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- Topeka Buzz: Thursday, February 27
Topeka Buzz: Thursday, February 27
A minor rant about legislative modernization (or lack thereof). Also: 2026 Election Bingo Card time!
Jason Anderson
February 27, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 13 minutes
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The 🐝 Rating System
Each bill is evaluated based on four key factors: Scope of Impact, Financial Impact, Urgency, and Controversy. These factors are weighted to reflect their influence on the bill's overall importance. Here's how the ratings break down:
🐝 Minimal Impact: Legislation with limited reach or lower urgency and controversy.
🐝🐝 Moderate Impact: Proposals with a broader or more notable influence, addressing issues of medium urgency or financial significance.
🐝🐝🐝 High Impact: Bills with widespread consequences, urgent needs, or significant public and political attention.
Daily Legislative Update 🐝
Thursday, February 27, 2025
Below is today’s morning update on published activities in the Kansas Legislature.
Table of Contents
Top Stories of the Day
Legislative Modernization (or lack thereof)
If you’ve ever tried to find a specific bill on the Kansas Legislature website, or the scheduled time and date of the next meeting of a particular committee, or any public testimony submitted on a specific bill, or a general calendar of events and activities at the capitol, or the identity of the legislators that represent your particular address, or the status of a bill, or (bless your heart) tried to analyze that information in a structured way, you’ve had three options:
Manually drudge through a website that dates back to 2012 (or earlier), download PDF documents, and interpret them by hand.
Pay for a commercial service like Legiscan or State Affairs.
Give up.
We’ve been building out BillBee.ai as a home-grown alternative to these options–something with a more modern sensibility and more nuance for Kansas-specific dynamics. In a perfect world, we wouldn’t have to do this because the Kansas legislature would provide adequate resources as part of its public charter to keep citizens and organizations informed.
There is a Legislative Modernization committee in the House. They haven’t been very active, however:
Bills Sponsored by the Legislative Modernization Committee
In short, there is no reason to expect the quality of information transparency from the legislature to improve in 2025 or 2026. It’s up to the public to build its own solutions, or to pressure elected officials to do so.