House & Senate Committees worked hard last week to meet this week’s deadline to work non-exempt bills in the House of origin. Committees will finalize their work by Tuesday and we’ll spend all day Wednesday, Thursday and Friday on the floor working bills.
One measure that failed to make it out of committee was the proposal to repeal last year’s law allowing in-state tuition for children of undocumented Kansas aliens who have graduated from Kansas high schools or have received GED’s. The controversial measure failed on a tie vote in the House Federal & State Affairs Committee.
However, the House passed a measure that has been defeated in years past to require booster seats in passenger vehicles for those children who are in between child safety seats and adult restraints. The House also approved legislation to prohibit leaving children unattended in vehicles.
The House has also taken action on a massive tax relief measure to phase out the machinery & equipment property tax. The bill picked up a floor amendment that would increase the homestead property tax exemption from $20K to $30K of appraised value on residences. The bill was also amended to increase the income eligibility threshold for claimants over age 65 from $27K to $50K.
In the House Judiciary Committee we passed out a measure that would call for the collection of DNA samples from all persons arrested for felony violations of the criminal law to strengthen our DNA database and assist law enforcement in Kansas and other states with unsolved crimes. Today we’ll work in committee the proposal to enact Jessica’s law, a measure that enhances penalties for sex crimes involving children. We’ll also consider legislation that would suspend the driving privileges of those who refuse to pay their child support and another measure that would increase the usage of mandated ignition interlock devices for persistent drunk drivers.
The Senate has passed over legislation that would facilitate voluntary local government consolidation, a measure I had drafted and introduced to streamline the process and break down barriers at the state level to such voluntary consolidations to save taxpayer money. The bill was amended to require a 60% vote of those affected, but this is an improvement over past provisions in other consolidation proposals which required dual majorities of city and county voters.
Look for the House to float out a school finance proposal this week to begin gauging support for a compromise measure that will garner bi-partisan support in the House & Senate and from the Governor. The Kansas Supreme Court has retained jurisdiction over the school finance case and will await the legislature’s school finance bill for this year before announcing its decision. This has frustrated many of us in the legislature as the Court’s decisions have been unpredictable and inconsistent and we are wary of yet another special session over school finance this year. Measures pending in both the House & Senate would limit the Court’s role over school finance public policy and expenditures from the state treasury, something that the state constitution has always reserved to the people’s elected representatives. Recent Kansas Supreme Court orders have forced expenditures of additional tax dollars on education, something many of us view as a violation of the separation of powers guaranteed by the constitution. We’ll continue to increase spending on K-12 education and target that spending on the areas of need, but we have tired of the Court’s meddling in matters of public policy and are looking for some closure on the school finance litigation.
Waiting in the wings is litigation that has been filed by representatives of the developmentally disabled which is patterned after the school finance litigation as Plaintiffs have found what they perceive as a friendly court to get around a legislature that has not agreed to give them all the funding they have requested. Historically, the remedy for disagreement with the legislature has been at the ballot box. Now, the trend seems to be to appeal legislative decisions to the courts under the claim that the state constitution guarantees adequate funding no matter what the fiscal consequences to the state may be.
