This week marks the first major deadline of the 2007 legislative session. All non-exempt bills must be worked by the committees by Wednesday and by Friday all non-exempt bills must be worked by the house of origin. We’ll be on the floor most of Thursday and Friday working bills. Next week we’ll start hearing Senate bills in the House and the Senate will start working House bills.
A major piece of crime legislation came out of my House Judiciary Committee last week and was debated and passed to final action by the House Thursday. Given the name Alexa’s law in memory of an unborn victim of violence, the bill creates for the first time in Kansas a law protecting the unborn by imposing a separate criminal penalty for injury or death to an unborn child at the hands of a criminal. Similar laws are already in place in 26 states, including California, where Scott Peterson sits on death row for the brutal murder of his wife and unborn daughter. In Kansas he would have been charged with but one crime, the murder of his wife, and would not have been eligible for the death penalty. Attempts to water down the bill on the House floor to limit it to crimes against the mother only failed by a wide margin.
A similar debate is expected soon on the issue of prenatal health care. Governor Sebelius has been pushing an initiative to provide health coverage for all children from birth to age five. The House is expected to change the initiative to one from conception to age five to recognize the importance of prenatal care. Kansas case law currently recognizes a separate duty of care owed by a physician to an unborn child, separate and apart from the duty owed an expectant mother. There are legislators, however, who are reluctant to recognize that an unborn child has any rights apart from the mother. Question, will the Governor accept the House plan in order to achieve her goal of providing health coverage to those birth to age five or veto the plan due to her philosophical hang-ups over rights of the unborn?
Two tax cut proposals are well under way in Topeka. The House has passed over to the Senate a 3-year total elimination of the state franchise tax, worth $15M a year in tax relief to Kansas businesses each of the next 3 years until the tax is eliminated altogether. And, the Senate has passed a measure providing $112M in tax relief in the form of cuts in the unemployment insurance tax. The cut this year takes into account the fact that the Unemployment Insurance Trust Fund has accumulated more money than needed to pay out in benefits. The big winners would enjoy elimination of the tax. These are employers with positive balance accounts. The Senate rejected a proposed amendment that would have eliminated the one-week waiting period for unemployment benefits.
Having completed my duties as Chair of the Special Committee on Contested Elections, I was named Thursday to Chair a Special Joint Committee on Corrections Reform, a 6-member committee of 3 House and 3 Senate members. Our goal is to evaluate prison bed space in the state, determine the need for new beds and develop a plan to reduce recidivism and promote successful re-entry programs for inmates coming out of the system. We’re looking to balance the expectations of the public that dangerous felons remain incarcerated with the increasing costs of incarceration and prison bed construction.