If there is anything universal in America in 2021, it is a feeling of disturbance, of discomfort. School plans, career plans, business plans, and travel plans have been on a COVID-induced hiatus for almost a year.
Nowhere is this truer than in Topeka, if only the above alternatives are replaced by the term “policy plans”.
The statehouse is different this year. More masks, social distancing, and video links, but fewer visitors, employees, and voters.
The mood here is subdued and yet determined. Big political issues that were dropped due to last March’s pandemic are now moving forward.
This forward movement really started in August at the ballot box.
There is a certain segment of elected officials who are not on their file because they cannot. They have no contact with their district and try to hide this fact whenever possible. It caught up with many in elementary school this August. There have been big changes in those who now sit in the Kansas House and Senate.
Voters re-emphasized this sentiment in November when a new round of Liberals and Democrats went under (or on the verge of defeat). And that despite record spending by the political left in Kansas.
It is therefore not surprising that the first proposal to emerge from this hiatus in 2020 is the pro-life amendment Value Them Both.
It’s really popular with the enlarged Conservative majority in the House and has had a day of hearings and debates in committee in the first five days of the session.
It is now on the floor of the house as I write this column.
The VTB amendment is a rather humble proposal indeed, and merely attempts to move the legal target posts for the Kansas Abortion Act back to the 2018 state before the infamous Kansas Supreme Court ruling, Hodes & Nauser v Schmidt.
Hodes’ decision and its “strict control” legal standard would jeopardize nearly 20 abortion practice regulations that Kansas has enacted over the past two decades. Laws, as House records show, were passed with the consent of both parties.
But Laura Kelly’s Democratic Party won’t benefit from it. There are many false amendments, the lack of sincerity coupled with angry moral attitude. The conservative troops in the House are unmoved and reject all amendments: 84-40, 86-38, and on it goes.
The speeches on the bill itself are more substantive. The Pro-Choice Democrats have a philosophical position on this matter, and they are good at telling the truth.
But for the GOP in freshman Republican Patrick Penn marched from Wichita. He is an African American Republican, a retired Afghan war veteran with a cavalry hat in his office and attitudes to match. It tells the story of a single mother in Florida who was pressured to abort her child from family and “friends” in the 1970s. The stigma, the lack of money, all the reasons people give and yet it stands firm and gives birth to a boy. Called Patrick. You could hear a pin drop.
All lives are indeed important, and in Topeka all voices are important too. The VTB Act was not complied with in 2020 and only received 80 of the 84 required votes for its passage. But with a new house and a new year, it won 86-38. With the Senate acting soon, the measure will appear on your August 2022 ballot papers.
Other issues that come up this year are less “life and death” but still important. A tax reform package from 2020, for example, with provisions that everyone can list and a reduction in sales tax on groceries (old SB22). There is also a 2020 bill on property tax transparency or newer bills on school choice, judicial selection, liability in nursing homes, criminal justice reform and more.
Maybe not for everyone, but they are serious and worth considering and debatable.
Both the Republican and Democratic leadership went to great lengths to make this new legislature work. Our shared hiatus from Covid is nearing the end and a return to normal for Kansas appears to be beginning.
Rep. Paul Wagoner represents District 104 in Hutchinson at Kansas House.