Starting at 2 p.m. Jan 8, though hopefully years earlier, the Legislature will be galvanized over the issue of respectful interaction between legislators, legislative staff, lobbyists and young legislative interns.
The issue, of course, is the result of complaints of sexual harassment or obviously improper interaction between interns and others in the Statehouse. The Women’s Foundation of Kansas City, which is advising legislative leadership on interaction in the workplace—yes, the Statehouse is a workplace—last week issued recommendations for the 2018 Legislature, which starts Jan. 8.
This issue is atop finding an answer to the likely $600 million price tag for a constitutional school funding formula, seeing a potential change of occupants in the governor’s office, plus highways, health care for the poor, just about everything else the state does.
The sexual harassment issue is focused on those college kids who are getting their feet wet in seeing how a legislature actually operates, the ins and outs and shuffles and tradeoffs and concessions made almost daily by people who are elected to the Legislature. It’s different than in the schoolbooks.
The issue itself evaporates if Statehouse denizens would just behave the way their mothers taught them, be polite and respectful, and not use one’s authority to harass or embarrass those who aren’t elected by a majority of voters in their districts. We’re guessing that no candidate’s palm cards note that the office-seeker is handsy.
Just telling the occupants of the Statehouse to act right and respectfully isn’t going to solve the problem. The Women’s Foundation of Kansas City is going to find itself with some political power to dispense because among its recommendations is to increase the number of women in leadership roles at the Capitol.
Leadership in the Statehouse is determined by votes, or almost as often by close working relationships based on trust—and votes.
What seems simple good behavior becomes more difficult when “fraternization” includes interns, legislative staff, elected officials and lobbyists. It’s the hall talk, the dinners and drinks, the fraternization that has long been the oil in the machine. There is good respectful fraternization and the other kind based on gender and power.
Oh, and the Women’s Foundation is also suggesting accountability and monitoring of sexual harassment, ranging from definitions of sexual harassment to safe reporting of that conduct, to representation and respect for complainants and consequences for violators. Oh, and no secret settlement deals to hide those who harass others.
Lots of work, but it all comes down to respectful behavior, and finding some way to define that.
The issue is serious, needs to be dealt with, but it also provides a grandstand for legislators who offer up bills dealing with the subject and, of course, higher visibility for the Women’s Foundation which wants more women in leadership roles in government, elected and appointed, and a broader base of government leaders that for decades in Kansas has been powerful, or at least relatively powerful, men.
What happens? Look for lawmakers to find ways to take public, well-orchestrated positions in favor of respectful treatment of women in the Statehouse. Ever think that just being respectful like they were taught as children turns out to be a campaign issue? Most probably wish that it wasn’t necessary.
Kansans, of course, want the collegiate legislative interns and others respected. The trick for lawmakers will be to balance needed work on the issue with an otherwise full plate of spending, budgeting, and representing and protecting their districts. Very little is very simple in the Statehouse. We’ll see how this comes out…
Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC of Topeka; Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report—to learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit the website at www.hawvernews.com.
If you are looking to reduce stress in your life or are trying to make yourself a little healthier in 2018, a new health educator in Hays will offer classes that may be able to help.
Jessica Moffitt is a certified health education specialist who moved to Hays earlier this year.
She will offer a series of classes through the Hays Recreation Commission on techniques for stress reduction beginning in January. She also has a series of four lunch and learn classes set at Professor’s, 521 E 11th St., in January that will look at healthy eating and cooking.
Moffitt has a private service through her and her husband’s business, Prospectively Healthy in Hays, where she offers clients individual help setting goals for better eating and making healthy life changes.
Moffitt has a degree in public health from Portland State University with an emphasis in physical activity and exercise in addition to her 2016 national certification as a health education specialist.
For her lunch and learn classes, Moffitt will discuss the benefits of certain foods, how they can be incorporated into your diet and will provide recipes and samples to participants.
