The close of the fourth week in Topeka finds the Kansas Legislature in full swing.
With members spending the bulk of their time churning through proposals in committee, the priorities and headlines for the 2010 session are coming into focus.
The budget will continue to be the looming priority facing the legislature, but Wednesday’s deadline for individual legislators to introduce bills prompted a number of non-budget-related proposals.
We’ll soon be looking at bills concerning a range of issues including health care, lobbying reform, tax policy, immigration, texting bans and the legalization of marijuana.
Some of the more controversial issues typically will not survive the committee process to make it on the floor for debate — but in an election year, we typically see some of the “hot button” issues.
Functionally, it was a productive week for the House. The highlight was passage of the 2010 budget adjustment (rescission) bill out of appropriations committee.
The Senate cleared its rescission bill last week. This is an important development as the rescission bill simply covers funding for our current fiscal year.
It’s not expected for the House and Senate to take long in reconciling their respective versions of the bill, which means we’ll be able to get to work on the controversial 2011 budget.
We also were fortunate to have four days of debate on the House floor.
There were a couple of highly publicized bills, such as the ban on synthetic marijuana, but for the most part, the bills on the floor are of a non-controversial nature and enable us to keep the legislative calendar clear.
My first committee of the day is Taxation. This week, we will have a full schedule of hearings on tax exemptions.
Attention has been brought to this issue, and periodically reviewing the exemptions made in the past certainly is in order.
Health and Human Services is my second committee and meets after lunch.
Many items on the agenda for the week include scope of practice and licensure issues. We also have a hearing on a smoking ban bill. It should be an interesting week!
The final committee of the day is Agriculture and Natural Resources in the late afternoon.
The Agriculture committee has been a little less active than the other two, but we have reviewed issues regarding hunting, food inspections, and water use and storage.
As always, I’m glad you’re interested in our work.
