Letters on lawmaker pension, BTK, public health, political hubris
Lawmaker pension is legalized theft
When voters go to the polls, please keep in mind that the very legislators who deferred $100 million in state payments to Kansas Public Employees Retirement System in order to balance the budget are the very same legislators who are taking advantage of a nice and cushy retirement plan for themselves.
In this plan, legislators who participate in KPERS (a significant majority) take their roughly $15,000 salaries and prop them up by including the $140 a day they receive during the session for living expenses. Their part-time salaries are then annualized as if they were paid their daily salary and living expense rates for the entire year. This can bloat that small salary to about $90,000 annually for purposes of KPERS.
Legislators pay no taxes on their living expenses pay, if they live more than 50 miles outside of Topeka.
The rest of state employees and elected officials are not allowed this golden parachute for their retirements. I spent 32 years in public service and would have enjoyed benefiting from this “legalized theft.”
So before you vote in the general election, please take the time to quiz your candidates regarding what they intend to do about this issue. If they commit to making a change so lawmakers have to follow the same rules as everyone else, hold their feet to the fire. If KPERS is as bad off as has been implied, blood sucking from the program must be stopped.
Mike Keating, Park City
Don’t feed ego
I totally agree with Kerri Rawson (“BTK’s daughter: Book allows Rader to feed ego,” Aug. 21 Eagle). The attention Dennis Rader receives is feeding his ego. It’s time to stop. Take him out of the limelight. Let people heal.
Ann Menzies, Wichita
Public health
When I saw the commentary by Sedgwick County commissioners Richard Ranzau and Karl Peterjohn (Aug. 19 Opinion), I was hoping for an intelligent discussion on the Community Health Assessment, its purpose and potential effect on citizens in Sedgwick County. But instead of looking at the community, our elected representatives went off on a totally unrelated tangent. Their discussion centered on individuals and their health, and rightly focused on the importance of the patient-doctor relationship.
What apparently has been totally eliminated by these commissioners is the concept of public health – the idea that a community that is healthy as a whole is dependent on everyone working together. Individual health issues are determined not just by genetics and lifestyle.
If I have a contagious disease, and if my doctor fails to impose a quarantine period, is it OK for me to go out and pass the illness on? Public health says that if you are contagious, stay at home, do not go out and spread the disease around.
Even most elementary school children learn about clean water, tested food, regular trash collection and clean air. These are all vital to ensuring that everyone’s basic health is maintained.
Let us have no more negative and uneducated comments on the Community Health Assessment, but wholeheartedly embrace it to ensure that everyone benefits on a continual basis.
John M. Davis, Wichita
Political hubris
I expect both Sedgwick County Commission candidate David Dennis and District 27 state Senate candidate Gene Suellentrop to win in November. One will continue to do little for Kansans in the Senate; the other will find himself unable to compromise with his Republican colleagues on the County Commission.
I’m a life-long Democrat who registered Republican in 2010 in hope of seeing “sensible” Republican moderates returned to political office. But I have come to see that such a wish won’t ever become a reality.
This is a state where the Republican “conservative” electorate ideology never concentrates on actual, productive issues for the betterment of all citizens. Instead, it always rises to take the bait of the loudest and most hubris-driven candidates, only to learn that those whom they voted in have the same weaknesses as the people they voted out.
The problem is they are always one election too late. They should have sent Gov. Sam Brownback home in 2014.
Chuck Glover, Wichita
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This story was originally published August 25, 2016 at 5:02 AM with the headline "Letters on lawmaker pension, BTK, public health, political hubris."