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Table of Contents
It’s a big week in Topeka
For those wanting a quick refresher on the legislative process in Kansas, three key deadlines approach:
February 20 (this Thursday) is Turnaround Day. This is the last day that either chamber can consider a non-exempt bill that’s originating from that chamber (e.g. the Senate must pass a Senate bill to be able to send it the the House for consideration). Any bills that don’t cross this threshold essentially gets put on hold until next year.
March 21: Any bills that were sent over from the other chamber, must be voted on and passed by this day.
March 28: First Adjournment. Everything’s sent to the Governor for signature or veto by this point. (They expect the veto session, where the chambers respond do any governor vetoes, to begin on April 10.)
Since we only have a few days to Turnaround, we can begin to make some projections as to which bills may remain “live” in 2025 and which ones remain on hold for more debate in 2026.
Where are Here come the school vouchers?
ERRATA: When this newsletter was originally written, the fate of the school voucher bills was murkier–they appeared to still be in committee. They were not on the published calendar, no hearings were scheduled. SB 75 moved to the floor earlier today, so it will be up for a vote this session.
Two bills currently sit in the House Education and Senate Education committees: HB 2156 and SB 75. These essentially identical bills would create a $125M private and homeschool tax voucher program that would pay out $8,000 per student to enrolled families. Both of these bills remain in committee, and (as of this morning) aren’t on either committee calendar for debate this week.
The implication: At least for the 2025 session, vouchers are not yet happening. (Not unless one of these two committees pushes the proposal to the floor, or other procedural shenanigans are invoked.)
When I first wrote this, I chose to take a less cynical view of things, but that was unfortunately incorrect. The Senate school voucher bill reappeared out of the Senate Education committee on the Senate floor today and will be receiving a vote.
Here come the tax cuts
School funding may be “safe” for another year, but there’s a broad assortment of tax bills in the pipeline. All of these bills already passed the Senate and will likely see a floor vote (and passage) in the House:
SB 10 reduces property taxes on some specific vehicle types, reducing funds for school districts by $2.5M that would need to be transferred from the general budget.
SB 14 is an Americans for Prosperity proposed bill that creates a “continuous budget” mechanism. This would be equivalent to the US Congress no longer having to have annual budget debates and just “letting it ride” in the absence of a budget.
SB 35 eliminates the 1-mill property tax that funds building construction and maintenance and replaces it with $56M from the general fund, increasing each year with property values. (Where does the replacement revenue come from? We’ll get to that…)
SB 181 comes to a floor vote in the Senate this week, and would install a hard limit on how many funds could be transferred from the general fund.
Also out of committee and headed to floor votes this week:
HB 2385 would empower counties to create 1% earnings taxes (with local voter approval). Half of these funds would need to be pledged to replace property tax revenues.
HB 2011 raises the property tax exemption from $75,000 to $100,000 of assessed value, and reduces the state mill rate by 1.5 mills. Total cost of this tax cut: $823M over the next 5 years.
Additionally, unless the general fund is used to fill the gap, state funding to public schools would be reduced by 2-3% per year (compounding).
The “main course” for tax cut proposals won’t be subject to the Turnaround deadline–those proposals fall within the purview of exempt committees. But at a minimum, the pattern is coming into focus: reducing or eliminating property taxes, transferring their funding rules to the legislature (via the state general fund), and instituting caps on how much can be spent from the general fund.
This will be fine for 2025. This will be painful in 2030.
Changes for Election 2026
One of the clearer priorities for the supermajority this session has been implementing changes to election law. The Elections committee isn’t an exempt committee, so multiple early pushes have already cleared one chamber and are headed to the other:
SB 4 eliminates the 3-day grace period for advance ballots.
SB 5 bars federal funds for election-related activities, including voter registration.
SB 6 bans ranked-choice voting.
HB 2018 changes qualifying criteria to be a poll worker or election board judge.
HB 2020 funnels drivers license data to the Secretary of State for “purging” of noncitizens from the voter database. (In practice, this isn’t actually an issue.)
HB 2106 bans contributions from foreign nationals to campaigns for aor against proposed Kansas constitutional amendments.
HB 2206 restructures the governmental ethics commission that oversees campaign compliance.
On the path to clear a floor vote this week:
HB 2016 allows removal of voters from registration lists based on funeral home online obituary notices.
HB 2021 requires the Secretary of State to establish statewide rules and regulations for remote ballot boxes for returning advance voting ballots.
HB 2022 modifies the timing for special elections.
HB 2054 will double the cap on political campaign contributions and eliminate limits on contributions to political party committees.
HB 2057 requires the governor to appoint persons of the same political party as a departing incumbent for US Senate.
In total, these are some decidedly conservative and anti-democratic changes to election law. Collectively it creates more mechanisms for removing registered voters, reduces access to advance ballots, increases the financial advantage for candidates and campaigns aligned with corporate donors, and transfers some appointment powers from the Governor to the legislature.
I’ve been reading this newsletter for the past couple of weeks, and have found it to be a balanced and non-partisan source of information. -Jason
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