Copy
Learn more at www.JanKessinger.com!
View this email in your browser
Dear Friend,

The Kansas Legislature officially wrapped up the Regular Session and for most of us that means heading home to catch up with “real” jobs, reacquaint ourself with family, and hold constituent meetings:

  • April 13, 9 – 10, Senator John Skubal and I have a town hall meeting at Leawood City Hall.  
  • Also, from 10 – 11:30 that day, I will be on a legislative panel for the League of Women Voters Coffee at Central Resource Library, 9875 W. 87th Street, Overland Park, KS. Other participants include:  State Senator Dinah Sykes, Representatives Stephanie Clayton, Nancy Lusk, Jarrod Ousley, Willie Dove. 

We return to Topeka on May 1 for the veto session, which may last two days (or 20).   

On the Home Front
In case you missed it, Sen. John Skubal and I penned an opinion piece for the Kansas City Star to explain our opposition to Senate Bill 22 as traditional republicans. The controversial bill was promoted as a tax cut for individuals, however, the big beneficiaries were to be international corporations who had been sheltering income off-shore. With our revenues careening like a roller coaster from month-to-month, we cannot afford this right now. I want our revenue outlook to stabilize before we consider tax cuts again. One description of SB22 was “a perfect storm of uncertainty”. This is not the time for that.

About Jan

5th Generation Kansan
3rd Generation State Representative
Retired Fortune 100 Business Consultant
Congregational Care Minister, United Methodist Church of the Resurrection
Husband to Jeanne
Father of 3 girls
Grandpa to 6

About the 20th

Under the Dome
I have been a baseball fan since kindergarten. My dad and I played catch for many years and I love to play the game and enjoy being at the ballpark. I caught opening day with my friend (and constituent) Andy Brandt...and the Royals won!
March 27, advocates for senior care were at the Capitol. I visited with the Johnson Commission on Aging to discuss the concerns and needs of older Kansans while keeping their independence and dignity. Here I am with Care Coordinator Staci Tripodi and board members Rob Givens and Eugene Lipscomb.
April 9, I attended the Leawood Chamber of Commerce breakfast with featured speaker Brian Hanni, the voice of the Kansas Jayhawks.  Brian shared the expected KU basketball and football information, but his passion came through when he shared about his charity event, The Rock Chalk Roundball ClassicMore than 40 sports stars and celebrities participated to raise money to help families fighting cancer. Brian uses his position as announcer to help sports stars use their platforms for the greater good. He has been organizing the event for seven years and is approaching raising $1 million for charities. He cited Luke 12:48 as his inspiration (To whom much is given, much is expected). 
I hosted two pages, Kyler Milne and Noah Wilson. Kyler is grandson of a friend of mine since childhood, Debbie Windham. Here the pages are with Governor Kelly and me.
On the Floor  Floor CalendarFloor Livestream
After bills are debated and passed by each chamber, they are sent to conference committees. We spent the last week or so debating conference committee reports. Here’s some help with the definitions and the process:
  • Conference Committee
    • Typically, a bill doesn’t pass one chamber in the exact form it passed the other – if it does, it goes straight to the governor’s desk. 
    • If there are changes while passing the second chamber, the originating chamber can agree (concur) or disagree (non-concur) with changes made in the opposite chamber and require a conference committee be convened. 
      • If the originating chamber concurs with changes made by the opposite chamber, a motion to concur is voted on, and if passed, the bill goes straight to the governor. 
      • In the case of a non-concur, the chair, vice-chair, and ranking minority members of the House and Senate committees that passed the bill form a conference committee. 
      • Those six legislators hammer out differences (in most cases) between the versions passed by each chamber and submit a conference committee report (CCR)with the negotiated compromise language. The process is fascinating to watch. 
    • Conference Committee Report (CCR): The committee report is debated by both chambers but cannot be changed(amended) and must be passed “as-is” by both the House and Senate before heading to the governor for approval. If one chamber does not pass the report, the bill stays in the conference committee for continued deliberation. 
Here are a few highlights from CCRs we passed last week: 
 
School Finance -- FINALLY!
After hours of debate and amendments, (as well as weeks of behind the scenes maneuvering) the House finally passed an education bill (SB 16) to comply with the Kansas Supreme Court’s request to finalize the Gannon litigation by including funding to account for inflation. I supported a bill that passed by the Senate, which was a much cleaner version than what we considered in the House. 
 
There were policy provisions included in the House bill which for the large part were untenable and would result in a standoff with the court, and likely a constitutional crisis – something that many of my colleagues support in an attempt to drive public support for a constitutional amendment against schools. 
 
The policy pieces of the House version were offered separate from the appropriations funding aspect. Here are a few of the provisions of the policy bill I opposed: 
  • Eliminating the requirement for the state to cover up to 92% of excess costs of special education and set the special education budget to whatever the legislature appropriated. 
  • Capping school bond authority, limiting the ability of districts to respond to extraordinary growth or other educational needs.
  • Reverting the school funding formula’s four-year appropriation to a two-year appropriation, likely to elicit ire from the Court.
That bill passed 63-61, I voted NO. 
 
