- Coming up on "IGI," we break down the details of the 2025 Kansas legislative session.

Our all-star panel of political experts discuss the laws that were passed, what didn't make it, and what this means for our state.

Stay with us.

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(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to "IGI."

I'm your host, Washburn University Professor of Political Science, Bob Beatty.

The Kansas legislative session has finished their 2025 session, and while some issues were addressed quickly and acted upon, others were blatantly slept on.

So joining me to dive into the swirling depths of Kansas politics and figure it all out is the best group of Kansas political analysts you'll ever find.

From the "Kansas Reflector," Senior Reporter, Tim Carpenter; from KSNT News, Capital Bureau Chief, Rebekah Chung; and Bill Fiander, Lecturer, Political Science Department, Washburn University.

Thank you all for being here, and I have to say right away, in January when we did this show, I started off by saying, "Oh, what about daylight savings?"

That was the biggest dud of the session, I mean, in terms of anything happening, so I apologize for that.

- [Tim] I wasn't gonna bring that up.

- Thank you.

But let's go to something that did pass, which leads into some things that passed but didn't pass, which are the cultural issues.

And Tim, right off the bat, almost one of the first things was the ban on gender-affirming care.

So, tell us about that.

- I think the Republicans in the Kansas Legislature are really intent on banning gender-affirming care for youth, individuals under 18, and so they sent a bill to the governor, first bill of the session.

She promptly vetoed it, and they, as you might expect, overrode her veto, so that'll be the law in Kansas.

I think that really is a tough balance between people's personal decisions and the role of government, and so there's some people think that really crossed the line there.

I suspect the law will be challenged by somebody in court.

- And it seemed like they just wanted to get it over with, in a way.

They wanted it, of course, but boom, right off the bat?

- Well, they kind of flounder around in the 2024 session, and so they really wanted to stick it to Governor Laura Kelly and show her who was in charge right out of the gate.

- We always have... Yeah, go ahead, Rebekah.

- Well, we saw that with so many things this session, issues that were cultural issues that they wanted to get through this year, and because they had the numbers, they were able to do it.

And they really, I think Democrats were saying, kind of bulldozed through a lot of those vetoes coming from the governor.

I think with this particular issue, I agree with Tim.

There's one side that says, you know, this could be an overreach, getting in between a patient and their doctor, and then another side that just says, you know, we should not be allowing kids to make this decision when they have not even, you know, gotten to adulthood and have maybe a full clear understanding of what it may entail.

- What about the cultural issues?

Some made it, some didn't.

There were some abortion-related issues, right?

- Yeah, so the legislature adopted a law that says that in schools, children need to be shown videos of fetal development.

And the issue there is really, it's an anti-abortion indoctrination measure.

So all the way down to the lower grades, people are gonna see maybe cartoon characters, or maybe they're just gonna watch a video of a developing fetus inside a woman.

But I think the anti-abortion crowd really felt like this is an opportunity to influence young people on the subject.

- Right, if they see it fleshed out, then they may make a different decision is probably what they're thinking.

- And the other one was child support from conception, right?

- Well, they codified the language "fetal personhood" at the point of conception.

I think they want to push it back.

That phrase is in state law elsewhere, but they tried to align it with the idea of providing child support to a fetus in utero.

So again, you know, if somebody were to become pregnant, I think the state already had a mechanism to go back in time and provide support for that mother while the woman was pregnant.

This is just a more direct path, I guess.

- Right, and outlining it in a way that some Democrats say could give fetuses some sort of authority, right, because they'd have tax exemptions, they'd be able to get those tax credits, so.

- Tax breaks for a fetus.

It's just a new thing.

- Yeah.

- Well, we're getting to taxes soon, but some issues didn't actually get through that people would call maybe cultural issues.

The pronouns bill, in which the bill would say that in schools that students had to be addressed by teachers and administrators by the pronouns they were born with.

That actually didn't make it.

So not all the cultural issues went through.

- Private school vouchers didn't either.

- Right.

- Right.

- And the voucher thing might be they're just awaiting, over the next year or so, they're gonna rewriting the school finance formula, and the Republican-controlled legislature's gonna be doing that, and rest assured that formula is gonna look different than it does right now.

- Is there any element of some of the things that didn't get passed of Republicans saying in a couple years we'll... "We will," them saying this, "We'll have a Republican governor, and then boy, this is gonna be a lot easier"?

- Maybe so.

