By RUSSELL ARBEN FOX
Insight Kansas
In 2023, Governor Laura Kelly issued a near record number of vetoes (though close to half were overturned). What were her motivations in making use of her veto power so extensively?
Some of Kelly’s vetoes reflect her very practical, service-oriented vision for Kansas. More than anything else, Kelly campaigned as the anti-Brownback, as someone who would be responsible regarding state priorities, and not allow the state’s finances to be subject to such things as radical flat tax proposals or efforts to limit the revenue-raising power of cities. The bills pushing these and other changes often included provisions that Kelly wanted, but giving them up in order to stop what she considered larger harms was more important.
Kelly also wants Kansas to take a live-and-let-live attitude towards trans issues, which led her to repeatedly veto bills that targeted the access which trans Kansans had to public bathrooms, athletic competitions, and more. That vision is not shared by the Republicans majority in Topeka—and this session, after years of trying, the legislature finally managed to get its way.
Which leads to Kelly’s less visionary, more partisan uses of her veto pen. The veto power has long been used to not just shape legislation, but also send messages, to warn or punish legislators—particularly those of the chief executive’s own party—by targeting specific issues.
In this case, Kelly’s target was to use her line-item veto to eliminate $250,000 designated to help turn the Quindaro Ruins, a former stop on the Underground Railroad in Kansas City, into a historic landmark. Rep. Marvin Robinson, a Democrat, had pushed for this money, which the Republican leadership inserted into the final budget bill—but only after Robinson broke ranks and provided crucial votes to overturn Kelly’s vetoes of the legislature’s restrictive trans bills. While Kelly’s veto message claims that Robinson’s budget item hadn’t been properly vetted in committee, it’s not unreasonable to see payback here.
Some vetoes, though, are neither obviously visionary nor partisan. Kelly’s veto of a provision that would have made up for financial losses which some Kansas students suffered due to changes in the distribution of scholarship money through the state’s Comprehensive Grant is an example.
For decades, the Kansas Comprehensive Grant was distributed to Kansas’s colleges and universities, public and private, in a manner that recognized the distinct sets of students with financial need who might choose a small private (sometimes faith-based) college over a large public (and secular) university. By converting the distribution of the Grant to a rigorous per-student formula, Kansas’s independent colleges lost some of their ability to provide scholarship support to needy students, since those institutions are smaller, with a collectively smaller student body than state universities (though often with a higher percentage of qualifying-students nonetheless).
The legislature aimed to help make up for that loss with an additional $5 million of Grant money. Kelly’s reasoning for vetoing that single budget line is ambiguous. Was it rooted in a belief that Kansas shouldn’t provide full support to students who choose colleges that may have a faith-orientation? Was it a move reflecting that most (though not all) independent colleges are in rural, more Republican areas, while most (though not all) public universities are in counties that voted for Kelly? Both? Neither?
In the complicated process of striking deals and shaping legislation, the role of vetoes is one of the least predictable. This year, Kelly’s broad use of that power received both applause and condemnation, from the usual partisan sources. But maybe some of her vetoes make sense to her alone.
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Russell Arben Fox teaches politics at Friends University in Wichita.