Things got pretty simple last week on this school finance foul-up.

Remember, Democratic leaders stood outside Gov. Sam Brownback’s office threatening to have legislators petition to call a special session of the Legislature to begin Monday, June 20, to fix the portion of the school finance formula that the Kansas Supreme Court has held unconstitutional—and so egregious that the high court would shut down schools on July 1 if it isn’t fixed.

That was good for some photographs and news coverage…except that just Wednesday, Brownback called the special session on his own order…signing a piece of paper telling the Legislature to show up, presumably in clean shirts…at 8 a.m. Thursday, June 23, to knock out whatever is needed to prevent the court from closing schools.

Look at it from the long view, and Brownback probably made the right call.

Instead of starting on Monday, start on Thursday and hope the Legislature wants to get home and members restart their re-election campaigns.

Now, that all seems pretty simple. Get a committee or two in early, have them assemble a bill that will meet the court’s demands, and on June 23 bring back legislators, or at least as many as will come, and knock out the bill.

Practically, the bill has to do just one thing: Send another $38 million to $43 million to school districts that would see reductions in state matching for their Local Option Budgets. It’s complicated, that LOB formula. Lawmakers earlier this year passed a school finance bill that used not the Supreme Court-blessed LOB formula, but another formula for state aid for capital outlay support which apparently is OK for capital outlay, but not for LOB.

So the fix is relatively simple. Get the language that the court has already approved for LOB, toss in the money, and…see how the votes go.

Hard to figure, because that minimalist $38 million to $43 million means some districts will see a reduction in state LOB aid—and make sure that the schools stay open—but it means some districts will get less money under the formula than they’d planned on. That brings up about $12 million in so-called “hold-harmless” money, which makes sure that no school district—or legislators campaigning for re-election in those districts—will lose state aid, or their legislators get blasted for bringing less money home to their districts.

The early arguments break out several ways. Just pass the bill that meets the Supreme court’s demand, and let the governor come up with the money…or maybe even find the money to finance it.

Or, they could put in the hold-harmless agreement, and come up with another $12 million or so, or let the governor come up with the money.

It comes down to something that simple…unless there’s some acting-out by legislators about the Supreme Court running the state, imposing on the Legislative and Executive branch powers and threatening to close schools.

There’s an apparent interesting sideline to keep lawmakers from drinking at lunch or later…this proposed constitutional amendment that would allow voters a chance to strip the court of authority to close down schools if the Legislature finances them unconstitutionally. That’s the diversion we talk about — you don’t have to be much of a magician if your assistant is pretty because who’ll be looking at you?

That blast the court, limiting its authority provision, will be good for debate that might make the simple fix-bill relatively easy to pass. Or not…

The special session? Could be two days, or stretch through the weekend and into the next week…against that June 30 deadline to pass a bill so the courts don’t shut down the schools.

Could be simple…but we’re trying to think of the last time the Legislature did anything easily…

Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.

As a trapper, I enjoy trying to match wits with God’s critters, and beavers, believe it or not can on occasion be very clever and hard to catch.

When the new four-lane highway was built along Inman, a spot that was merely a big puddle along a drainage creek became a couple acre pond that’s a couple feet deep and holds water until the weather gets very dry.

Every time I pass that pond, I look for signs of beavers there, as it has all the makings of a good beaver pond. Just this week as Joyce drove past that pond, she saw what could have been a beaver swimming there, so it became time for a field trip to find out.

I first clamored up and over the railroad tracks to check for beaver signs along the creek opposite the pond. The grass beyond the tracks was lush and thick and shoulder high, and with each step I sank a foot deep into a mat of decayed stocks and vegetation left there from each time the creek flooded over the past who-knows-how-many years.

It was a little spooky to tell you the truth; I could barely see what was in front of me and then to feel my foot sink with each step into something else I couldn’t see! There seemed to be no signs of beaver along the creek, so I moved on.

Going the opposite direction the creek first passes beneath the railroad, then under both lanes of the new highway, so I had to navigate the underside of three bridges worth of nesting swallows to get to the pond. I was still a good fifty yards away from the first highway bridge when a literal cloud of twittering swallows suddenly filled the air, probably numbering in the hundred’s.

Back-and-forth they flew; under the bridge then out again until I was well clear of their space. Their mud-nest colonies lined the underside of the bridge like so many tiny baskets pasted against the otherwise intimidating concrete structure. They never became aggressive or dive-bombed me like they used to do cats when they caught them out in the open on the farm when I was a kid, but they gladly escorted me from the area. After clearing the bridges the creek basically became a muddy path full of cattails for a couple hundred yards until it reached the pond. At the pond, the cattails spread out 30 yards wide and then gave way to the water proper.

Some years ago on a nearby property I trapped beavers in a small marsh that formed alongside a deep, wide creek. The marsh was very shallow, but the beavers had pushed mud up against the marsh bank all across one end, allowing the water to become deeper. Looking at this pond from the highway, it appeared to have gotten the same treatment; another reason to suspect beavers had moved-in.

The pond is often partially covered with a mat of moss, and as I waded into the water and stood in front of the 7 foot tall cattails, what appeared to be mud shoved up against them at the waterline proved instead to be thick slabs of moss, evidently deposited there as the recent high water abated. I picked up a big chunk of the dried moss and tossed it onto the bank; it was thick and stiff enough to pass for cowhide.

As evidence of beaver’s presence in the pond, I looked for dens dug into the bank or a mound-shaped hut of some sort in the water, piles of cut sticks in the water stored for future food, well used trails in the mud leading from the pond into trees along the creek and trees or sticks cut and freshly chewed on.

I got scolded by red winged blackbirds perched high up on cattail leaves, serenaded by bull frogs, nearly carried away by hoards of mosquitoes and warned to mind my own business by legions of swallows, but I found zero confirmation of beavers living in or near the pond. I’m still convinced it’s only a matter of time!

Continue to Explore Kansas Outdoors.

Steve Gilliland, Inman, can be contacted by email at [email protected].