- Coming up next on IGI, the legislative session is heating up.

I'll be back with a panel of political experts to discuss the numerous, high-profile topics, and how they impact us here in Kansas.

Stay with us.

(logo whooshing) - [Announcer] This program is brought to you with support from Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust, and from the Friends of KTWU.

(upbeat music) - Hello, and welcome to IGI, I'm your host, Washburn University Professor of Political Science, Bob Beatty.

The legislative session has created quite a stir this year with high-profile topics like redistricting, the Parents' Bill of Rights, marijuana legalization, and Medicaid expansion, so there's lots to cover, and I'm honored to have this panel of political experts here with me to cover the Kansas legislative session of 2022.

Joining me in the studio is Amber Dickinson, Political Science Professor at Washburn University, Tim Carpenter, Senior Reporter for the Kansas Reflector, and Jim McLean, Political Correspondent for the Kansas News Service.

Thank you all for joining me.

Now, the name of this show is IGI, I've Got Issues, and it's a great name, I've always loved it, and it has multiple meanings, and I was thinking before this show that, is there any legislative session that reflects the name of this show better than 2022?

I've Got Issues, there's multiple issues, and they're controversial issues.

So people have issues with the issue.

So I think this is the poster child for the name of the show.

Let's start with redistricting, that's a huge issue of course, every 10 years, it's caused some controversy, The Legislature passed their maps, they're vetoed and looks like they're probably going to happen.

Let's start with Jim McLean, in terms of the map that ended up happening, why is it controversial?

All the maps, I should say.

- Two big reasons, I think.

One, what happened over in the Kansas City area with Wyandotte County, a lot of minorities in the district it's and heavily democratic as well, it's really the cornerstone of Congresswoman Sharice David's district and Johnson County and Wyandotte County have essentially been joined at the hip for many, many years now, and they split Wyandotte County and moved about 110,000 people into a much more rural district that stretches all the way down to Southeast Kansas.

So there's that whole community of interest argument there.

The other issue is, they took the progressive Liberal University town of Lawrence and they stuck it way out in Western Kansas, essentially isolated it politically out in Western Kansas and to people who looked at that map, that seemed like the critic say, it's just blatant gerrymandering, the Republicans say, "No, we're just trying very hard to equalize the population of all the districts and we did that and that's their defense of the map, and plus they say it made sense to join KU and K state because Manhattan's still in that first district," so those are the two main reasons it's so controversial but as you know, it's been challenged now what, three times in court, so we'll see if it holds.

- Is it going to be overturned or what do you think the possibilities are?

- Well, I can't get into the mind of the judiciary but it there's a possibility that the congressional map could be thrown out and they'll have to try again.

I think the legislative leadership, the Republicans thought that was always a possibility, and so why not reach for the stars, get the most advantageous map you can, divide Wyandotte County's democrats, I mean, you gotta ask yourself why not divide all the Republicans in Johnson County in half, why not?

Well, they went after the minority vote just to damage Charice Davids, the Lawrence thing is pretty ridiculous.

I live in Lawrence.

And I gotta wonder how much I have in common with the feedlot operators in Dodge City like 300 miles away or something.

I can't wait to have a couple livestock in my backyard and have a Congressman really represent my interest.

So the congressional map's pretty terrible.

And we'll just see what the court does with it.

- Now, Dr. Dickinson, Jim mentioned a term gerrymandering and it's technically legal, but there are some numerous states, actually a number of states that have put in nonpartisan redistricting commissions.

Why has Kansas not gone that way?

- Because they don't need to go that way because they have it set up to where they can draw the maps the way they want to draw the maps and so why would you create a bipartisan effort to do that?

When you know that it would be much more difficult to get the map that you want, if you were to do something like that.

- So the majority party essentially enjoys the power?

- One interesting thing here, the people who are suing or challenges the map, wanna challenge in state court, not federal court and Derek Schmidt the state's attorney general went to the Kansas Supreme court and said, "No, the state court does not have jurisdiction, so I want you to take, essentially take over the case right now and essentially declare that so that we can move on."

And the state Supreme court just recently said, "No, we're not gonna do that, the case is not ripe enough yet."

So they're gonna have to work through the district courts.

- And to be clear there's a fair number of Republicans that don't exactly hide the fact that they.

- Right.

- Would like to get rid of the one Democrat, Charice Davids, even last year, some prominent Republicans said, "Hey, let's redistrict this so we can have four Republicans right, yeah?"

