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The Legislature has spent the past two weeks wrapping up committee work and debating legislation on the House floor. The House debated over 30 pieces of legislation in an effort to clear the calendar ahead of the Turnaround deadline. Turnaround marks the halfway point in session where each chamber must complete their work and send it to the other chamber.

While we have addressed a number of issues in the first half of session, much work remains including passage of: House and Senate redistricting maps, a budget, water reform, tax reform and several other pieces of legislation important to Kansans.

I encourage you to watch the action via the Legislature’s YouTube Page or Listen Live to debate or read testimony via the Legislature’s website. As issues arise, I hope you will reach out to me to share your thoughts and concerns.

Rep. Jim Minnix
State Capitol, Room 512-N
Jim.Minnix@house.ks.gov
785-296-7384

When the Legislature passes a bill, it usually contains authority for state agencies to create rules and regulations to implement the law. There are times when the rules and regulations adopted run contrary to the intent of the Legislature. When that happens, the Legislature has no authority to correct the issue.

HCR 5014 places before voters the decision of whether the Legislature should have veto authority over the bureaucratic regulations of state agencies. In rural Kansas, we are all too familiar with government overreach and the decisions of unelected bureaucrats. I supported this amendment in hopes of adding some checks and balances to the unfettered power state agencies have in the rules and regulations process.

Following Turnaround, the Legislature will take up the state budget. One of the highly debated items within the state budget will be education funding. For me, now is not the time to make sweeping changes to school funding or to saddle teachers with additional requirements that interfere with student-teacher time in the classroom.

The House K-12 Budget Committee has been working on a number of policy issues that divert funding from public schools to private institutions, erode local control and disadvantage rural school districts. These policies all but guarantee the state ends up back in court over school funding. I’ll be fighting for a clean funding bill that maintains local control and a level playing field for our rural schools.

The House of Representatives introduced HB 2711, which is a comprehensive tax reform bill. The bill includes a reduction in the sales tax on food by nearly half, a reduction in the overall sales tax rate from 6.5 percent to 6.3 percent and targeted food sales tax relief. The House Tax Committee will take up the bill and forward a recommendation to the full House of Representatives.

As you may recall, the Governor proposed to repeal the state’s portion of sales tax on food. The Senate proposed to repeal the state’s portion of sales tax on food as well as sales tax on delivery services and sales tax on utilities, in addition to allowing movie theaters to keep the state sales tax on movie tickets for two years.

Once the House and Senate finalize their versions of tax reform, we will meet in a conference committee to iron out the differences. In the end, I hope we have a product that creates real savings for taxpayers while maintaining stability in the tax code.

The Water Committee might not sound exciting to a lot people, but for a legislator from western Kansas, it is right up my alley!

Last year, the Water Committee studied water policy in hopes of identifying ways to help Kansas address water quality and quantity issues. This year, the chairman proposed, HB 2686, a comprehensive bill to overhaul water regulations in Kansas. The bill creates a new state agency dedicated to water, consolidates existing water related functions into the new agency and creates a new fee structure to assist with additional funding for long-term projects.

There are a number of improvements that need to be made to the bill before the committee can come to consensus on a final version of the bill. The committee will continue discussions following Turnaround. I am excited to be part of this debate, as I think it is long overdue.