter Fenn

SNOW DAYS AND RULE CHANGES

This week marked the end of the first four weeks of the 2011 session and as the saying goes, time flies when you’re having fun. Snow cancelled and closed the Legislature on Tuesday and Wednesday. It was pretty quiet around the Capitol those two days and it gave me an opportunity to catch up on my emails and reading. If you’re assuming not much has happened so far, you’d be right. Both chambers have just begun to debate measures and cast votes during floor action, but the pace will certainly pick up in the weeks ahead.

The first real spirited debate of the new session occurred on Friday. As you may know both the House and the Senate have rules by which they operate. These rules help keep the chaos organized. Each new session the House Rules Committee meets and reviews the rules and presents changes to the full House for their adoption or further change. There were two rule changes that drew the most attention. The first was “pay-go” and the second was the closing of caucus meetings to the media.

1. Pay-go – on the surface, a common sense approach to budgeting. It was made popular by Congress a few years back (it worked pretty well there, right?). The pay-go rule would prohibit any floor amendment that would increase spending without a companion piece that identifies where the budget would be cut to fund the increase. In other words, if a member wanted to propose a spending increase (say for education), one would have to propose a matching decrease in spending (let’s say the Secretary of State’s office). Sounds pretty good right? It does until you examine how budgets are made.

Those committees, (where pay-go does not apply), amend and debate the budget and produce their own version. It is then voted on in committee and the finished product is sent to the floor of their respective Chambers for further debate and amendment. In the House, this is where pay-go starts to operate. For an example, let’s say that the Governor has submitted a 2012 budget of $5B. The Appropriations Committee, 23 members, works the budget and comes up with final spending of $4.5B. Under pay-go rules in the House, total spending is capped at $4.5B. This concept was criticized by the minority party who pointed out that the rule would put too much power in the hands of the 23-member House Appropriations Committee, and their voting majority, 12 members. By the way, Republicans enjoy a 17-6 numerical advantage on the committee. In essence 12 members of the Appropriations Committee can determine total spending for the 125 member House.

Opponents to this rule are pointing out that even though the GOP has a 92-33 margin in the House, there is still a constitution to be followed and this pay-go proposal might violate the constitutional provisions by limiting legislators’ powers to appropriate funds. Democrats, who hold only 33 seats among the 125-member chamber, claimed pay-go would damage an individual legislator’s ability to represent interests of his or her constituents. Proponents say that the pay-go rule provides much needed fiscal restraint and budgeting process change.

My view is that fiscal restraint cannot be legislated by rules but must be exercised by individual legislators casting their votes on difficult issues. I have never backed away from tough votes, and don’t intend to in the future. Pay-go deprives me of my ability to fairly represent the some 25,000 constituents of the 71st District.

2. The closing of caucus meetings to the media – The second rule change that caused much debate would permit the House majority leader and the House minority leader to close their respective caucus meetings. The result would be that 92 Republicans, in the 125-member House, would be capable of convening behind closed doors.

Some of you may be familiar with the Kansas Open Meetings Act (KOMA). The Kansas Open Meetings Act KSA 75-4317 et seq.,is one of two main laws that guarantee the business of government is conducted in the “sunshine”. This new proposed House rule would seem to violate the spirit and intent of KOMA. The Legislature, its committees and sub-committees are covered by KOMA, unless rules provide otherwise. That’s right, the Legislature may exempt itself from its own legislation. We don’t have to eat our own cooking.

During debate, the Democrats said that they would never close their caucus and offered an amendment to remove just Democrats from the closed caucus provision. It failed 32-71.

After 3 hours of debate the rules changes were adopted and moved to final action 74-34. All 74 votes were cast by GOP members. Of the 34 votes opposed, 31 were Democrats and three were Republican. I was one of the 3 Republicans voting against.

JANUARY REVENUES

I would like to close on a positive note, revenue collections for the month of January outpaced estimates by $28 million! The biggest increases were in sales and personal income taxes, which helped boost optimism for brighter economic days ahead.

As always, I consider it a privilege to represent the 71st district. Thank you! Please stop by my office if you visit Topeka. In the meantime, please continue to let me know how proposed legislation will affect you.

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