Subsequent to the policy bill, the House did not work a funding bill at all (the votes were not there to pass a proposal by leadership, so that funding bill was never considered.) The House went to the Education Budget conference committee with a policy piece and no official House position on funding. The Conference Committee met to work out school funding based on the clean Senate bill and no funding bill from the House, just a policy bill.
 
Once the funding bill was in conference, the Senate held firm to its simpler funding bill and made some compromise by including some of the less controversial House policy measures. For example: 
  • Paying for the ACT and WorkKeys assessments for all Kansas students, 
  • Extending the Legislative Task Force on Dyslexia through 2022, and
  • Including the Jobs for America’s Graduates-Kansas (JAG-K) and Boys and Girls Clubs as complementary programs for school funding.
The funding legislation appropriates $104.5 million beginning July 1, 2019, and another $114 million beginning July 1, 2020. Moving forward, the bill ties school funding to the average consumer price index of the three previous years. 
  • CCR House Substitute for SB 16 passed the House 76-47, I voted YES. It passed the Senate 31-8, and Governor Kelly signed it into law this past weekend. It’s now the Attorney General’s job to prepare a defense of the bill to the court by April 15. Oral arguments will be held on May 9. We expect a decision from the court during the summer.
Transportation Highlights
A few recommendations from the Transportation Vision Task Force completed the bill process and are headed for the governor’s desk: 
  • Senate Substitute HB 2214 institutes fees for hybrid and electric vehicles beginning January 1 of next year. Hybrid vehicles would pay a $50 registration fee and all-electric vehicles would pay a $100 fee. The purpose is to help offset road use by those who do not pay or pay less in gas taxes that fund the roads. It passed the House 80-41, and the Senate 36-2. I voted YES.
  • Senate Substitute HB 2007 will allow the Department of Transportation to issue bonds to help finance new toll roads, paid for by private funds and local units of government. The specified goal of such toll or turnpike additions would be to add capacity to existing highway projects. For example, there has been much discussion of adding express lanes to Highway 69 in Johnson County and K-10 Highway between Johnson and Douglas Counties. It passed the House 90-33, and the Senate 39-1, I voted YES. 
Health Care
HB 2084: The House agreed to changes made in the Senate to the Next Generation 911 (NG911) bill, which will help improve 911 coverage throughout the state. To pay for these necessary upgrades, the bill increases the current 911 fee on your phone line from $0.60 to $0.90 per month. For prepaid phones, the current fee is 1.2% of the transaction cost, and would be increased to 2.06%. Fees are distributed based on the number of users in each county, with each county receiving a minimum of $60,000 for upgrades. It passed the House 87-35, I voted YES. 
 
SB 15 includes three key provisions to improve access to health care across Kansas: 
  1. Licensure reciprocity: We continue to have trouble recruiting enough social workers to cover the demand in our hospitals, schools, and mental health facilities. This bill would recognize licenses from other states, so long as the person meets baseline requirements. Reciprocity would also be available for addiction counselors, marriage and family therapists, and Master’s and Doctor’s level psychologists
  2. About a year ago, an owner of 15 Kansas nursing facilities began defaulting on bills and the facilities had to be taken over by the state, which hired a management company. Nursing home failures like this are on the rise in Kansas and this bill seeks to provide a stronger foundation for when they begin. It requires a “financial background check” to ensure the entity has the capital to launch the business, a list of other similar facilities with which they have been involved, and improves guidelines around the receivership process. 
  3. Naturopathic doctors will now be allowed to order radiologic testing like mammograms, x-rays, MRIs, etc.
It passed the House 122-1, and the Senate 38-0. I voted YES.
 
HB 2209 allows associations to form health care plans for their members which are exempt from some requirements of the Affordable Care Act (ACA). The compromise also included the somewhat controversial Farm Bureau benefit plan, which will allow Kansas Farm Bureau the ability to offer health coverage to its members. It passed the House 84-39, and the Senate 28-12, I voted YES.
 
Miscellaneous
Sub SB 130 combines a number of election-related bills to improve the vote-counting process. The bill will:
  1. Allow voters to vote at any polling location in the county, without having their ballot listed as provisional. This is sure to be a technology challenge for many counties, so this opportunity is subject to the county election official’s discretion. 
  2. Require election offices to contact voters whose advance ballot signature is missing or does not match that on file, and allow the voter to correct it before the final votes are tallied.
  3. According to the Sunflower State Journal, 460 ballots were not counted in Sedgwick County, and 153 went uncounted in Johnson County due to mail ballot signature discrepancies. 
It passed the Senate 38-1, and the House 119-3, I voted YES.
Please contact me at anytime about these or other legislative issues. 

Yours in service,


Jan Kessinger
State Representative
Kansas House District 20
Serving Overland Park & Leawood
Copyright © 2019 Kessinger4Kansas, All rights reserved.

Our mailing address is:
Kessinger4Kansas
12605 Walmer St.
Overland Park, KS 66209

Add us to your address book