At the risk of reaching inside the mind of a politician, I would say sometimes you might have some delays because people want to run for statewide office in 2026, right after you pass some important piece of legislation that the general public may want right now, but if you do it next year, it'll be fresh in people's minds and you could run a campaign on that.

So maybe some things are delayed till 2026, just for that reason.

- Right.

- Hmm.

Well, let's move on to taxes, and they're always, you know, a big issue in Kansas.

Before we talk about 'em, let's take a quick look at an example of the types of ads that the Republicans were running in the 2024 election, talking about taxes.

- [Ad Voiceover] Carl Turner will put politics aside and lower your property taxes, so every family gets a pay raise.

He's proven he can, and still protect investments in schools and public safety.

Carl Turner will deliver lower property taxes.

- I'm an outsider and small businessman who's dedicated to making a difference.

It's time to reach across the aisle to work with both parties to fully fund our schools, cut property taxes, and bring inflation under control.

- So, I'm a wacko when it comes to political TV ads.

So there was the most number of ads I've ever seen in Kansas election, and most of them came from the Republican House Campaign Committee, like those ads.

Bill Fiander, there's just two ads, but all these candidates saying, "We're gonna cut property taxes," and that's right, that's exactly what they did, right?

- Oh, that was meat.

That was their meat that they were set up.

It was red meat.

- [Bob] And they did it.

- No.

- Oh.

- They did a little bit.

They did what they had to do, and they're learning.

They're learning that, and I don't know if those ads that you showed, if those people really knew how much control they have over property tax or not, or if that was just more... - You're a very generous person.

- But the bluster came home to roost there this session.

They did cut a mil and a half from your property tax bill, which will free up another $30 in your pocketbook, 30, you know, depending on the value of your house.

- Wait, I'm gonna have to stop you there.

- Okay.

- Repeat how much.

- Repeat the number.

- On a $200,000 house, it's 30.

- $200,0000 house.

- If you're lucky enough to have a 200,000... - How much are you gonna save?

- 35.

- 30... - A year.

- $30 a year?

- 35.

- Okay.

- 35.

- $5 counts, Bob.

- Okay.

- You know?

- Now, okay.

I don't...

Okay.

We have to be clear here.

This is the second year of a property tax cut.

The last year amounted to about, it's harder to tell, but on a $200,000 house, 60.

- 60?

- 60.

- So we're almost at $100.

- So you're almost to $100 out of your property tax bill in the last two years.

So that's, I'm not gonna sneeze at that, but... - I'm sneezing at that.

- Oh, you're sneezing?

- I'm not wealthy, let me say that, but, okay.

- But based on those ads, you see the, we'll call it bluster, that, I mean, this was number one, A-1 priority coming into the session.

A couple bills got passed hot out of the gate, and then it just sort of languished until the very end where you had another series of a lot of property tax bills.

In the end, I think it's fair to say they chose income taxes over property taxes.

- But we just saw a couple ads.

They didn't mention those income taxes in the ads, Bill.

That wasn't... - Property taxes.

- It was education, it was property taxes, working across the aisle.

There was nothing about, you know, income taxes.

- And when you run on something that matters this much to voters, the expectation would be that you deliver in some way, but I think the delivery was very modest.

They could have probably done a little bit more, but the focus wasn't there, and I agree with you, Bill.

- Yeah, and I don't know how late it was in the session.

It felt like really late, like a week, or what, at the end there where, where the income tax proposal, this rush to 4% was brought up and passed.

And if you remember last year, the entire session was about how do we get a flat tax?

It took 'em three months and they couldn't get there.

It took 'em like a week, and they got to what eventually could fall into a flat 4% tax.

- I'll just explain real quickly, what they did was, instead of, you know, they did the 1.5 mils, instead of taking a chunk out of the property tax collected for public schools, the $800 million a year, that's a 20 mil tax.

They could have taken one or two or three points off of that and paid for it out of the state general fund, which is the way they replaced the 1.5 mils.

Instead of doing that property tax relief, which would be substantial, they followed up last year's 1.3 billion, three-year income tax cut with a new law that says revenue above a certain level will be dedicated precisely to reducing personal and corporate income taxes until we get down to 4%, which is the flat tax you just mentioned, which was the Republican agenda in the first place.

So they have preliminarily earmarked excess revenue for income tax cuts, so don't expect to get your property tax cut next year.

- That's exactly right.

The well is running dry, because the money they would've used to backfill those property tax cuts for schools, they're not gonna slice schools.

