The Lawrence Journal-World, Jan. 12

Past time to end anonymous bills

It's ridiculous that most of the bills that come through the Kansas Legislature are anonymous. Hopefully, a bill being introduced this session can change that.

State Rep. Stephanie Clayton, R-Overland Park, has proposed legislation that would require bills that come through committee to include the name of the person who initiated the bill. Currently, state law allows bills that are introduced in committee to be sponsored by the committee, and individual names are not attached to them.

The Kansas City Star, in its recent investigative series on the lack of transparency in Kansas, reported that 94 percent of the bills that were passed during the last legislative session listed only a committee as the bill's sponsor. This is not a new tactic — more than 90 percent of the bills approved in the past decade do not have names associated with them.

Kansas is unique in taking this approach. Although a handful of other states — Idaho, Iowa and West Virginia — allow committee bills, they all attach names to the bills by identifying either the originator of the bill or the members of the committee who are supporting it.

Only Kansas keeps its residents in the dark when it comes to identifying who's behind legislation.

Clayton hopes to change that. "I want to make it so if you look up a bill online, you'll know who the requester is, and who asked for it," Clayton told the Associated Press.

Clayton's bill faces an uphill battle. House Speaker Ron Ryckman and Senate Majority Leader Susan Wagle have expressed their opposition to such a change.

Ryckman said individuals don't want to be associated with a bill because that bill could later become an entirely different bill if it is subjected to gut-and-go. Gut-and-go is a political tool in which the contents of a bill that has been approved by one chamber is gutted and replaced with entirely different legislation before being sent back to the originating chamber for an up or down vote.

Wagle said she wants legislators to vote on the content of a bill, not on the person sponsoring it. "I don't want a name attached to it because there are people here who see a name on the bill and they vote against it if they have a personal vendetta that they want to carry out."

Such arguments reek of political cowardice. Why would a legislator author, sponsor or bring forward a bill they are not willing to put their name on?

Lawmakers are the most public of public servants and should be held accountable for their actions. If voters are to make informed decisions, they need to know what bills their legislators are writing, supporting and opposing.

Clayton's bill is a no-brainer, and it should be supported and approved.

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The Wichita Eagle, Jan. 10

Being governor isn't easy — unless you leave the hard work to others. Right, Sam Brownback?

Gov. Sam Brownback has fostered a new spirit of bipartisanship in the Kansas Legislature with his last budget proposal and State of the State address.

Yes, most everyone on every side was that unimpressed - putting it mildly - with his speech and budget.

The bottom line of Brownback's proposal - $600 million more to create a new school-funding formula that might finally pass Kansas Supreme Court muster, yet no details on paying for it except no tax increase - met with bewilderment from moderate and conservative Republicans.

Senate president Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, was exasperated, calling it "a feel-good budget that doesn't balance."

Rep. Brett Parker, D-Overland Park, said Brownback reminded him "of a student who only recently remembered his final project is due." Other Democrats seemed mystified, in some ways agreeing that $600 million in new funding is needed for schools, yet wondering why Brownback didn't identify the source of the money Tuesday during his State of the State speech.

The details of his budget proposal Wednesday didn't help.

Brownback seeks to satisfy the Supreme Court with $600 million in new school spending over five years, though there's no guarantee the Court will accept a phased-in plan. Just as problematic is how $100 million in years two through five of the plan can be paid for. The chairman of the House budget committee said Wednesday those budgets won't balance.

Some of Brownback's goals are worthy. He wants Kansas high schools to have a 95-percent graduation rate by 2023, 13 percentage points higher than most recent statistics. He is also an advocate for the Kansans Can program, which reinvents high schools by focusing on a student's career path instead of automatically molding them into a college-ready environment. More counselors are proposed to help direct students.

But this isn't leadership. It's throwing Monopoly money at problems and leaving the details to the Legislature while Brownback works on questions that will come up at a second confirmation hearing for his nomination as U.S. ambassador-at-large for religious freedom.

Brownback's performance at the microphone Tuesday and on paper Wednesday reinforce that he should have left leadership of the legislative session to Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer, for the good of Colyer (wanting some time in the governor's office before the August GOP primary) and for Kansas, which had tired of its governor's failed experiment and looking toward an ambassadorship.

But Brownback couldn't let go, so his speech and budget proposal become a prime example for his years as governor. He tried to lead but failed. He offered fixes mired in fantasy. And his legacy becomes galvanizing Kansans - including so many who voted twice for him - into knowing they can do better.

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The Topeka Capital-Journal, Jan. 10

Lawmakers should be held to promises to prioritize mental health this session

As the 2018 legislative session begins, lawmakers are promising to make the quality and availability of mental health services a top priority.

For example, Sen. Laura Kelly is the ranking member of the Senate health committee, and she says the Legislature has to address a range of problems with the state's psychiatric hospitals: "We're going to have to talk about the hospitals. They're understaffed, underfunded and underperforming, so we've got work to do on them." Meanwhile, House Speaker Ron Ryckman recently pointed out the economic benefits of greater public investment in mental health services: "Sometimes a little bit of investment early in some programs can be beneficial not just to the patient but to the state and the taxpayers in the long run."

This is particularly true when it comes to the incarceration of mentally ill members of our community. According to the Treatment Advocacy Center, in the United States, "approximately 20 percent of inmates in jails and 15 percent of inmates in state prisons are now estimated to have a serious mental illness," which means there are 10 times more mentally ill Americans incarcerated than in state hospitals. In January 2013, Kansas Department of Corrections Secretary Ray Roberts estimated that 38 percent of that state's inmates suffered from a mental illness, while 14 percent had a severe and persistent mental illness.

Nearly 25 percent of the inmates in the Shawnee County Department of Corrections have been diagnosed with a mental illness.

These numbers are far too high. Prisons and jails are terrible places for people with mental illnesses — they aren't equipped to provide the necessary treatment, they impose rigid rules and punishments that disproportionately harm mentally ill inmates, and they can't provide the consistent care and stability that mentally ill people need. Due to behavioral problems that stem from these issues, the Treatment Advocacy Center reports that mentally ill inmates typically remain in prison much longer than other people. They also cost much more to incarcerate and they're overrepresented in solitary confinement.

Although Kansas has far fewer mental health hospital beds than it did in the 1990s, community mental health programs haven't expanded to meet the need. According to Rick Cagan, the executive director of the National Alliance on Mental Illness Kansas, this needs to change: "The key to keeping people in the community, getting treatment there — out of the hospital, out of the emergency room, and of course, out of jail — is having accessible and adequate community based treatment." This is why we need more programs like NAMI's Family to Family Workshop, which provides information about treatments and educates the community about mental illness.

In December 2015, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services decertified Osawatomie State Hospital over staffing and safety issues. While that certification has been restored (along with $1 million in monthly federal funds), CMS is threatening to decertify Larned State Hospital for violating federal rules on the safety of its facilities. The survey was conducted in October, and state officials were informed that Larned would lose its funding in January if the necessary renovations aren't made.

It's clear that lawmakers are right to emphasize the improvement of our strained mental health system. Now it's time to see if they'll actually deliver.