The regular part of the 2011 legislative session is now past, with a great deal of major progress on important pieces of legislation, some of which are headed to Governor Brownback for his signature. This past week marked a time when we were beyond the committee process and the Senate considered bills the House had passed, as well as conference committee reports. In the coming weeks, I will be present at several legislative forums to discuss this session’s work and I would like to encourage you to attend. The first will be next Monday, April 11, from 7:00 – 8:30 p.m. at the Lenexa Conference Center Upper Level. Several area legislators representing portions of Lenexa will also be in attendance.
Before I proceed to the larger discussion of the FY 2012 budget, I want to take some time and go over some recently passed pieces of legislation.
Pro-Life Legislation
I am happy to report that the two pro-life bills the Senate passed last week, the unborn pain bill and the late term abortion/parental consent bill, also passed the House with our amendments and are now headed to the Governor for his signature. This is an historic day for Kansas and represents significant progress towards making a Kansas a place where life is always cherished and protected in our laws.
On April 12, the Governor will have a signing ceremony for both of these bills at the State Capitol at 2:30 p.m. This signing ceremony will represent the culmination of many years of hard work from Kansans at every corner of our state. I encourage you to attend!
Voter ID Bill
The Voter ID bill, HB 2067, brought to us by Secretary of State Kris Kobach, has also passed the House with the Senate amendments and is also headed to Governor Brownback for his signature. Here are the details from the Supplemental Note to the bill:
HB 2067 would change the requirements for providing voter identification at elections, effective January 1, 2012, and publication in the statute book. The bill would require photo identification of all in-person voters at every election (with the exception of certain voters who would be exempted), and it would require inclusion of the number on or a copy of a specified form of photo ID for all voters submitting advance ballots by mail for every election. (Current law does not require a photo ID, nor does it require ID be provided at every election.) The bill would allow for the issuance of a free photo ID card to anyone who qualifies and signs an affidavit.
The bill also would require any person registering to vote on or after January 1, 2013, to submit evidence of U.S. citizenship.
In-home Sprinklers
One piece of legislation I have received quite a deal of correspondence on was Senate Bill 101, which protects the freedom of an individual homeowner to choose whether to install an expensive fire sprinkler system in their home. If this legislation had not passed, nothing would prevent a local government from mandating that all homeowners install a fire sprinkler system in their home, which would be very expensive and burdensome for homeowners, while at the same time permitting the expansion of government into areas it does not belong. While I am a strong proponent of local control, which includes allowing cities and counties to set local codes, I believe that state legislators need to remain vigilant about situations when the liberty of the Kansas citizen would be threatened.
There are a number of other bills that were passed in the past week. A complete set of reports can be found on my legislative reports page, which you can find by clicking here.
On to the budget…
One of the most significant items of discussion every year is the Kansas Budget. In the past several years, the rate of growth of our annual budgets has simply been unsustainable, and last November a clear message was sent to rein in spending and reduce the size and influence of all levels of government, including Kansas state government.
Earlier this week, the Senate, by a 36-3 vote, passed our version of the 2012 budget. While many of us would have liked to see further reductions in the rate of spending in our state budget, no new money was used, and the current makeup of the Senate is one in which Senate conservatives believe the budget we passed in the Senate is the furthest we could go in terms of reducing spending, particularly based on the number of conservative votes we had.
On Thursday, the Kansas House passed a budget that reduces spending by a greater amount than the Senate. Before the final bill was passed, a number of conservatives in the House attempted to amend the bill on several occasions to reduce the rate of government growth, but each of those amendments failed by varying vote totals.
Many of us have argued and fought for additional restrictions on the rate of spending for many years, as the path Kansas has been on fiscally has been unsustainable. While I am pleased we are moving in the direction of balanced budgets and lower taxes, it will continue to be my goal to reduce the growth of government both this year and in future sessions as well.
We also need to remember that the Governor has just recently appointed new people to be the heads of agencies, all of whom were just confirmed by the Senate this session. It is going to take at least a year for those agency heads to find inefficiencies and be able to flush out where we can cut spending. At that point, it is my hope we can enact a long term budgetary plan that keeps spending under control and respects the principle of limited government.
If you have any questions or input on any of the above items or any other piece of legislation, don’t hesitate to contact me at mary@pilchercook.com. You can also follow me on Facebook at www.facebook.com/imwithmary.
In honor of your liberty,
Mary Pilcher Cook
