In April, Jeanne and I attended the Rock Chalk Ball with John and Cindy Ballard. Jeanne and Cindy went to grade school through high school together. John is president of the KU Endowment Association.

On Easter, we had a family one-on-one basketball tournament (daughter Carrie and her family came up from Houston). Here in the semi-finals, Gavin fakes me out of my shoes. I swore he couldn’t go to his left. Oh, and he won.

I mentioned our “veto session” was short this year. A veto session is intended to be when the legislature considers bills vetoed by the governor following the regular session. However, it is generally used to finalize the budget as well as any other major issues still outstanding – most of which tend to be the largest issues of the session. This year was no different in that regard. 

Floor Action
Veto
Our first action was to consider the governor’s veto of SB 67, a bill to require physicians who prescribe medication abortions (also known as Plan B, RU-486, or mifeprex) to inform patients of the option to stop the treatment after the first of two pills. I wrote extensively in the Shawnee Mission Post and sent a newsletter earlier this week (Standing Up for Science) about what really went on during this debate. It was a disappointing display of politics at its worse.

The bill would have required abortion doctors to inform patients as well as display a poster stating an unproven medical procedure was available to reverse a chemical abortion. I had voted for the bill based on incomplete information I was told. After meeting with constituents on both sides of the issue, physicians and researching on my own, including the New England Journal of Medicine, I voted to sustain the governor’s veto.

I fully expect you will receive dozens of postcards, phone calls, and other attacks calling me a baby-killer and every other horrible name in the book. I hope you will refer to the facts and understand that legislating is not black and white, there is a lot of gray, and the gray is where most Kansans are on this issue and dozens of others. 

• The Senate voted to override the governor’s veto with the required 2/3rds majority – 27-13. The House failed to override the veto on a 82-43 vote (it needed 84 votes), I voted NO in order to sustain the governor’s veto.

Budget Stalemate
I mentioned in my last newsletter that the Senate Minority Leader made a motion at the end of the regular session to bring the Medicaid Expansion bill out of committee. When we returned for veto session, the Senate approved that motion. However, another motion was needed to bring the bill up for debate, and that motion failed. Medicaid Expansion was DOA in the Senate. 

We weren’t done in pursuit of passing expansion. It had passed in the House and the votes were there in the Senate to pass it *if* we could bring the bill to a vote. Leadership in the Senate was stonewalling it.

The budget is the only “must pass” bill of the session – it is required before we can adjourn – which provided an opportunity for passage. A group of us who support Medicaid Expansion decided our best move was to block the budget from passing until the Senate held a debate and vote on Medicaid Expansion. 

The coalition held for a while, but at the end of the day (rather early the next day), we lost votes to block the budget. This was a frustrating process. I understand the unease many had in blocking the budget. For example, the first budget presented was the best budget the legislature had put together in about a decade. The proposed budget included the money to continue the slow process of restoring funding for K-12 schools and higher education, roads, foster care, employee salaries, and our crumbling corrections system. It was a terrific budget, but we had to block it in order to get Medicaid Expansion voted on in the Senate. In support of Medicaid Expansion, we sent that budget back to committee and waited on another, expecting cuts to targeted areas in retribution for our efforts.

Sure enough, the budget conference committee began slashing everything good out of the budget. If we were willing to vote against a great budget, a bad one is easy to oppose. That budget went down 42-81. This went back and forth with literally no other work being done – we convened and recessed a dozen times Friday and Saturday while negotiators attempted to reason with Senate President Susan Wagle (R-Wichita) and Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning (R-Overland Park). 

Keep in mind that killing the bad bill in support of Medicaid Expansion was only possible due to Republican support, while other Republicans would rather see the state burn than allow a debate on the issue. This is a good example of the divisions within our party, we are now seeing the same among our Democrat colleagues as well. 

Even though our coalition had been strong and effective, some were falling off out of fear of cuts to key areas of concern.  After days of back and forth, the coalition came to the sad realization Medicaid Expansion was not to happen this year. The budget we were considering was a good one and we voted to pass basically the same budget as we were first presented (79-45), I voted YES. This is a good budget. Here are a few highlights:

• More than $200 million increase for transportation plus $6.4 million to speed up completion of T-WORKS projects still on hold.
  • I’m also excited about the potential for tolling projects to alleviate the Highway 69 bottleneck! Things will get better there.
• $5 million for Community Mental Health Centers
• 2.5% pay raise for state employees 
• $33 million for Regents institutions
• $3 million to increase reimbursement rates for dentists who take Medicaid patients
• $6 million to reduce the waiting lists for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) for intellectually or developmentally disabled Kansans. 
• $16 million to increase reimbursement rates for HCBS and nursing home providers
  $35 million for the Department of Corrections to hire and retain guards and deal with overcrowding issues

I am deeply disappointed and frustrated with the ability of one or two people to block the needs of 150,000 Kansans and something nearly 80% of Kansans support. People are dying because of Kansas’ failure to expand Medicaid. Our efforts continue to bring healthcare to the needy and vulnerable.

Tax Plan
In the waning hours of the session we started work on another tax bill. HB 2033 passed the Senate 27-13, then came to the House for debate. The bill is different – and about half as costly – as the bill the governor vetoed earlier in the session, though it retained some of the basic components: 

• Return $157 million back to Kansans by allowing them to itemize deductions when they might not itemize them on their federal tax forms. 
• Allow small businesses to deduct the cost of capital expenses (computers, etc) instead of deducting the depreciation.
• Add sales tax to internet purchases – and this is where things get creative:
  • With the resulting increase in sales tax revenues, any revenue above 3% growth would be used to “buy down” the food sales tax. So, the more you buy online, the more the food sales tax goes down (it’s obviously a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea).

It passed 83-41, I voted YES.