She will offer Nuts & Seeds for Energy on Jan. 4, Chocolate: It’s Good for You on Jan. 11, Health & Lifestyle: Headaches on Jan. 18, and Recipes: Healthier Desserts on Jan. 25. All classes are at 12:05 p.m. and 1:05 p.m. Thursdays. Cost is $15 at the door. There is a $5 discount if you buy lunch at Professor’s. This is a continuing series, check out Professor’s Facebook page for a list of upcoming events.
In the Healthier Desserts class, Moffitt will talk about the benefits of using honey instead of processed sugar as a sweetener. The Jensens, who own Professor’s, process and sell their own raw honey and use it in their dishes.
Honey can be used in much smaller quantities than sugar. Moffitt has a recipe for icing that replaces two cups of powdered sugar with two teaspoons of honey. Honey can reduce inflammatory responses in the body and help people with allergies because of the pollen in the honey.
Moffitt also uses stevia, which is a natural sweetener from a plant, and apple sauce as sweeteners. She recommends against using artificial sweeteners, which are not recognized by the body and may be retained for the body to get rid of latter.
Do you think chocolate may be out of your life as a part of your New Year’s resolution? Moffitt said not necessarily. Dark chocolate has health benefits if you eat it in moderation. She will offer up a dark chocolate truffle recipe made with honey on Jan. 11.
If your emphasis is on maintaining energy through the day, Moffitt suggests adding an afternoon snack of nuts and dried fruit.
“It will provide you with the energy you need and will be a healthy tool you can use through the day,” she said.
Stress is not just something we feel, Moffitt said, it is something that affects our bodies and our hormones. Stress can have effects on weight management, fertility, growth patterns and the health of your hair. Severe stress can affect blood pressure and cardiac health and even contribute to heart attacks, stroke and death.
“I think the goal of all of the courses is first and foremost to understand biologically what causes stress,” she said. “We need to know what stressors are and the reaction in our body. If we are unfamiliar with the reactions, we don’t know how address it.”
In her Hays Rec classes, Moffitt will focus on natural ways to address stress. She will have classes that address sleep, the use of essential oils, deep breathing, using teas and drinks to relax and reducing stress in the work place. See the Hays Recreation website for a complete list of class dates and to sign up online. Her first class of the quarter will be De-Stress Your Sleep on Tuesday, Jan. 9.
“My classes are meant to be informational. Attendees can either use the information or save it for later. The information provided will help each individual make one better choice at a time. Each better choice provides fuel for the next, creating a cascade of health effects, ultimately leading to a stronger version of you,” she said.
Corrected 9:24 a.m. 1-2-18: Her first class of the quarter will be De-Stress Your Sleep on Tuesday, Jan. 9. … All Professor’s classes are at 12:05 p.m. and 1:05 p.m. Thursdays. … Moffitt has a private service through her and her husband’s business, Prospectively Healthy in Hays …
In the summer of 2005, the Legislature butted heads with the Kansas Supreme Court over a ruling that ordered an influx of money to public education.
The result? Kansas came closer than ever to a constitutional crisis.
With Kansas facing a similar Supreme Court deadline this spring, state lawmakers are talking about ways to challenge or restrict the court’s authority on the topic of K-12 funding. A special committee formed to address the latest court ruling will meet Monday and Tuesday at the Statehouse.
Key participants in the 2005 special session sat down with the Kansas News Service in recent weeks to share their memories of the 12 days in the House — and 11 in the Senate — when lawmakers debated defying the justices but ultimately backed down.
In the process, they missed a critical court deadline that raised the stakes of the session — and had people who doubted a school shutdown could ever happen rethinking their assessment.
Kathleen Sebelius was governor of Kansas in 2005, when the Legislature and the Kansas Supreme Court sparred over school finance as part of the Montoy v. Kansas case.
‘Time is running out’
Kathleen Sebelius, governor at that time, recalled calling the special session that brought lawmakers back to Topeka in late June 2005.
That spring, the Legislature had attempted to resolve a school finance lawsuit — Montoy v. Kansas — by adding $142 million to the state’s education spending. Sebelius suspected that wasn’t enough. Though she didn’t veto the bill, she declined to sign it.
