The legislative session has begun, and so have the games. One goal we have this session is for our team members to know sometimes things are not as they seem. The first instance we have of this is the bill the Senate passed today to make an additional payment of $115 million to KPERS. It passed 40-0, so that’s great, right? Well, not exactly. Public education supporters generally support making KPERS payments, and anti-public education legislators have in the past been willing to short KPERS when they were more interested in maintaining Brownback’s tax cuts. Today’s bill set public education supporters up. If they vote against a bill to give additional money to KPERS, they look anti-education, and anti-public-employee. However, some of the supporters of the bill actually support it as a way to sink Governor Kelly’s budget and to set up a situation where there is insufficient funding for schools and for Medicaid expansion. The public message is support for KPERS and public employees, but what’s going on under the surface is a fight against the governor and her agenda. These two screenshots from former legislator John Whitmer show the reality and the pretext. To be clear, not everything is black and white, but public education supporters need to exercise critical thinking when evaluating bills and votes this session.

Originally posted to Facebook on 02/05/2019.