Legislature splinters into smithereens by veto session’s end, with more sausage making on the way

Welcome back to the final Statehouse scraps column of 2024!

… Or is it?

Yes, the Kansas Legislature’s veto session drew to a close early Wednesday, but from all indications, Gov. Laura Kelly soon will order lawmakers back to work, ordering them to fashion yet another tax plan. Despite passing a handful of worthwhile bills, members just couldn’t help blowing themselves up at the last minute.

This leaves your scrappy scraps scribe in a slight quandary. Were the session to have actually ended, I could use this space for valedictory remarks and a promise to see you early next year. Instead, I’m hovering (along with the rest of the Kansas press corps) in limbo.

Let’s make the best of these unsettled times and forge ahead anyway.

When’s the special session?

Most legislators assumed their latest attempt at a sweeping tax cut bill would be vetoed and that Kelly would keep her word on calling a special session. All of which raises the question of when.

The working assumption in Topeka was that she would bring them back sometime this month. But the governor can order a special session at any time and for any reason. She could order one in July, just as candidates are digging in for the August primary election. She could order one in the October, just before the general election.

Heck, she could order multiple special sessions to tackle marijuana legalization and Medicaid expansion if she wanted.

I suspect that our rock star governor will pick this month. Folks across the state appreciate her plainspoken, technocratic and drama-free approach. But imagine the possibilities if she had a Machiavellian streak.

Keep an eye on Dan

House Speaker Dan Hawkins wanted Americans to know he supported a ban on gender-affirming care for those younger than 18.

So he placed an op-ed in the august conservative journal National Review making the case. “Kansas Will Protect Children with No Help from a Hapless Governor” appeared April 25. In case you don’t follow such things, the National Review was founded by walking caricature William F. Buckley Jr. and once published fishy essays such as “Why The South Must Prevail.”

But no, Hawkins wasn’t making a regrettable argument in favor of racial segregation. He was making a regrettable argument in favor of inserting the state between families and medical professionals.

The gender-affirming care ban he touted wouldn’t simply ban surgery or hormone treatments. It would also bar state employees from supporting teens transitioning by using preferred pronouns, and it tries to ban LGBTQ+ events at the Statehouse. Perhaps because of this remarkable over breadth, the Legislature sustained Kelly’s veto Monday.

In his op-ed, Hawkins concludes: “In the coming days, the state legislature will vote to override her veto to enshrine these protections for the children of our state into law.”

Perhaps the speaker might want to wait before submitting columns in the future.

Border time waste

Thanks to a reprint in the Kansas City Star, I heard from more angsty folk than usual about my Thursday column. I pointed out (reasonably, I thought) that Kansas didn’t share a border with Mexico and that allocating $15.7 million to support Kansas Guard members on a fictitious mission to Texas wasted everyone’s time.

Kelly commands the Guard, you see, and has offered no plans for such a deployment.

You can read intelligent takes about the situation at our nation’s southern border from Vox and the Pew Research Center. They offer facts and figures about the challenging situation for readers who may be curious.

But unless Kelly sends out our troops, none of those facts and figures matter. Nor does the overblown political rhetoric. Legislators allocated money for a mission they have no power to launch.

Red scare

No one expects the Spanish Inquisition — or the Chinese Communist Party!

That was the takeaway from debate over a likely unconstitutional bill requiring divestment of companies or property owned by those connected to China, Iran, North Korea and other adversarial countries. Kansas lawmakers proved themselves wholly unsuited for the challenge.

“Understand that China is a communist country,” announced Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee. “There may be some people here in the United States from China that do not have any nefarious intent. It’s very difficult to identify the ones that are. They’re not going to hold up a sign and say, ‘Hey, by the way, I’m here to spy on you.’ ”

Did I fall into a time machine and travel back to the McCarthy hearings? Just joking. Of course I didn’t — folks back then at least put some effort into their red baiting.

Recent debate over social media app TikTok in Washington, D.C., featured the same rhetoric, this time from the Kansas delegation.

Outgoing Rep. Jake LaTurner took the hard line: “The Chinese Communist Party will stop at nothing to gain influence in the United States — including using TikTok to steal keystrokes and data from over 170 million Americans.” Even Rep. Sharice Davids‘ spokesman Zac Donley said Davids “recognizes the potential negative impact the Chinese Communist Party could have on our youth and Kansans’ data security.”

Never mind that the current Chinese ruling party has about as much to do with communism as modern-day Republicans do with Republicanism.

Fresh abortion limits

One big culture war winner from this year’s session: anti-abortion forces. They notched successful override votes for abortion questionnaires and the new crime of abortion coercion. They also overrode Kelly’s line-item veto of funding for crisis pregnancy centers.

Yes, Kansans voted by a nearly 20 percentage point margin to preserve abortion rights in 2022. But lawmakers didn’t appear to care. One particularly ominous take, from Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita, was highlighted on Twitter.

“Okay, the (Value Them Both) vote happened,” she told fellow representatives April 29. “It went down. And until that can be changed sometime in the future, we accept it.”

The best response to such disregard came from Lawrence resident Annie Stevens, who showed up for a reproductive rights rally at the Statehouse last week.

“There was a bipartisan vote in 2022, and the fact that these legislators are d***ing around with this, they all need to go get vasectomies, ejaculate responsibly,” she said. “Keep your hands out of our business, this is absurd. We’re not putting up with it in Kansas.”

With that, we’re done for the week. Statehouse scraps will return whenever our legislators do.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.