Unusual $500,000 earmark for two Butler County homeowners illustrates pork-barrel spending

TOPEKA — Jenna Krob and Dan Prohaska are the unfortunate owners of homes on Thunder Road in Butler County with underground water supplies fouled by crude oil leaching from abandoned or malfunctioning production wells.

Their residential properties became more or less uninhabitable and it was unlikely anyone would be foolish enough to buy the homes at a reasonable price. But a legislative maneuver initiated at the request of a Kansas House member convinced budget negotiators to include a last-minute proviso directing $500,000 be drawn from a state abandoned well remediation fund to compensate Krob and Prohaska for their private property misfortune.

“When they turn on the water, they get oil,” said Sen. Rick Billinger, a Republican from Goodland and chairman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee.

The pork-barrel budget item didn’t go unnoticed in the House or Senate, but it was Rep. Ford Carr, D-Wichita, who sounded the loudest alarm. He was concerned drinking water problems experienced by residents of the two rural Augusta homes were sufficient to compel legislators to act, while a proposal to dedicate $3.5 million to test for chemical contamination of groundwater supplies serving 1,700 homes in Wichita was viewed as too expensive.

“I understand that many of us aren’t mathematicians, but I don’t think we have to be to understand there’s a little something wrong with that,” Carr said. “I do appreciate that the state of Kansas has now set a floor for home values with groundwater contamination. Two homes in Butler County are being condemned and reimbursed at $250,000 apiece.”

Carr, who is Black, said the earmark illustrated an appropriations inequity attached to Kansans who “look like me and the communities that look like mine.”

“I look forward to my bill being heard next session that will apply this same formula for groundwater contamination and ask the state to appropriate $425 million to allow the homeowners of the 29th and Grove area in Wichita to be able to find new housing that will not poison them,” he said.

Gov. Laura Kelly, while reviewing the $25 billion state budget bill packed with special-interest goodies, vetoed the line-item appropriation from the abandoned oil well fund. She said the earmark was “squarely outside the statutory scope of the program and risks setting an untenable financial precedent where the state could be required to pay for the demolition of property in all areas where historic oil contamination exists regardless of source, culprit or disclosure to the home buyer.”

Her veto frustrated Rep. Kristey Williams, R-Augusta, who demanded to know Thursday during a legislative budget committee meeting what the governor planned to do about rural Kansans struggling with tainted water supplies not connected to municipal or rural water systems. She posed the question to the state’s budget director without mentioning Krob and Prohaska.

“Where is the governor, in the budget, helping rural Kansans with very polluted water?” Williams said.

Of course, the Legislature is in session and could vote to override Kelly’s veto if two-thirds majorities in the House and Senate rallied to that cause.

Mystery winner

The state budget bill — signed by Kelly after she issued two-dozen line-item vetoes — included a $2.5 million provision for an industrial park in a “city in Kansas” that had to have more than 6,000 residents but less than 6,500 residents and be located in a county with more than 18,000 people but less than 18,500 people. The mystery winner? Abilene.

Senate Bill 28 included a no-bid award of $1 million to support renovation of Wareham Opera House in Manhattan. That earmark came as a surprise to some lawmakers representing Riley County.

“How did that get put in there? We’ve got $1 million for an opera house?” said Olathe Republican Sen. Rob Olson. “Everybody is getting their pet project done.”

The budget bill featured $600,000 for ongoing operations at the Wichita-based Envision organization serving blind and low-vision Kansans. Envision seeks to broaden employment opportunities for people with vision challenges.

Rep. Jason Probst, D-Hutchinson, said the “one-time” boost to Envision’s bottom line was an improper use of tax dollars given the $650,000 annual salary of Envision’s top executive.

“That might be part of their operational deficiency,” Probst said. “There’s a lot of stuff in this budget that is pretty specific to individual people or communities and we should probably keep a better eye on this.”

