| Manhattan & Riley County Constituents: Busy Days of February
The last few weeks of February were busy times in the Legislature and represented a big step in completing a significant bulk of this session's work. February 22nd was the "Turnaround" deadline, meaning bills must be heard and passed from their original chamber and turned over to the other chamber. Bills not passed are considered dead for the remainder of the session. As I often say, nothing dies in the statehouse, and the content of a bill is always potentially available to be amended into another bill, but the bill number itself cannot be used.
The House was on the floor all day on Monday (19th) through Thursday (22nd) passing nearly 40 bills. As indicated earlier these bills now go to the Senate for their consideration. The Senate passed significantly fewer bills, which will likely result in fewer bill hearings in two of my committee assignments. Historically, the House passes more bills simply because there are 125 House members bringing forth legislative topics. With 40 members in the Senate, they are simply unlikely to submit as many bills for consideration. It is not uncommon for many of the House bills passed during turnaround to not be taken up in the Senate and the bills simply languish until the next session. However, as this is the 2nd year of the two-year election cycle, any bills not passed by the end of this session die and must be reintroduced in 2019.
The Taxation committee I serve on is an "exempt" committee, as are Federal & State Affairs, Appropriations, and Calendar & Printing. What this means is these committees are exempt from the "Turnaround" deadline, and bills can still be introduced after turnaround or House leadership can refer a bill to one of these committees in order to keep the bill alive. If a bill is sent to an exempt committee, leadership can re-refer a "blessed" bill back to its committee of origin.
My experience has taught me the most politically controversial bills or bills of legislative consequence are usually tackled after turnaround. So while February was a busy time addressing many of the bills heard by committees, the months of March and April are when the strenuous work is finally tackled. I testified in support of the Nurse Licensure Compact, which would create licensing reciprocity among member states. This is an important issue for the leadership of Ft. Riley in order to help military spouses in the nursing profession continue their careers when moving to Kansas from an out-of-state military installation. The legislation will also help communities across the state dealing with nursing shortages or staffing challenges. I began work on this over the past summer by attending a State Board of Nursing meeting with Lt. General (retired) Perry Wiggins, Executive Director of the Governor’s Military Council, and COL Mark A. MacDougall, Chief Nursing Officer, Irwin Army Community Hospital. The bill passed the House 116-1, I voted yes. Further testimony can be read here. To learn more about the compact click here. I thought you might enjoy this helpful graphic from the League of Kansas Municipalities that shows the breakdown of the legislature by party, gender, and population:
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| HB 2531 would designate 10 segments of Kansas and U.S. highways as memorials to members of the Kansas Highway Patrol killed in the line of duty. In our area, we will be memorializing Trooper John McMurray on K-18 from I-70 northeast to the western city limits of Manhattan. Testimony from the House hearing is available here. It passed the House unanimously.
If you’ve watched the drama unfolding in the race to be Kansas’ next governor, you know there are no rules regarding age (or species, for that matter) to file. HB 2539 passed the House, 94-28 (I voted yes), and would require every candidate for Governor, Lt. Governor, Secretary of State, Attorney General, State Treasurer and State Insurance Commissioner to be a qualified elector of Kansas, which means candidates must be at least 18 years old to run. The bill also would require a candidate for Attorney General to be licensed to practice law in Kansas. View hearing testimony here. I voted for the bill, but was disappointed when an amendment setting the minimum age limit at 30 was defeated on the House floor. As a former Manhattan City Commissioner and Mayor, this bill was of particular interest. Did you know that mayors do not have voting rights in some forms of local government? HB 2505 would require the mayor to be considered part of the city governing body in all matters in cities with a commission or commission-manager form of government. In cities with a mayor-council, modified mayor-council or mayor-council-manager form of government, the mayor would be considered part of the city governing body for voting on charter ordinances. In addition, the mayor would be considered part of the governing body for voting on any other matter upon passage of an ordinance by a two-thirds majority of the council. The bill passed the committee and the House unanimously. You can read testimony here.
