The Wichita Eagle, Dec. 22
Gov. Sam Brownback is still blaming the media for why his policies are so unpopular.
For someone who campaigned claiming “the sun is shining in Kansas,” it’s not too surprising that Gov. Sam Brownback is still in denial, blaming the media for why his policies are so unpopular.
But it’s disappointing that he doesn’t respect the intelligence of Kansans and their ability to recognize a disaster when they see it.
Voters in this year’s elections rejected many GOP lawmakers who supported Brownback’s policies. But in a meeting last week with reporters from The Eagle and the Kansas City Star, Brownback claimed that Kansans don’t understand those policies.
Brownback noted that voters backed moderate candidates who want more money in schools and the state’s pension system, a fairer tax system and an end to taking money from the state highway fund. He wants those things too, he argued.
“It’s not like that was all counter to my policies,” he said.
He then accused the media of creating a false perception that he was anti-education and that the Kansas economy was not doing well.
Blaming the media has been recurring theme for Brownback. He made the rounds this fall complaining about media myths and attempting to “set the record straight” on his tax policies.
But it wasn’t the media that created the shortfall in the state budget; it was Brownback.
When Brownback slashed taxes, he promised it would act “like a shot of adrenaline into the heart of the Kansas economy.” As Kansans can clearly see, that didn’t happen.
Kansas has continued to trail the nation and region in job growth. In fact, the state has lost jobs this year.
Meanwhile, the tax cuts resulted in a huge loss of revenue and recurring budget shortfalls. That led Brownback and the Legislature to raise the sales tax, institute block grant funding for education, delay payments to the state pension fund, and transfer more than $1 billion from the state highway plan.
Yet even with all these maneuvers, the state still faces a shortfall of more than $900 million over the next 18 months.
It’s no wonder an overwhelming majority of Kansans think the state is on the wrong path - 70 percent, according to a recent survey by Fort Hays State University’s Docking Institute of Public Affairs. Even more Kansans - 74 percent - are dissatisfied with Brownback’s job performance.
Kansans also aren’t confused in their understanding of Brownback’s tax exemption on pass-through business income - 61 percent want it repealed. And 62 percent of Kansans want the state to expand Medicaid, which Brownback opposes.
Brownback’s policies, not the media, are why so many of his allies weren’t re-elected and why he has had the lowest approval rating of any governor in the nation.
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The Topeka Capital-Journal, Dec. 24
Transitional assistance should be provided to Topeka VA patients
One of our society’s weightiest responsibilities is the dedicated provision of health care for our veterans. The men and women of our armed forces are expected to do things that would be intolerable for the rest of us - from putting their lives at risk on the battlefield to enduring situations of unimaginable deprivation and discomfort. While “support our troops” bumper stickers and yellow ribbons are important, we see them so often that they’re liable to be ignored. They’re just part of the American landscape - no more striking than the trees or hills.
To avoid complacency, we have to do more than exchange agreeable platitudes about our soldiers and veterans. We have to do our best to appreciate the real anxieties and strains of life in the military (as well as life after the military). We have to become acquainted with the needs - from professional to social to medical - of American veterans. And we have to advocate on their behalf when these needs aren’t being met - particularly in our own communities.
With this obligation in mind, we’re disturbed by the announcement that the Colmery-O’Neil VA Medical Center is temporarily suspending outpatient care for veterans with post-traumatic stress disorder. The PTSD program’s mental health care provider has accepted another position, which means veterans will either receive treatment in the primary care section of the hospital or have to find a private clinic via the VA’s choice program. Some of these veterans have received services at the Topeka VA for many years, such as Bob Portenier - a Marine who saw combat when he was in Vietnam and who has been treated at the Topeka VA for almost two decades.
Portenier is worried about finding the care he needs, and he says his fellow veterans are in a similar position: “We don’t know what we’re going to do. It could be a year or more before we get in to see a psychiatrist or psychologist.”
According to VA Eastern Kansas Health Care System spokesman Joseph Burks, ” . our nursing staff in the clinic are working hard to determine if some of our veteran patients can be seen in primary care.” While we don’t doubt that the Topeka VA staff is doing its best, the experience of losing a stable psychiatrist and being forced to find PTSD therapy at a different facility must be destabilizing and painful. Rick Cagan, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Kansas, says the transition will have a “profound impact” on the psychological health of veterans who have relied on the Topeka VA for a long time.
