Well, the 2006 legislative session is well underway as we head into the third full week. We started session late on Monday to accommodate those of us attending president bush’s Landon Lecture series speech in Manhattan. The President’s visit to Kansas is a welcome prelude to the weekend’s scheduled Kansas Day celebration.

My assignments for this year remain the same. I continue to chair the house judiciary committee and serve as vice-chair of the house select committee on school finance. I also serve on the rules committee and the house budget subcommittee overseeing the budgets of the judicial branch, Dept. of transportation, Dept. of Revenue and KPERS. Needless to say, I’ll be as busy as ever and even more so this year as the house corrections and juvenile justice committee was dissolved and the bulk of their work transferred to my judiciary committee. We’ll handle the crime legislation this year and there are a number of high-profile issues that will be addressed, including Jessica’s law dealing with sex predators, a proposal to create school and residential buffer zones for sex predators living in our communities and legislation dealing with the collection and analysis of criminal DNA.

I’ll continue to be involved in the pending school finance litigation and debate over school funding. Last week I reported on the post audit report on costs associated with delivering k-12 education in the state. For school year 2006-2007, the post audit team estimated that state spending would need to increase a minimum of $316m under the inputs approach and $399m under the outcomes-based approach. We’ve been working with the $399m figure associated with the outcomes-based model. While that figure has concerned many lawmakers and Kansas taxpayers, it’s important to keep in mind that these numbers assume that the state would be funding 100% of these costs. In fact, Kansas currently funds k-12 education 55% at the state level, 35% from the local level and 10% from federal monies. This percentage of state funding is greater than any of the 5 nearby states. The post audit team did not include monies raised and spent locally, nor did they count the over $200m in state funds flowing to local school districts to equalize local option budgets and the millions of dollars the state puts into teachers’ KPERS retirement. Local option budgets supply over $400m in additional school funding. How we count education dollars will be an important issue this session as there is no requirement that the state fund 100% of k-12 spending. Look for us to revise budgeting for schools to capture all funding from all sources and provide an equitable mix from state, local and federal sources. We plan to resolve the school finance litigation issue without a tax increase of any kind and make school budgeting more transparent for Kansas taxpayers.