HB 2506 would change how the definition of abandoned property and blight for purposes of how cities and nonprofit housing corporations take possession of said properties. Cities could file a petition with the district court seeking an order of temporary possession of abandoned property. The bill passed 90-32, I voted yes.
Golf Cart Getaway: HB 2486 would allow golf carts to be driven on certain streets at night provided they are equipped with lights required by law for motorcycles. Current law restricts golf cart driving on certain streets and highways to only daylight hours. Local elected officials need to pass local ordinances authorizing the use of golf courts, and there are apparently small towns wanting to permit this activity. Testimony is available here. The legislation passed, 84-29, I voted yes.
Current law requires driver’s carrying hazardous materials licenses (HAZMAT) renew those licenses every five years. HB 2511 would move commercial driver’s licenses (CDL) to renewable every five years instead of every four years so they could be taken together. Hearing testimony is available here. The House passed this bill unanimously.
Corrections officers are currently in short supply and are difficult to recruit due to the low rate of pay. HB 2448 would move corrections officers from the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS) and into the Kansas Police and Firemen’s (KP&F) retirement system, which is a more attractive pension system and should help with recruiting efforts. The bill passed the House 113-9, I voted yes. Hearing testimony is available here.
Current law specifies the salary to be paid to a county election commissioner and one assistant, and how those salaries should be paid. HB 2509 would leave the amount paid to an election commissioner up to the county. The bill passed the House 77-40, I voted yes.
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| We held hearings on a number of bills, but none were taken up for consideration and a vote. However, since our committee is exempt from deadlines, we can consider those bills at any point before the end of the session. We will also be receiving a number of bills sent over from the Senate. One noteworthy bill involves collecting and publishing metrics for the state’s various economic development tools: - HB 2572 would require publication of economic development incentive data on the state’s transparency portal known as KanView. The data would include information on payments from the Job Creation Fund, income tax credits claimed for various business development activities, specifically sales tax and revenue bonds issued under the STAR Bond Financing Act, benefits received under the Promoting Employment Across Kansas (PEAK) program; and certain property tax exemptions. In addition, the bill would establish the Joint Committee on Taxpayer Transparency, which would consist of five state senators and five members of the House. The committee would be required to meet at least twice per fiscal year. The committee would be required to advise and consult with the Secretary of Administration on the content, format and reports to be produced on the KanView website.
The committee completed its work for the first half of the session, and the Senate did not pass any bills related to our issues, so our work is likely done for the year. We held hearings on three bills, but did not take them up for a vote. One I thought you might find interesting is a slight change to a law passed a few years ago to require roofing contractors to be registered with the state, to avoid fly-by-night contractors from taking advantage of Kansans after a major weather event. Current law requires roofing services to a building be on the owner’s property. HB 2532 would clarify that the building would need to be located on the owner’s commercial property as well, as the law only includes references to residential and farm property. This seemed common sense to me and because it failed to pass the committee before the Turnaround deadline, I assume it will be added on somewhere as an amendment. HB 2741 was authorized by leadership to remain under consideration this session. It would require the Office of the State Fire Marshal to create and oversee a licensure process for anyone who plans, sells, installs, repairs, services or inspects commercial or residential fire sprinkler systems. The OSFM would be required to design and administer an examination for potential licensees to test their experience and training, as well as run background checks, including fingerprinting.
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| It is an honor to represent you in Topeka. Please do not hesitate to contact me regarding these or other legislative matters.
Sincerely,
Tom Phillips
State Representative, District 67
Kansas House of Representatives
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Thanks to Carl Reed, John DeSanto, Barb DeSanto from Moms Demand Action for stopping to visit during their advocacy day at the Capitol. I also hosted legislative pages Thom Loub and Julius Newmann.
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Deb & I met up with Governor Jeff Colyer during his tour through Kansas following his inauguration as Governor.
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| Tom Phillips serves the 67th District, which includes Manhattan and part of Riley County. He has lived in the district for more than 20 years.
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Paid for by Tom Phillips for State Representative, Richard Hayter, Treasurer
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