They're gonna have to backfill those property tax cuts for schools, and they could get that only from income and sales tax, and here income tax was the choice of cut.

- So was this an okey-doke?

Okay, we're gonna cut property taxes.

We saw the ads.

They did one a half mil, 30 bucks, basically.

And then what we're really gonna do is go back to that flat tax on income tax, - Tried to get legislators who endorsed this tax agenda to comment on it, and their answer is repeatedly, "We were very thoughtful about tax policy, and our tax policy is great."

They don't really want to address the promises that were made about property tax cuts.

- Right, and then playing devil's advocate here, maybe they were learning about what they can and can't do, and possibly coming back next session with something stronger of a proposal on what they can do when it comes to property taxes, and maybe having more (indistinct) - Maybe, then, Rebekah, is to save it for later.

They cut property taxes in 2026, and they go to voters and say, "Look at us.

Look at us."

- Maybe.

- Here's the thing, here's the thing, and I think you're onto something.

I think they got into it, and it became apparent, it was over their head in terms of, "Oh, we know we wanna do income tax.

Well, we're not gonna have enough to do property tax."

The lever they can pull that they really didn't talk about was valuation.

And the state controls all the county valuations.

The State Department of Revenue actually sets the standards for those valuations, those appraisals, and so that's what's killing people, is the spikes in valuations and appraisals.

That system is actually run by the states.

It is not a...

So, the standards are set by the state, not the county.

- All right.

Rebekah played devil's advocate.

This is the first year that legislators are making 45, even more, $45,000 to be a legislator, and some are making more if they're on committees or of leadership.

So what we're seeing here is, oh, they found out this was really complicated and everything, but they skedaddled as soon as they could, right?

So now they're making, you know, a wage to be professional legislators.

Why not come back, have a special session, and say, "Okay, we think we figured this out.

Let's cut these property taxes."

- Special session on property taxes.

I mean, that is something they could do, right?

- They had no interest.

They were outta here faster...

I don't wanna give an analogy.

All right, maybe it's just a hanging question there, but you can't forget that they're now paid 43, $45,000 when before it was a lot less.

- Well, they were grossly underpaid and they basically doubled their salaries.

- Yeah.

- So.

- All right, so we're starting a new segment here.

It's called "Burn the Tape," and what it means is that when we say something that is not gonna become true or is heinously wrong, we will ask our producers, Jim Kelly and Lyle Ford and others, to please do not ever find the tape of us saying that.

So I'm gonna start out and, no, we can be held accountable.

And so the take that I wanna make is that the Kansas City Chiefs are going to come to Kansas, full stop, and here's why.

The Chiefs have indicated that they want a stadium where they can have Super Bowls, where they want to make money, you know, and they want to be competitive with other stadiums across the NFL.

Well, how much is that gonna cost?

Well, the Washington Commanders have announced they're gonna build a $3.7 billion stadium, and Washington, D.C. is gonna chip in $1 billion.

Okay, well, what about... Let's think about Missouri.

You'd say, "Well, Bob, they're gonna stay in Missouri."

Look at Missouri's track record.

Kansas City A's, go to Oakland, the baseball team.

The St. Louis Cardinals football team, off to Arizona.

The Kansas City Kings, NBA.

Oh, nobody likes the NBA.

They're off to Sacramento.

St. Louis Rams, football, off to L.A. Missouri has one of the worst records of keeping pro teams, you know, in America, so they got that going for them, okay?

So, where are the chiefs gonna get this money, right?

Is it gonna be from Missouri, where their own legislators are saying their discussions about this are, quote, "dysfunctional."

Clay County, people saying Clay County will have to have a vote to decide that.

You think the chiefs want a vote over stadium financing?

The governor of Missouri said, quote, "Not in favor of just throwing money at stadiums."

Well, guess who is in favor of throwing money at stadiums?

Kansas.

They're gonna do it.

- Are you saying you think one of these franchises is coming to Kansas?

- Yeah, the Kansas City Chiefs.

- Now, what you really need to think about is the Royals going downtown like they wanted in the first place, and the Chiefs are gonna stay precisely where they are right now.

- Yeah, and you're gonna get a Super Bowl in Arrowhead Stadium.

- [Tim] They can build a new stadium in the parking lot right there for a couple billion bucks.

- Yeah.

We're throwing the flag on you, Bob.

That is a 10 yards, 15 yards.

You're wrong.

- So there's a deadline the Chiefs have set of June 20, right?

