Lawmakers don’t care what local officials want

There has been a recurring pattern this legislative session of lawmakers not caring what most local officials want. Here are three of several recent examples:

▪  The Senate Committee on Ethics and Elections held hearings this week on a bill to move spring elections to the fall and make them partisan. More than 100 local school districts, including USD 259, have passed resolutions opposing the move. The League of Kansas Municipalities also opposes the move. Wichita Mayor Carl Brewer even spoke against it in his State of the City address last month. But odds are that the Legislature will do it anyway.

▪  Secretary of State Kris Kobach is pushing lawmakers to give his office prosecutorial powers, a change opposed by the Kansas County and District Attorneys Association. Johnson County District Attorney Steve Howe told senators last month that expanding the secretary of state’s duties to include prosecution is “bad public policy” as well as redundant and wasteful.

▪  Kansas teachers, school administrators and school boards worked for more than a year to develop a new policy on teacher negotiations. They testified in support of that policy and opposed another bill promoted by the Koch-backed Kansas Policy Institute that would severely restrict those negotiations. So which bill did the House Education Committee advance this week? The KPI bill, of course. “They sent a clear statement that opinions of lobbyists paid by outside special interests carry more weight with the Legislature and state government than do the opinions of trained professionals,” said Mark Farr, president of the Kansas National Education Association.

Regarding the election bill, Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, said that lawmakers should stop saying they believe in local control. Their actions often say otherwise.

For the editorial board, Phillip Brownlee

This story was originally published February 12, 2015 at 6:06 PM with the headline "Lawmakers don’t care what local officials want."