We oppose SB 171, which was passed by the Senate last week. The bill would move local elections, including school board elections, to the fall, with primaries in the spring. As we have posted in greater detail elsewhere on this page, although this bill is an improvement over the original bill which made elections partisan, there are still multiple issues with it, including the fact that primaries will be held in August when much of the school age population is on vacation. We also disagree with Sen. Holmes saying that opposition to this bill is just by organizations. We think “John Q. Public” does not support this bill, but doesn’t know it’s necessary for him to contact his legislators directly instead of letting his school board and municipal leadership, which he elected, to speak for him. This bill now goes to the House, where it still could be modified to add back the partisanship or could be passed despite an overwhelmingly large number of school boards and municipalities voicing opposition to this move. So much for local control.

“Holmes also criticized opponents of moving the election dates, noting that lawmakers’ e-mail inboxes had been inundated with petitions against the bill.

“‘What we have, folks, is a locked-in, organized effort to keep the status quo regardless,’ Holmes said.

“Holmes said that most voters would welcome the change despite the organized opposition. ‘This is not controversial to John Q. Public,’ he said…

“Even with the more mild version of the bill, 194 school districts have signed resolutions against changing the election dates, according to the Kansas Association of School Boards.

“Holmes contended that ‘organized groups’ have outsized influence in elections with low turnout. He did not specify which organized group has an outsized influence in Kansas, but in previous comments he has framed the bill as a way to weaken the power of teachers unions over local school board elections.

“’He’s posed this in the press as wresting the school boards out of the power out of the teachers association, which is absurd,’ said Mark Desetti, legislative director of the KNEA, the state’s largest teachers union. ‘The truth of the matter is that we don’t control school board elections more than anybody else.’

“Desetti also questioned Holmes’ logic that moving elections to the fall would break the power of organized groups. He said that organized conservative groups, such as Americans For Prosperity, which has ties to Koch Industries, dominate November elections.

“’So I guess then AFP who dominates our November elections is not an organized group? Who dominates our November elections? Huge super PACs and organized groups. It’s an absurd argument,’ Desetti said. ‘In fact the April elections have fewer organized groups involved because under these nonpartisan, spring elections the big PACs don’t get involved in them now.’”

http://www.kansas.com/news/local/article11264396.html