This is why Cagan recommends transitional assistance: “I believe that the VA should be making some effort to connect its patients with providers in the community rather than turn them loose to figure out ongoing care on their own.”
Is the VA providing this service? If so, who should concerned veterans contact? Why does Portenier think it will take “a year or more before we get in to see a psychiatrist or psychologist”? Are other veterans having the same problems? These are questions that the Topeka VA must answer as soon as possible.
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The Salina Journal, Dec. 26
Legislators need an accountant
For the first time since Kansas became a state in 1861, the state Senate will not have a practicing attorney among its members in 2017.
The lack of a lawyer has caused a ripple of concern among lawmakers. State Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, will be the only member of the Kansas Senate with a law degree when the session gets underway. But Haley allowed his law license to lapse more than 20 years ago and is not a practicing attorney.
“As many people realize, Kansas has never had this happen before,” Haley said. “There’s always been a practicing attorney or licensed attorney.”
The National Conference of State Legislatures said attorneys made up only 10 percent of the total Kansas Legislature for the past two sessions. Most of those attorneys served in the House, while there were two practicing attorneys in the Senate: Sen. Terry Bruce, R-Hutchinson, and Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence. Bruce was defeated in the August primary and King decided not to seek re-election.
The concern is that attorneys are vital to the Senate’s essential function of writing and amending laws. And it’s hard to imagine a Judiciary Committee without an attorney as chairman, much less a Judiciary Committee without an attorney as a member.
“I believe that lawmakers should have some framework or concept in certain areas, like the judiciary committees, and the theory and practice of law,” Haley said. “I’m glad to be legally trained and to have had those experiences and that ability, but as a nonpractitioner, and yet a lawyer, I feel we’ve reached a low-water mark on that committee and in the Senate.”
King said the low pay that legislators receive - about $21,000 a year including per diem - and longer legislative session make attorneys reluctant to serve.
But it would be hard to argue the presence of attorneys in the Legislature has made a significant difference in recent sessions. Attorneys didn’t do much to fix the tax policies that blew a hole in the Kansas budget. Attorneys couldn’t guide lawmakers to come up with an adequate school- funding plan.
The immediate priority for lawmakers in the 2017 session is dealing with a $350 million hole in the state budget. Next up will be fixing a $500 million revenue shortfall projected for the 2018 fiscal year, which begins July 1. Rather than being worried about the lack of attorneys, perhaps the greater concern is that the Senate doesn’t have a practicing accountant among its members.
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The Hutchinson News, Dec. 22
EPA regulations touch the absurd in Reno County
The overall mission of the federal Environmental Protection Agency is worthwhile - carrying out policies that ensure that Americans enjoy safe and clean air and water.
But where the EPA fails - and in the process aggravates the bulk of the pro-business, limited-government community - is in its sometimes absurd reading of the details that underlie those overarching goals.
Nothing illustrates that ridiculousness more than a story last week that shows how bad ideas become bad directives that end up costing local taxpayers more money - and force those actually carrying out the EPA’s orders to perform insufferable tasks.
During a recent Reno County Commission meeting, leaders learned that a contract to monitor methane gas collection systems will jump $12,000 a year thanks to a head-scratching order from the EPA.
Workers with the company that monitors the system - which collects methane gas created by decaying matter in the landfill - will now be required to walk the entire network of piping and stations, instead of using an all-terrain vehicle as they’ve done in the past. Thanks to the change, the company says work that used to take a day will now take four - and the price increase that comes with additional labor. A spokesperson with the company - SCS Engineers - said there’s nothing in the law, per se, that requires them to do a walking inspection for leaks, but the EPA during a recent audit told company officials the inspection should be “walked” instead of driven.
This is a prime example of how the EPA undermines its own relevance and credibility. People take clean air and water for granted, until it’s not. And the work the EPA does on a larger scale to protect the nation’s air and waterways from wanton polluters is valuable work that makes life better for more Americans.
But that’s not the message people remember, because one can’t see clean air or water. But they can see a misguided application of policy that results in unnecessary work, increased cost and policies that are not at all tied to keeping the environment free from pollution.
In Reno County that cost is $12,000 a year, but multiply that by other counties, other states, and the cries of an out-of-control federal bureaucracy begin to carry a collective price tag that fuels critics’ demands that the organization be cut down at the knees or eliminated.
The EPA should stick to larger policies that prevent or restrict pollution, and spend less time in the weeds of county government and making small, inconsequential decisions about the methods in which the larger policies are carried out.
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