Michael A. Smith: Statehouse news is not funny

Rep Joe Seiwert, R-Pretty Prairie, does not think we are funny.

Recently, the anonymously authored House Bill 2234 arrived in the House Education Committee. It would prohibit employees at state universities and colleges from using their official titles and affiliations in newspaper commentaries like this one. Advocates Seiwert and Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, report that they are tired of our columns criticizing the Legislature’s and governor’s actions.

HB 2234 has been a boon for our consortium of professor-columnists called Insight Kansas. Our blog visits, Twitter following and newspaper affiliates are rising.

I appeared one Sunday on Wichita television stating that I “may or may not be” a faculty member at a state university, while the host suggested I wear a paper bag over my head. The next week, my Insight Kansas colleague Chapman Rackaway continued the comedy, mentioning Peck’s characterization of his critics as “fruitcakes” and asking: “Is it something I said?”

Seiwert was not amused, writing: “I felt like I was watching a ‘Saturday Night Live’ skit – a satire on the legislative process and legislators.”

He may be right. What is happening to Kansas is not funny.

The bad news comes daily. Last week we learned that the Governor’s Office may try to cover reduced pension-fund contributions by making higher-risk investments. This comes at the worst possible time – when the stock market may be nearing a peak and is likely to self-correct soon.

That is not funny.

Nor is it amusing that the governor seeks to jettison the state’s school base funding formula, implemented about two decades ago to rectify spending disparities of more than 3-to-1 between the state’s wealthiest and the poorest, mostly rural school districts. It also weaned the state’s schools off their property tax dependency. Brownback’s move is almost certain to be ruled unconstitutional, so the governor’s response is to try to change the way judges are appointed, moving either to partisan political campaigns or to gubernatorial appointment with legislative confirmation but no other checks or balances.

We are not laughing.

Nor is there any mirth in the governor’s move against the state’s lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender employees. The governor repealed a 2007 executive order protecting state employees from bullying, intimidation and harassment by supervisors due to their sexual orientation. Unrelated to other controversies, this is just a pure and simple authorization to discriminate.

Talk about not funny at all.

Then again, I did crack a smile at the same-day response to the executive order by Kansas City, Mo., Mayor Sly James: a press release reaffirming the city’s protections for LGBT workers and encouraging those excluded in Kansas to head across the state line and bring their expertise, incomes and jobs with them.

That will at least bring a smile to those on the Missouri side of the Kansas City metro area, which is already experiencing economic growth four times that of the Kansas side these days – and that includes Johnson County.

Maybe Peck and Seiwert are right: It’s time to ease up on the jokes. There is nothing funny about what they and their allies are doing to this state.

This story was originally published February 27, 2015 at 6:05 PM with the headline "Michael A. Smith: Statehouse news is not funny."