- That's right I mean, and she's been saying it Congresswoman Davids had been saying it right along too, and so what was interesting though, during the debate, all the Republicans weren't in line initially, and the first override attempt failed in the Senate, Senator Steffen from Hutchinson, was complaining about having all those Lawrence liberals in his district, and you have Lawrence, Manhattan, Emporia, and some counties that have gone democratic in recent elections are now in the first district, makes me wonder how long it will be before that district's not gonna ever tilt democratic, but I think it will make a little bit of a difference in terms of the balance out there.

- Now you have provided the perfect segue.

- And I good.

- I know you plan to do that, right?

- I did not.

- Okay.

- But I'm always, oh, we glad.

- We have.

So I'll continue with you.

We had this odd scenario where the Republicans needed the votes to get these maps passed and they actually the first time around didn't get the votes and there was a few Republicans that held out that you would've expected to vote for them, right.

And then not so mysteriously Jim, a day later, they did vote for the maps, yeah.

What happened there without getting too into the weeds.

- Yeah, 'cause it's easy.

It would, it'd be easy to go down a rabbit hole here, but essentially the ivermectin bill.

Steffen is a doctor.

The aforementioned Senator Steffen from, is an anesthesiologist.

And he had a bill that would essentially preclude prohibit state board of healing arts from investigating doctors who prescribe off-label drugs for the treatment of COVID 19.

And he really wanted that bill to move forward.

And the scutlebutt around the state house and Steffen must has admitted this on a radio interview in Kansas City that the Senate leadership went to him and promised that they would expedite the bill in exchange for him switching his vote and voting to overrun, which he did then a couple days later, Senator president time masters and set the bill back into committee into purgatory essentially.

And so I think it was just punishment for Steffen not being on the team from day one.

- He's horse trading, it's political horse trading.

He needed traction on his ivermecting bill, but don't forget.

Senator Steffen has said he is under investigation by the board of healing arts for doing things off label and in terms of the COVID 19.

And so he essentially introduced a bill that would protect him medically from the regulators if it passes and that's the bill that was hung up, that's what he traded for his vote on the map.

- We went a committee immediately and then went back.

- Yeah, but three very conservative Republicans who had initially voted against the bill, lost some committee assignments as a punishment from Senate president Masterson, right?

- So that the segue is from redistricting to COVID related bills.

And these have been, again, I've Got Issues very controversial and they've sort of run the gamut.

They've some of these bills have specifically have gone toward bills saying that a doctor cannot be punished for even advocating for certain prescriptions of off-label drugs to some real restrictions on local health officials and which is going through, right.

So let me start with Dr. Dickinson, sort of a big picture question.

What are these bills limiting the local authorities?

And again, this seems to butt up against what we'd call federalism, which is this idea that that many people in Kansas, many, especially Republicans say local authorities are the best, but when we've hit up against the COVID crisis, we some real anger that some local health authorities have put in some rules for their counties and people at the statewide level are outraged.

So how does that match with this idea of, well, this philosophy of well let's local people decide what they wanna do.

- Well, they're clearly picking and choosing when they wanna apply that principle.

And I think it's very curious to me that our citizen legislators are not taking into consideration what these medical experts are advocating for.

And I think that the evidence that what our citizen legislators are proponents of is not effective.

If we look at our numbers of the deaths that we've experienced in the state, if we look at the numbers of people who've been ill, it's phenomenal and not in a good way.

And I think that they're just deciding when they wanna apply this concept of federalism to concepts that that fit their rhetoric and what their proponents of.

- And Tim, what are some of the, and Jim, what are some of the bills that are still sort of alive?

Because the Senate president time Masterson just a few days ago was quoted as saying "We're gonna process these things."

He wants to see some of these go through, so they're not dead.

- [Tim] Oh no.

So they're really emphasizing these ones regarding the local authorities.

- Senate committee has a mega bill that basically takes into account that the legislature has already kind of cut the governor off at the knees in terms of what she can do during these pandemic like events, emergencies.

So now the state legislature is basically gonna adopt a mandate on cities, counties, school boards, local school boards, all elected people, community college trustees.

They're going to tell them what they cannot do in a pandemic.

You cannot shut down businesses.

If you issue an order, it can only last 30 days.

People who don't like that order can go to court and fight you.

And so they're really recreating the ground rules for what local government can do.

And you're absolutely right.

The legislature hates federal mandates and they complain about those all the time, but I've seen it for many years, they have no trouble enforcing mandates on other duly elected people.

So it's a bit of an irony hypocrisy perhaps a bit.

- Yeah.

Yeah.

- The interesting thing is to your point, it's for some future emergency, we're all crossing our fingers.

It could be much, much, much worse.

It could require immediate action, And again, this is a legislature that doesn't convene is not 365 days a year.

And what you're describing are bills.