The budget bill included $185,000 for the Kansas City Full Circle drug and alcohol rehabilitation program and $2.5 million to expand infrastructure at the Valley Hope treatment facility in Atchison. DCCCA Family Preservation Services, a nonprofit based in Lawrence, was recipient of a $1 million earmark. Woven into the package was $350,000 for Youth Core Ministries.

‘Uneven playing field’

The bill had an appropriation of $250,000 to Keys for Networking to deliver the iGRAD financial education program to children in foster care. The governor line-item vetoed that proviso, complaining legislators sought to hand funding to one specific entity rather than open the initiative to bidding by service providers.

“By doing so,” Kelly said, “the Legislature is creating an uneven playing field for those interested in providing services, supports and capabilities for children in need of care. This funding should be available to all potential providers through a competitive bidding process.”

The budget also contained $500,000 to improve security at Jewish centers with bullet-resistant film on windows, license plate readers and anti-vehicle limestone blocking. It included $50,000 for the Kansas National Guard’s marksmanship competition teams. That appropriation wasn’t sought by the adjutant general through the normal budget review process, the governor said.

There was $1.2 million to support acquisition by Kansas State University of student-trainer aircraft, a proposal not endorsed by the Kansas Board of Regents. It’s another piece of the budget that didn’t go through the regular legislative process.

Neither did the state Board of Regents ask for $750,000 for a medical residency program at the University of Kansas medical school in Wichita nor the $2.2 million allocation for an osteopathic school scholarship.

Kelly’s line-item vetoes included the National Guard, KSU aircraft, medical residency and osteopathic scholarship earmarks.

Bipartisan objections

Sen. Kristen O’Shea, a Republican from Topeka who isn’t seeking reelection in 2024, said she didn’t vote for SB 28 because the measure recklessly burned through of the state’s budget surplus and sidestepped the standard process of bill introduction, House and Senate committee hearings and debate in both chambers of the Legislature. Instead, House and Senate negotiators presented the bill for an up-or-down vote — without opportunity to consider amendments — by the Legislature.

“The true test of fiscal responsibility is not how the Legislature manages the people’s budget in a deficit, but how the budget is managed when there is a surplus,” O’Shea said. “Times of surplus require added restraint, the ability to not frivolously spend surplus dollars on pet projects for the chosen few, but to instead wisely invest the taxpayers’ dollars in needs that have been fully vetted by this chamber, savings for a rainy day and meaningful tax relief.”

She said it was egregious last-minute budget favors were granted to well-connected organizations or individuals while those resources could have been devoted to foster care children or other priorities.

“Our constituents deserve to know that their taxes are being squandered, and they deserve better than this. I hope this body can continue to refine the budget process to be just,” O’Shea said.

Despite her objections, and bipartisan protests by other lawmakers, SB 28 passed the Senate 26-12 and cleared the House on a vote of 78-44.

Rep. Henry Helgerson, a Wichita Democrat who serves on the six-person House and Senate budget negotiation committee, said it was disturbing the spending bill ended up looking like a holiday tree decorated with special-interest gifts. He said the process of manipulating budget bills during these negotiations fed an appetite for spending in excess of revenues.

“There is a shadow appropriation process that lurks in this building,” he said. “The second floor (Democratic governor’s office) is guilty. Leadership of the Republican Party is guilty. Nobody wants to control that spending.”

Criticism of unchecked expenditures and a broken budget process was shared by Sen. Mark Steffen, a Republican from Reno County who has indicated he wouldn’t run for reelection. He voted against SB 28 and accused the Republican-led Legislature of allowing the budget process to go sideways.

“I believe and live the Republican Party platform tenet of small government,” Steffen said. “Disappointingly, from 2020 to 2024 this supermajority Republican Legislature has grown the state general fund expenditures by 25%. Our promotion of a tax system full of tax credits and abatements, preventing a level playing field fair to all Kansans, is very disappointing as well. We are better than this.”