Energy is still the big story in Topeka going into this week. Last week the Senate took strong action on legislation limiting the power of the Sec. of Health & Environment to block construction of two coal-fired energy plants near Holcomb. The move had strong bi-partisan support. Similar legislation is scheduled for debate and action on the House floor this morning. The House bill does include some renewable energy requirements supporting supplemental wind power.
Currently, neither the state nor federal government regulates CO2 emissions. Yet, Sec. Bremby took unprecedented action to block Sunflower Electric’s construction permits where their planned CO2 emissions would have been vastly lower and the plant more energy efficient than any of the state’s existing plants. As to the existing plants, Bremby admitted that he had no current authority to revise their air quality permits and he admitted that at the present time he wasn’t even sure how much of a problem CO2 emissions were for the state.
In other news, Thursday the House Education Budget Committee that I vice-chair took action to recommend over $20M in increased funding for the state’s schools of higher education and approved planning money for construction of expansions of KU’s Pharmacy programs in Lawrence and Wichita. We also added Aviation research and technical training funding for the aviation initiative in Wichita and additional funding for the Wichita Center for Graduate Medical Education. We view these programs as essential “value-added” programs for Western and South Central Kansas.
Our Committee was also briefed by Legislative Post Audit regarding their concerns following an audit of the state’s 28 “virtual schools”. These virtual schools are valuable programs that reach out to rural students and others who would benefit from distance learning but the audit found abuses by school districts who were using the programs as money raisers. Schools who enroll these students get full weighted per pupil funding even where the actual costs of educating these students is thousands of dollars less. We then learned that some districts are recruiting drop-out to enroll, not in traditional GED programs but actual high school enrollment to obtain full weighted per pupil funding. One district was making so much money on this tactic that it started trading students with neighboring districts. The Legislature benefits greatly from the work of the Division of Legislative Post Audit in monitoring state programs for potential abuses.
The House Governmental Organization Committee will have hearing soon on an annexation bill I’m having introduced to address the questionable annexation attempt in Mulvane. In Mulvane’s attempt to attract a potential casino, the city fathers, along with casino-friendly property owners, are proposing annexation of a narrow, meandering, several mile long strip of land, as narrow as 100 feet in places, connecting the city with a potential distant casino site along I-35 in Sumner Co. Such a move, even if consented to by pro-casino landowners, would set a very poor precedent as to future proposed annexations of land. If allowed, annexations of land as narrow as a foot or less would be legal if technically contiguous. My bill would prevent such annexation of less than full tracts.