- Yeah.

- Missouri legislators laughed when they were told about that deadline.

They can't get their act together.

Kansas, you know, we just said something about the legislators.

Well, last year they got their act together in about a day and passed the STAR bonds bill that could fund up to $1 billion, which is exactly what Washington, D.C. is chipping in for the Commanders.

- I think they are more open to hearing what Kansas has to say and using that as leverage for making a deal with Missouri, 'cause they know that they can pull that card with them.

And so I don't think they want to move, I don't think they want to leave, and the desires not there.

I don't think they would come over to the Kansas side.

Would the Royals come over?

Possibly, but I think that the Chiefs, very unlikely.

- Do you think...

Okay, so we'll say the incentives from Kansas are $1 billion.

Let's say our less expensive stadium costs 2.

The Hunts, who own the Chiefs, are gonna put up $1 billion?

I don't think so.

I don't think they're willing to spend that kind of money.

- But I don't think we are willing- - You're wrong, Bob, - to like throw as much money as you think we are at stadiums.

Remember talking with the governor, she was saying- - $1 billion!

- Well, I don't know.

- All right, well, okay.

That was my take.

Now we go to Rebekah Chung.

- Okay, I don't think marijuana in any form, medical, recreational, will be legalized in Kansas.

- Ever?

- Ever.

Well, or at least for the next two years.

Or Medicaid will be expanded, at least for the next few years.

And I say this because I think even though these two issues have a lot of public support, that does not mean legislative action, right?

We may see that a lot of people may support it, but it doesn't mean that legislators are gonna support it in the same way.

We didn't see the hunger or desire for that in several past legislative sessions.

Committee control is gonna be the bottleneck of this, right?

So you're gonna have legislators that are in charge and looking over this, looking over these bills, that already wanna cut it off as soon as they're on arrival.

So it's not gonna be an easy feat for Democrats or even supporters of these bills to get that issue pushed forward.

Then looking at leadership change, is it likely that we'll see a different legislature in the coming years?

The way redistricting has worked out, I don't know if that's gonna be the case, and I think that we could see a lot of Republican retention in the legislature, and a lot more far right legislators that would be able to speak on these issues.

I think also you start to see, even in this last legislative session, how culture wars, social issues start to take priority over some of these issues that we're seeing, like Medicaid expansion or marijuana.

The shift was not to focus on marijuana, it wasn't to focus on Medicaid expansion, things that we've seen fail in the past, but it was more so to focus on transgender issues, elections, things like that.

And then I even think with compromise bills that we've seen brought up, where it comes to narrowly tailored legislation for marijuana, or very maybe compromises when it comes to work requirements for Medicaid expansion, those things have also fallen apart.

So I don't see either of these issues really getting traction in future sessions.

- I'm gonna disagree on- - Disagree!

- Is that what we're supposed to do?

- Yes!

- Okay.

- With all due respect- - Convince me.

- [Bob] You don't have to be with even respect - Okay, no respect.

On marijuana, I've been on that, on your tagline for a while, but I have two fleeting thoughts.

One is did we just not discuss all these income tax cuts, and we're gonna be in the red in a couple years here.

Any source of revenue, everyone is in Kansas City, I guarantee is going over to the Missouri and buying their hooch, okay?

So we've got a revenue issue.

We're gonna look at all sorts of revenue in the future.

I think that'll be more weighted.

And then also, I do believe, I'm a big believer that legislature is ignoring the wishes of the people on a lot of issues.

This is one of them.

And I do think the governor's race, I think next year, you'll hear about this in a second, I think the push for a referendum in this state for laws without lawmakers, I think is not a farfetched thought, and if we give the people that power, then, just like Missouri, just like Oklahoma, just like Colorado, just like Nebraska.

- Did you just slip in your "Burn the Tape" take- - A little bit.

- while you're responding to Rebekah?

- Yeah.

- I think you did.

- I believe next year's gonna be a referendum on referendums, and I think the governor's race, I think it's slowly realizing people the concentration of power, at least at this state, is increasingly in the legislature.

They have taken away a lot of the executive's power in this session with the budget.

They have pushed a few things over to the attorney general.

They are asking the people of the state to elect their own supreme court justices next year and take that away from the governor.

- So you think the people running the House and Senate who are consolidating power by taking from the governor and so forth, from the executive branch, are gonna suddenly do something that would allow a public vote on the initiative and referendum, the thing that California and Missouri uses to get legislation or policies changed.

