Senator King is announcing his intent to block a common sense change in Kansas politics. Last week the House passed a bill prohibiting the bundling of more than 2 bills. We only recently came to understand how bad bill bundling is. In Topeka, legislatures will put together important bills that must pass together with bills that would never pass on their own. Not only does that lead to passage of policy that shouldn’t pass, but also leads to confusion about exactly what legislators voted for and against. HB 2506 from last year is a perfect example. The legislature needed to pass the additional equity funding ordered by the Gannon court, but added the bad policy of the corporate tax credit scholarship and removing due process for teachers. The bill passed, and we were stuck with the whole package, though the corporate tax credit policy had been voted down when standing on its own, and no bill on removing teacher tenure had even been introduced. Many of the truly pro-public education legislators voted against the bill and then were targeted by postcards saying they had voted against the funding when they actually supported the funding but voted against the bill holding out for a clean funding bill. Let your Senator know you support the bill prohibiting bundling of bills.

http://cjonline.com/news/2015-02-03/senate-republicans-plan-reject-anti-bundling-rule

Update: The Senate expanded the number of bills that could be bundled and exempted tax bills from the rule. The House agreed to the “compromise”, which means bills will continue to be bundled.  See here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article10530413.html