Mark Peterson: Some political clarity as 2015 comes to close

In the broad traditions of this holiday season, there are lots of stories of redemption and rediscovery. They often derive from personal moments of crisis – Ebenezer Scrooge is an example. Moral clarity is a personal event.

This commentary addresses political clarity for Kansans as 2015 closes – a moment of collective rediscovery, perhaps.

For example, Kansas’ privatized and malfunctioning intervention and protection system for foster and other at-risk children has been determined to be a near-criminal mess. Long-serving Rep. Mike Kiegerl, R-Olathe, co-authored a December report that concluded privatized services were too expensive for the poor results they’ve produced.

Two members of the Legislature have helped to make their own seasons merry and bright. Reps. Travis Couture-Lovelady, R-Palco, and Steve Brunk, R-Wichita, decided that life is good without electoral campaigning and with a substantial steady paycheck. Furthermore, they appear to have learned the lesson former House Speaker Mike O’Neal did a few years ago: If you are good to your “friends,” your friends will be good to you.

O’Neal traded in his legislative gavel and consistent record supporting the anti-tax, anti-regulation, laissez-faire elements of the Kansas business community for a job as president of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce. Couture-Lovelady took his expansive view on firearm possession and use in public places, such as at state-funded colleges and universities, and parlayed it into a position as a multistate lobbyist for the National Rifle Association. Brunk is leaving the chairmanship of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee to become executive director of CitizenLink, a policy arm of Focus on the Family, on the staff of the Kansas Family Policy Council.

After Thanksgiving, House Speaker Ray Merrick, R-Stilwell, reduced his residual headaches from the 2015 legislative session. To eliminate further foolishness from the House Health and Human Services Committee about expanding Medicaid, Merrick removed three Republican moderate members who advocated getting additional Medicaid dollars for Kansas to keep medical services functioning in some fragile rural and inner-city locales.

Finally, Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, recently presented her hopes and ambitions for the coming legislative session to the Wichita Pachyderm Club. There will be no discussion about taxation this year, if she has any say about it. And as president of the Kansas Senate, of course, she does.

As 2015 closes and we retire to our holiday snuggeries, wishing joy and goodwill to family and friends, perhaps we can also think of the foster kids, the unwell, the unemployed and others on hard times and reflect on the merry band of self-interested officeholders, practitioners of false economies, defenders of the status quo, and producers of blue smoke and fun-house images of reality that we’ve sent to represent us in Topeka.

We’ll have 11 months for clear reflection and action. Perhaps next December we might optimistically wish each other a happier new year in 2017.

This story was originally published December 25, 2015 at 6:04 PM with the headline "Mark Peterson: Some political clarity as 2015 comes to close."