By TIM CARPENTER
Kansas Reflector
Outcome preserves half budget veto overrides sought by Kansas Senate
TOPEKA — Three Republicans and three Democrats in the House dropped their opposition Friday to overriding Gov. Laura Kelly on 15 budget vetoes to meet the Senate halfway toward restoration of spending earmarks on the verge of being deleted from the appropriations bill.
Kelly got the ball rolling by making more than 30 line-item vetoes in Senate Bill 125 — the mega-budget bill that would keep state government running through the next fiscal year and featured a Christmas-tree assortment of expenditures sought by lobbyists and special-interest organizations. The Senate voted to reject all of Kelly’s budget vetoes, while the House pulled together a list of 15 priority vetoes it would consider overriding.
In a stunner Thursday, the GOP-led House rejected the scaled-down package and opened the door to sustaining each of the governor’s budget vetoes.
Rep. Charlette Esau, an Olathe Republican, was among GOP lawmakers who initially voted with Democrats to prevent the House from securing the two-thirds majority necessary to override the governor’s budget vetoes. She returned to the Capitol on Friday convinced she had made a mistake, and offered a motion to reconsider the House’s rejection of the 15-item list.
The House responded by voting 88-34 to accept the override package. The two-thirds majority in the House was reached after six lawmakers flipped their votes. Those changing positions were Democrats Barbara Ballard of Lawrence, Sydney Carlin of Manhattan and KC Ohaebosim of Wichita along with Republicans Brian Bergkamp of Wichita, Steve Huebert of Valley Center and Esau.
Rep. Brandon Woodard, the Democratic leader in the House, said he appreciated the bipartisan coalition that voted 82-42 on Thursday to block the budget overrides. He said he was disappointed advocates and lobbyists were able to convince lawmakers to change their votes.
“I am disappointed, though not surprised, by the overnight decision change to reconsider the motion to override the governor’s budget line-item vetoes,” Woodard said. “It is fiscally irresponsible to bundle these line items together and push them through under pressure from GOP leadership and outside special interests. The voices of Kansans — and the judgment of their elected representatives —should never be overshadowed by external political agendas.”
Rep. Brett Fairchild, a Republican from St. John, refused to change his vote against the 15-piece veto bundle in the House. He said there were individual vetoes that he’d enthusiastically vote to reverse, but he rejected the bundling of veto overrides. Traditionally, the House and Senate voted on vetoes one at a time.
“It sends a message to the governor that we don’t even want her to find waste and fraud in the budgets,” Fairchild said.
Show me the money
Esau said she was most concerned about loss of a $1 million earmarked for O’Connell Children’s Shelter in Lawrence, which works with children dealing with trauma and might be a risk to themselves or others. She said funding for the shelter could help children in the foster care system not ready to be placed with a family in a home.
“They (families) don’t have the ability to handle kids that need to be in a specific location getting treatment,” Esau said.
Kelly said she vetoed the appropriation because language in the bill allocating tax dollars to O’Connell created a no-bid contract that circumvented the state’s regular grant review process necessary to ensure “services provided are the bet quality at the best price.”
The reversal of fortune in the House saved a $3 million appropriation to the “pregnancy compassion awareness program” advocated by Kansans for Life and other organizations opposed to abortion. The program, housed in the office of the state treasurer and previously referred to as the “pregnancy crisis” program, was authorized as an alternative to traditional health clinics or family-planning centers. The governor’s veto message said she viewed the Legislature’s decision to place the program in the office of the state treasurer as “inappropriate and simply politically motivated.”
“There is no guarantee this funding is going to be directed to expenditures for moms and babies. It more or less has no strings attached,” said Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, D-Lenexa.
The Legislature’s work on veto overrides preserved bonding authority for construction of a $130 million veterinary diagnostic laboratory on the campus of Kansas State University. It restored $500,000 for unmanned aircraft research at Wichita State University and $500,000 for aviation research at the Salina campus of Kansas State.
The package retained a mandate championed by Sen. Virgil Peck, R-Havana, to assess a monthly rental fee of $1 per square foot for office space used by journalists in the Capitol. The Kansas Reflector wasn’t assigned office space at the statehouse, but rents private office space in Topeka. Kelly had vetoed the rental fee and recommended the Legislature “look for ways to make the lawmaking process more transparent.”
‘Highly inefficient’
The Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto of a provision that forbid the Kansas Lottery from negotiating on contract renewals with casinos operating sports gambling in Kansas. Veto action of legislators allocated $1.5 million to a new program in the state treasurer’s office to attract talented workers to the state. The maneuver defunded a comparable Kansas Department of Commerce program known as “Love, Kansas,” touted by Lt. Gov. David Toland.
“It is highly inefficient to create a new, unvetted program with no guardrails in an agency that has nothing to do with workforce development or talent attraction,” Kelly said.
In addition, the override included a requirement the Kansas Arts Commission dedicate 60% of grants to counties with a population of less than 85,000 people.
Work of the Legislature retained a double-appropriation to the Kansas Department of Health and Environment of $250,000 and $96,000 for prevention of tuberculosis. Lawmakers held onto allocation of $263,000 to various Kansas health facilities for cerebral palsy research. Also, the votes reversed Kelly’s veto of $375,000 for interpreter services for individuals who were deaf or had hearing challenges.
The voting resulted in preservation of a provision that directed the Kansas Highway Patrol to collaborate with a third-party entity to build an aviation hangar in Wichita that would be leased to KHP. Originally, KPH requested funding to buy a hangar. Kelly said she vetoed it because a lease would cost the state more in the long run.
Voting by the House and Senate kept in place an estimated $2 million that would be spent to purchase software that would diagram school buildings in preparation for emergency calls to law enforcement officers. The governor said she vetoed the expenditure because the state’s 911 agency didn’t request the funding and reported that it didn’t have the personnel capacity to enact the program.
Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat who serves on the Kansas 911 Coordinating Council, said the earmark was the result of a lobbyist working to please clients that marketed the mapping software. He said the state was engaged in a pilot project to examine possible use of mapping technology, but that assessment wasn’t completed.
“If you want to know how taxpayer money gets wasted and how budgets get inflated, here’s a prime example,” Carmichael said.