Dear Friend,

As its name would suggest, veto session is intended to be when the legislature considers bills vetoed by the governor following the regular session. However, it is generally used to finalize the budget as well as any other major issues still outstanding – most of which tend to be the largest issues of the session. This year was no different. 

Veto
Our first action was to consider the governor’s veto of SB 67, a bill to require physicians who prescribe medication abortions (also known as Plan B, RU-486, or mifeprex) to inform patients of the option to stop the treatment after the first of two pills, and potentially save the pregnancy. Failure to provide this information would result in a felony charge for the physician. 

• The Senate quickly voted to override the governor’s veto with the required 2/3rds majority – 27-13. The bill then came to the House where 84 votes are needed to override a gubernatorial veto. The override failed 82-43, I voted YES to override the veto.
• I’m very disappointed that this common sense measure – which is simply informational – will not become law. The bill simply requires information be shared so a woman has the choice to change her mind. I will continue to work on this issue.

Because the budget is the only “must pass” bill of the session – it is required before we can adjourn - a group of us who support Medicaid Expansion decided our best move was to block the budget from passing until the Senate held a debate and vote on Medicaid Expansion. 

This was a frustrating process. Especially since the first budget presented was the best budget the legislature had put together in about a decade. We had the money to continue the slow process of restoring funding for K-12 schools and higher education, roads, foster care, employee salaries, and our crumbling corrections system. However, in support of Medicaid Expansion, we sent that budget back to committee and waited on another. 

As part of the negotiating team, I was part of a group that offered to support the budget in exchange for Medicaid Expansion being implemented by April of next year. Again, this fell on deaf ears.

The budget conference committee voted to slash may good items out of the budget bill to punish us for supporting KanCare expansion. That was very frustrating to me as they are members of my own party. If we were willing to vote against a great budget, a bad one is easy to oppose. That budget went down 42-81. This went back and forth with literally no other work being done – we convened and recessed many times Friday and Saturday while negotiators attempted to reason with Senate President Susan Wagle (R-Wichita) and Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning (R-Overland Park). 

Keep in mind that killing the bad bill in support of Medicaid Expansion was only possible due to Republican support, and other Republicans would rather stop any progress than allow a debate on the issue. This is a sad example of the divisions within the exist within our party, just as we are seeing among our Democrat colleagues as well.

After days of back and forth, the coalition came to the realization Medicaid Expansion was not going to happen this year. We voted to pass basically the same budget as we were first presented (79-45), I voted YES. This is a good budget. Here are a few highlights:

• More than $200 million increase for transportation plus $6.4 million to speed up completion of T-WORKS projects still on hold
• $5 million for Community Mental Health Centers
• 2.5% pay raise for state employees 
• $33 million for Regents institutions
• $3 million to increase reimbursement rates for dentists who take Medicaid patients
• $6 million to reduce the waiting lists for Home and Community Based Services (HCBS) for intellectually or developmentally disabled Kansans. 
• $16 million to increase reimbursement rates for HCBS and nursing home providers 
• $35 million for the Department of Corrections to hire and retain guards and deal with overcrowding issues.

I was disappointed and frustrated with the fact that two people can block the needs of 150,000 Kansans and something nearly 80% of Kansans support. I am committed to continuing this work during the 2020 session.

Tax Plan
In the waning hours of the session we started work on another tax bill. HB 2033 passed the Senate 27-13, then came to the House for debate. The bill is different – and about half as costly – as the bill the governor vetoed earlier in the session, though it retained some of the basic components. It is a good compromise – it takes away some of the business tax deductions but leaves plenty of incentives for businesses, as well as individual taxpayers.

Admittedly, it’s a concern that we’re reducing revenue at a time when we have a major school finance bill still up in the air and we want to expand Medicaid, but we are always trying to balance priorities. Here are the key components of the bill: 

• Return $157 million back to Kansans by allowing them to itemize deductions when they might not itemize them on their federal tax forms. 
• Allow small businesses to deduct the cost of capital expenses (computers, etc) instead of deducting the depreciation.
• Add sales tax to internet purchases – and this is where things get creative:
  • With the resulting increase in sales tax revenues, any revenue above 3% growth would be used to “buy down” the food sales tax. So, the more you buy online, the more the food sales tax goes down (it’s obviously a little more complicated than that, but you get the idea).
• My sales tax exemption for purchases of bullion and gold was also included in this bill (finally)!