“Sen. Jeff King, chairman of the Senate Judiciary Committee, doesn’t see this as a problem…Maybe blackmail isn’t the right word for what the Legislature is doing to the judicial branch. Maybe ‘power grab’ would be a better term. Either way, lawmakers are trying to alter the roles, responsibilities and fundamental balance of power among the state’s three branches of government. Their action also feeds the perception that they are trying to punish state courts for school finance decisions that have forced the state to increase spending for K-12 schools — decisions based on the constitutional requirement that the...
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Arnold urges moving local elections
The Chair of the Kansas Republican Party, Kelly Arnold, is urging legislators to support the bill to move local elections. He says it’s about increasing turnout but also says, “The vast network of politically active people, who engaged wholeheartedly in the even-year general election, currently have almost no time, given the intervening holiday period, to re-focus on local elections before the January filing deadline. Moving the local elections to the fall, with a mid-year filing deadline, will allow substantially more engagement by the people of Kansas in assessing local issues, recruiting candidates, and engaging in the election process. There is...
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Leave a Comment Bill threatens to defund courts
“Local control” is becoming the most abused term in the Kansas legislature. Bills to change how judges are selected and link courts’ funding to anything other than what they need have more to do with school funding cases than “local control”. “Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said the issue about how chief judges are named is a matter of ‘local control’ over district courts because chief judges have a great deal of discretion in allocating district court funds, hiring staff and even assigning cases to other judges… “It leads me to only one...
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Leave a Comment Legislature needs to face fiscal reality
“Finding the revenue to pass a two-year budget should not be lawmakers’ only concern. Back home in their districts, many schools are suffering serious consequences from the recently approved block-grant bill, which repealed the two-decade-old school-finance formula. Some are ending the semester early, cutting programs, raising fees or a combination. The superintendent of the Skyline district in Pratt County even resigned Wednesday to save the district his $81,000 salary, on top of $477,000 in other personnel cutbacks. “And more cuts could be coming, as the Senate Ways and Means Committee advanced legislation that would counter falling oil-and-gas valuations...
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