If they're passed, could say to counties, health officials, you can't do anything until unless the legislature gets together votes and overturns a bill that could be passed.

- Well, there's another bill that essentially strips the state secretary of health of all their pandemic response powers.

I mean, that bill was her very recently in committee.

So it goes on and on and on.

I'll give you another example.

There's a bill that would preclude prohibit any city or county from an enacting, an ordinance that would restrict the use of plastic containers one use plastic containers, again, state government telling local governments, which you can and cannot do.

- But yeah, what I really find interesting is this is this idea of a future emergency, right?

And a citizen's legislature that is not in session.

And then a local officials possibly having no ability.

- That's a really good point because the way that was set up and had worked for a hundred years, I mean, county health officers had these powers for very specific reasons to respond when they saw an infectious disease emerging in their locality.

And this legislation essentially ties their hands in, in the, and sure as the world we're gonna have another pandemic.

And this isn't the last one.

- The wish of many people in any state is that the government is nimble and you're putting into state law barriers to local government being nimble and crafting the answer that fits their community the best.

Now we're gonna have a one size fits all, which ironically is exactly the same argument and complaint that the legislators had about Laura Kelly's very robust mandates about schools and churches and businesses and those things that people were very highly critical of.

- And they're also putting this information about vaccines into things like education bills.

So for example, there's a portion of an education bill that says there are these 11 vaccines that students must be up to date on, and COVID vaccines are not going to be a part of those 11 vaccines.

And that's sent a pretty clear message.

- Jim, do you, do you see these passing?

I mean, it's, it's tough to tell, but I think it's possible, right?

- Absolutely.. Republicans have super majorities in both the house and Senate.

We've already talked about how the leadership is exacting discipline when people fall out of line and clearly there, an this is kind of a residual.

These bills are left over some of them from the special session where they passed the one bill.

So I think that there really is a desire to make these political statements in the wake of the COVID pandemic.

And you said to yourself, when we started talking about this about Senate president time masters and talking about the energy that exists behind some of these bills in his caucus.

And so I'm not sure if all of them will pass, but clearly some of them are on their way to the governor's desk.

And it'll be interesting to see them what she does with them.

Given the fact that she's backed away from some of these things for political reasons in a reelection year.

- Now, Jim and Tim and myself, I'm not saying we're old, but let's just say, we've watched, we've watched the legislature for a while and I wanna step back, and watching this session.

Yeah.

We especially, we've seen some hearings and I want to ask you two, have you seen any of the things, I don't know if I have, like at these hearings, we're where people are talking about the Holocaust or where people are dropping F bombs at committee hearings.

And it's really brought about sort of some shocking behavior from citizens and some legislators.

Have you seen it before?

- No.

I've never seen anything like this session at all.

I mean, I've, this is my, roughly the 40th legislative session and it's a highly charged partisan atmosphere.

I mean, there's a division that's apparent in that building every day.

Like you see it in the country and people really are emotional about where they stand politically and that's being manifest.

That's coming out in all these conversations.

I've never seen anything quite like this session.

- Well, Tim, you, you work for the Kansas reflector.

We had one person at a hearing get up and just start saying F you yeah.

To a writer for the Kansas reflector.

I'd never seen anything like that.

- Yeah, you have to feel despair at some of the decorum and the state house.

And I think the aggressiveness of some legislates feeds into that.

They'll have a committee hearing on a bill and they'll pull in some fairly questionable sketchy people and they'll give them a big platform.

And so I've rarely heard so much, very questionable material shared before legislative committees that you really gotta be skeptical about.

And so that's happened.

And so you get some fringe people who show up who are potentially dangerous, don't know, and they'll make threats like that.

And so make no mistake, legislators in that committee you're talking about where the guy was kind of escorted out, law enforcement was edging closer and closer to him as he spoke, and there were legislators texting each other regarding whether or not they were carrying concealed weapons that day.

- I remember in a hearing early on taking a picture of a guy in a hearing with a let's go Brandon sweatshirt on.

In the look he gave me, as I was snapping the picture was chilling.

It was clear, there was a great deal of hostility there.

- Were weren't they, people were wearing a star of David, right?

- Yeah.

- I mean, I just it's really, over the top.

- You don't have to have been around the Kansas legislator for any number of years to understand that people are letting their emotions take precedent over their common sense or their ability to have decorum.

And these types of meetings.

There's a way you conduct yourself in these types of meetings at the state house.

And it's just absolutely not happening because people, for whatever reason, and it's very personal to them have decided that the way they feel about this is somehow more important than the reality of the situation.

- Usually, almost every idea presented can be presented in a professional manner.