They will never allow an issue of referendum to go on a ballot in Kansas, never, because that opens the barn door.

And you would have Medicaid expansion, you would have medicinal marijuana and recreational marijuana, all of that.

- I'm going to disagree with Rebekah on the medical marijuana, because, and this is, I hate to say this, as I've said many times, maybe agreeing with Bill, which is how long can the same old Republican candidates run for governor and Senate and for all these offices without a new-style Republican, Libertarian who's touting initiative petition, medical marijuana, and other Populist causes?

I think there's definitely room for that.

You're probably right that it's not gonna happen.

- Bob, you should probably get out from behind the camera and go run for governor as a Populist.

- I'm gonna say I don't think Kansas has the same ability to do what Missouri did and put it up to a vote for the people of... - Well, we don't have that, the voters don't have that power right now.

- But the governor can run it.

- Oh, if they...

Okay.

- The legislative and the executive could give that power to the voters, if they really trusted voters.

- True.

Yeah.

- So I think there's a lot of room.

Tim, your take.

Burn the Tape.

I don't want to run out of time.

- I think this is accurate, but I just really wanted to make a comment about the idea that there's a new language in politics.

It's just becoming more in the foreground, and it's about silence.

And so when politicians do not want to acknowledge or discuss really terrible things that were happening, they just go radio dead.

So in Washington, President Trump is doing tariffs, and he's doing firings at USDA, and he's killing the USAID agency, all of which has an effect on Kansas agriculture.

And there's been some pushback by the Republicans in Congress from Kansas, but it's not been vocal.

It's not been vocal at all.

Then you have in the Kansas legislature more silence.

The Kansas House this year closed their caucuses.

Keep in mind, the Kansas House and Senate have Republican supermajorities, so that's a number that can pass any bill.

They're having closed-door meetings in the House with all of their Republicans, and that is, in fact, I'm told, where they're having the real public policy debates.

They get out on the floor of the House and there's no debate.

The Democrats stand up and complain, and that's it.

- Okay, how can you say silence when at the beginning of this session, they created a committee, Committee on Government Efficiency, and they said, "We're gonna open up this portal.

Everybody, give us your ideas.

We wanna know what you want."

- They got 1,500 ideas.

- 1,500, 1,600 ideas.

- And the committee dealt with almost none of that.

- How's that silence?

- That's not silence.

- They got the portal and the people, but the people on that committee didn't address any of it.

They already had their agenda over here, which they pursued, which was to basically take welfare benefits away from poor people, and so that was their real agenda.

They didn't care about what the public said.

Inside the bubble they had this other thing going on.

- Maybe they're waiting to get to it too.

(chuckles) - Maybe next year they'll do what the people asked.

- That's what we already said.

- This came in.

- Out of this discussion, much of it, you know, wrong, but out of this discussion, I think, is there not room for a Populist, and again, not me, Tim, gubernatorial candidate, especially in 2026.

Given the issues of what you're saying, couldn't a Republican Populist say, "Look what's going on in the legislature.

Look what about that portal.

Look at they're ignoring you on these issues"?

- Is there?

- I'll jump in.

- It seems like there is.

- Because I agree.

That's kind of where I was coming from.

I think this is a left and right issue, and when I was talking about the referendums, but there's disdain for sort of experts out there as well, and so if a governor, as the executive, with so-called, you know, branches or departments of experts comes along and says, "Oh, I'm not... You know, I'm with you, the people.

I'm no expert.

I wanna put the power in...

I wanna give it back to the people any way I can."

- What's the last time you saw powerful people surrender authority?

Do you see that in the executive branch of the U.S. government at the moment?

Not remotely.

- You don't see a room for a Populist emerging in 2026.

- I would be fascinated by it, because I could cover that race.

I'd like that.

I want more diversity of opinion.

- [Bob] Yeah, yeah, for sure.

- Well, and the campaign next year, a huge issue is gonna be the election of supreme court justices.

I think that's a massive issue that kind of opens the window for some of these Populist bents.

- But that'll be on the primary ballot, not the general election ballot.

- That is true.

That is true.

- I don't know if that matters.

We'll get to that next time.

All right, well, that's all the time we have for this episode of "IGI."

If you have any comments or suggestions for future topics, send us an email at issues@ktwu.org.

If you would like to view this program again, or any previous episodes of "IGI," visit us online watch.ktwu.org.

For "IGI," I'm Bob Beatty.

Thanks for watching.

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