Republicans dominate the Kansas Legislature by 86 to 39 in the House of Representatives and 39-11in the Senate. Nearly all Republicans believe – or say as much – that government has overreached, become a bully, chiseled away our freedoms, seized too much of our lives.
Sent to Topeka to get government off our backs, Republicans simply shift the load, moving government from one back onto another.
Consider House Bills 2550 and 2662. They give people new freedoms by slapping the manacles on public schools and teachers. H 2550 would create fatter “educational savings accounts”, a way to sluice more public money to private schools. This gives some parents more freedom of choice; others will pay the bill. It sidesteps the Supreme Court and enforcement of equity in public school finance.
House Bill 2662 includes a ‘parents bill of rights’ requiring onerous posting of all lesson plans and materials used each year. It requires teachers to post online every piece of material they use and to give parents more say about what goes on in the classroom. Any parent is free to pronounce a lesson inappropriate. An aggrieved mother believes Pythagoras had it wrong about right-angled triangles and poof!, there goes that geometry lesson.
A bill introduced in the Kansas house on February 9 would change the state’s obscenity law, making it a class B misdemeanor for a teacher to use any material which depicts “homosexuality” in a classroom. Legislators have also pressed to weaken student vaccination programs, denounce or fire teachers for using “offensive” materials, ban from libraries any materials considered obscene by a measure of “community standards.”
The idea is to condemn certain people and uncommon ideas, to pronounce them unwelcome, even illegal. This is straight from the old Soviet playbook.
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The Kansas Constitution apparently needs changing to give more liberty to some, less for others. Examples:
– The House has approved an amendment that allows legislators to alter regulations or their enforcement by state agencies. Don’t like how the gas pumps measure gallons? Legislators may tell the Agriculture Department, which inspects pumps for accuracy, to back off. (Or step it up.) Trouble with plans for that pig farm next to the high school? Leave it to the politicians, not Health and Environment.
– Simmering in Topeka is an anti-“sanctuary city” bill that forbids cities or counties from failing to enforce federal immigration laws or failing to help state or federal authorities hunt suspected illegal immigrants. Wyandotte County is apparently the only entity to order local authorities not to participate in immigration investigations or arrests. By this bill, local authorities that fail to enforce the federal law are providing forbidden sanctuary.
This bill has been praised by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, who is running for governor. If elected, he or his agencies may be overruled by the legislature according to that pending constitutional amendment.
– Another amendment, set for the August election, would clarify that a right to an abortion is not protected under the Kansas Constitution. It would give legislators freedom to pursue abortion restrictions and sidestep the courts.
– Another amendment would order all Kansas counties to elect sheriffs for four-year terms. All counties but one have been electing sheriffs since before Kansas was a state . In 1974, Riley County voters consolidated the sheriff’s department with the Manhattan and Ogden police departments; the Riley County Law Board hires a director for the Riley County Police Department.
A commission in Johnson County recently reviewed a plan to appoint rather than elect the sheriff. The plan was dropped, but the notion to take politics out of law enforcement gave the sheriffs’ lobby a case of nerves. The local option – Political sheriffs or professionals? – would be replaced by a state mandate.
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A plan favored by the governor and legislators offers at least $1 billion in tax breaks and other goodies to lure a phantom manufacturer to Kansas. Commerce Secretary David Toland says it is the biggest economic development project in state history. Enhanced subsidies would go to a mystery company that promises to spend $4 billion on a 3 million-square-foot plant employing 4,000 people. Toland says that if the firm picks Kansas several suppliers might follow, drawing another 4,000 jobs to the region, again unnamed.
The company and its work have been kept under wraps. Public light on any details, we are told, would send the mystery corporation scuttling away from Kansas to more welcoming shadows. Transparency, especially if it involves more than $1billion in public funds, can go only so far. Or not at all.
There you have it. A one-party legislature pledging liberty for all, meaning special freedoms for the favored.