It's sort of about the color of the way they're presenting it.

It seems offensive.

- Yeah.

That this makes it a very unusual session.

And hopefully we won't see it again.

Let's move on to the education bills.

Dr. Dickinson.

There's a bill and, oh, there's several bills, but it's called the parents' bill of rights.

I didn't name the second part of the bill because I don't want to do air quotes and those sorts of things.

Sometimes the names of a bill imply what it really is, but tell us a bit about sort of a major bill that's called the parents' bill.

- So basically the biggest point of concern in this bill is that there is, this teachers are being charged with presenting parents through an online portal, with every single piece of material they're using to educate students.

And this would include ideas for things like activities, and they have to include title and author and website and where this can be located.

Now, the question that I have about this bill is number one, I don't understand why legislators who many of whom have never been teachers think that this is something that they need to charge teachers with doing and tacking that onto a teacher's 10 plus hour day that they're already putting in.

But also we don't know what the cost of this online portal is going to be.

We don't know who's going to be in charge of this online portal.

And the thing that people need to is that you can already access that kind of information if you are a parent, you simply need to request it from a student's teacher and that information will be made available to you.

I do not understand why the legislature thinks that we should not trust teachers so far as to ask them to log and keep it up to date throughout the school year, a list of every, every single thing that they're doing in their classroom.

- You really, but you don't under, what's the motivation for the bill.

I mean, that's.

- The motivation for the bill is so that we don't educate students on race based issues.

- Okay, well, there's that, but it's so prescriptive.

So precise that to me, it looks like discovery for a pending lawsuit.

And I just think there setting the foundation to make legal claims against school districts about what they're teaching and what they're doing.

- It's interesting.

You say that there's a legislator from Johnson county representing Poskin who moved from New Hampshire several years ago.

And she has a lot of friends back in New Hampshire.

And similar bill has passed there.

And there's an organization there now that is placing bounties on the heads of certain teachers.

I.e if you complain about this teacher, you get money for it.

And so.

- What, well, there's a component of one of the pieces of legislation that says, "You can be charged with a misdemeanor felony.

If you are exposing your students to obscene material," which again, I don't know that there is a teacher that is willingly exposing people to OBS seen material.

And I think the vagueness of that word obscene, when we have a United States Supreme court, that doesn't even have a firm definition of what obscene means that leaves it open for bounties.

Because a part of that piece of the legislation says, "That if you are an individual that wants to challenge someone in a court of law, because they've presented obscene materials."

Then you can get up to $15,000 of reasonable attorney fees from the court.

- I'm gonna giving them the benefit of the doubt.

the unanticipated consequence of this may be anticipated.

Maybe that is gonna be, who's gonna wanna be a teacher.

It's absolutely circumstances.

- Anticipated.

We spent years and years talking about the brain drain, where we were worried about teachers fleeing to other states for better pay.

And if you wanna talk about teachers fleeing, well, the first thing you need to do is threaten them with persecution, for trying to educate students on topics that are extremely reasonable and should be taught.

Otherwise history is going to continue to repeat itself.

And part of me is concerned that that's what some of these legislators want.

- Don't forget the another, I go to the bill, which says, they're gonna go through all the books in the library.

And if there's violence, sexual content, curse words or something, they're gonna be stickered.

And we're gonna put big warning labels on all the books in the library, which if I was a kid, I go find the books with the warning labels on 'em and check them out.

They're would be a line for them.

I just think it's kind of.

- There's also COVID vaccine language in this bill, by the way.

- And, but so to talk once again about this idea of federalism, right?

This is really a national effort to push this type of legislation.

So I question why the Kansas legislature who tends in some instances, wanna have all this state autonomy is simply just gonna to jump on board with this nationally pushed education.

That's coming from a lot of conservative think tanks.

I don't know why they can't think for themselves, why they're just taking this hook, line and sinker.

- It's a political litmus test.

That's what it is for people who have aspirations either to stay or move up.

- Well, I think at the, at the end of the day, that's the key point is that if this bill passes it really simply saying, "We do not trust this school board", whatever, wherever it is, whatever county, whatever area of Kansas, we don't trust that school board, because that's the area.

I'm guessing that over 100 plus years where Kansans have said, we elect school board members, if we're not happy with them, well, there's an election coming up.

Or in some cases there is recall elections that I've actually studied some of those for school board, but this is the legislature saying, "Forget the school board".

It's pointless, sort of like forget the county health department, right?

The legislature is now going to watch over the teachers.

- And its a vilification of teachers.

We went from calling teachers heroes during COVID 19 to telling us that they are evil and they're going to indoctrinate our students.

And heaven forbid we don't want woke students, which is actually a quote from one of these national, wait.

- And talk about lack of decor.

Have you been to a local school board meeting lately?

- No.

Yeah, it's probably, that's probably for the best, I wanna show a quick, a full screen here of a poll from Fort Hays State University.

And it really struck me on a couple of questions.

They asked one was, it was Medicaid expansion.

The other was marijuana legalization.

This is the annual poll from Fort Hays State.

And it's over 70% support for both for Medicaid expansion.

And for Mar marijuana legalization, by the way, it's not medical marijuana legalization.

So if you put that on there, it might be 90.

- It's nine out of 10, want medical marijuana.

- I don't wanna get too meta, but at what point at, what do you say my gosh, is the legislature waiting?

Well, once we get to 100% of the people, then we'll pass it.

I mean, we know these issues have been going on forever, but you look at those numbers and they're act absolutely striking.

And they beg the question in sort of what sort of democracy is it that 75% of the people want something and it just does not happen.

So are we seeing any possibility I'm not gonna mention Medicaid expansion?

- No.

- I do see any possibility for at least medical marijuana, Jim or Tim.

- Now we're assure that the bill is coming.

- Really.

- On medical marijuana.

I think there's.

- I've heard it.

- Before.

That's why am a little.

(indistinct chattering) - Pass the house last year.

- [Tim] Last year.

- And so now it's the Senate turn.

And I think they'll have a bill that gets there and be a lot of you wonder if sports betting is gonna pass, but I would say medical.

- Lot of those issues were queued up in the first week of the session.

Hearings were scheduled on the medical, on the medical marijuana bill.

The bill was pulled by Senate president Masterson.

I talked to Senator Olson, the chairman of the committee about this, and is being rewritten as being, it has been it's in the process of being rewritten now for weeks.

And is now what going to emerge in the next couple of days with a lot more controls on it, in terms of marketing, how you.

- Purchase a 30 day supply, it can be extended.

If two doctors approve at the extension, it's added the list of, and physical illnesses and- - There's concerned that what Oklahoma did is too progressive.

- Sure.

Sure.

But there are a lot of tightened up restrictions in the bill that Senator Olsen is promising it's different from the house.

- You have issues that are that popular, it's a great leverage tool.

Let's not kick that out early and remove that from my tool chest.

Let's hold onto that.

And I'll just hold it over their head rank and file legislators two by four over their heads until we get to the end of the session, we'll go ahead and do that.

But I need these other votes leading up to that.

- Or to be a little more cynical.

It's a shiny look over here so that you aren't paying attention to what we're doing over here.

- I mean the political scientist here, I mean, I've had this question forever.

How Medicaid expansion for instance can pull 70% and there's no, absolutely no movement.

The answer I get from political scientists is it is an issue that people will tell posters yeah.

For that, but they won't vote on it.

It's not a powerful issue.

- Well, I would argue it hasn't been really tested in Kansas because the candidates won't run on it for famously for governor.

- Governor Kelly ran on it was part of.

- I mean really running on it.

Of course she won.

- It's an issue, saliency issue.

If people don't feel it in their pocketbook, if they don't feel it in their moral compass, then it's not something that's gonna drive them to the poll.

- Right.

- Well, I got fooled a couple years ago on this very show.

I don't remember who, if you were the guest or not, when Medicaid expansion I was told, oh boy, that looks like this is the year for it.

And of course it didn't happen.

So medical marijuana may, you all seem fairly confident, but.

- I trust him.

- Okay.

All right.

We only last year have 20 seconds to hit on anything you want that may happen.

This session go, Jim.

- What I'm surprised by this session is how political it's been in the real in election year, where the legislature has wasted no opportunity to head governor Kelly off at the past, disempower her one way or the challenge, all of nominees for the Regents secretary of health.

I mean, they really are just it seems like a coordinated strategy to me.

- All right, Dr. Dickinson.

- I have three major questions for the legislature quickly.

And the first one is that, why do you not want students to be educated?

Why do you not want people to have access to reasonable medical treatment?

And why do you not want people to have freedom of democracy in their state.

- Tim, 10 seconds.

I'm worried we're gonna have a bewildering number of constitutional amendments on the August.

- [Jim] Oh yeah.

And November ballots and the descriptions are hard to read and understand.

And so if we already have an abortion one, we could tone that down it'd be nice.

- Yeah.

Thank you.

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 at watch.ktwu.org For IGI, I'm Bob Beatty, thanks for watching.

(upbeat music) - [Narrator] This program is brought to you with support from Lewis H. Humphreys Charitable Trust and from the Friends of KTWU.