“I said that over and over during the session,” she said. “So we sent it quickly to the court without my signature.”
Sebelius believed the bill fell short of two requirements the state had to meet: putting enough money into schools to help student outcomes and distributing the money in a way that was fair to resource-poor school districts.
On June 3, 2005, the court agreed, ordering the Legislature to double that $142 million figure by the start of the new fiscal year on July 1 — an important date for school district budgets. The justices settled on that amount based on a school finance study the Legislature had commissioned four years earlier.
“Time is running out for the school districts to prepare their budgets,” the justices wrote in explaining the July 1 deadline. “The Legislature has known for some time that increased funding of the financing formula would be necessary.”
Sebelius wanted the Legislature to comply, and many moderate Republicans agreed.
“We thought we were putting an adequate amount of money in, but the court thought otherwise,” recalled former Senate president Steve Morris, of Hugoton. “So I thought, well we’ll just have to do what we have to do.”
Sebelius set a June 22 start date for the special session and Morris called a few of the Senate’s committees back early to craft legislation that would meet the court’s demands. When the full Senate returned, it passed the bill on its first day.
That’s not to say senators had no reservations about the situation. After passing the legislation, some Senate Republicans set to work pursuing possible constitutional amendments that would tie the court’s hands on school finance in the future.
Court out of bounds?
The House, meanwhile, was at a standstill. Complying with the court ruling was anathema to conservative leaders there who saw it as caving to a branch of government overstepping its authority.
“We were pretty shocked that this court would not only weigh into that issue,” said then-representative Mike O’Neal, referring to school finance, “but literally order the Legislature to appropriate a certain amount of funds.”
The Hutchinson Republican was the longtime chairman of the House judiciary committee and argued that separation of powers doctrine — and in particular provisions in the Kansas Constitution and legal precedent — meant the court was out of bounds.
Democrats and some moderate Republicans disagreed.
“We have equal branches of government, and we need to remember that,” Morris said.
The lack of a resolution frustrated members of the Senate who wanted the House to wrap up its work, get the money to schools and allow everyone to go home.
“At one point I put out a news release where I called it ‘Mays malaise,’” Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said, referring to then-Speaker of the House Doug Mays. “They were unable to do anything.”
Mays, a Topeka Republican who left the Legislature a year later, didn’t respond to an interview request for this article.
Constitutional questions
Talk of potentially defying the court by ignoring its ruling, or asking Kansas voters to amend the state constitution, continued. The Kansas Constitution had — and still has today — a provision requiring the Legislature to suitably fund public schools, and potential ideas in 2005 included adding a line to it barring the court from weighing in on that matter.
In a legislative hearing, Washburn University law professor Bill Rich testified against the idea.
“That would mark a really radical change in the history of the relationship between the judicial and legislative branch,” Rich said.
It effectively would have carved out part of the constitution as unenforceable by the courts, Rich argued, and that could have broader implications. If lawmakers wanted to prevent judicial scrutiny of their compliance with a constitutional duty, Rich said, they should ask voters to remove that duty from the Kansas Constitution.
In this case, that would have meant deleting the clause requiring Kansas to suitably fund public schools. But asking the public to do that may not have been politically palatable.
“I think the Legislature knew that that was not going to pass,” Rich said.
As the impasse continued, lawmakers missed the court’s July 1 deadline, raising the possibility of school closure.
Political and government leaders knew school closure was a risk because a lower court ruling had made that clear. Absent a constitutional school finance system, the judicial branch was prepared to strike down the current one. In doing so, the court would block its implementation, which meant stopping the flow of money to schools.
The missed deadline increased pressure on everyone. School administrators like Randy Weseman, then superintendent of the Lawrence district, weren’t sure how long they would have the authority to keep paying the bills in the new fiscal year.
“When you’re talking about not providing education in August for 11,000 kids, 2,000 employees,” Weseman said, “it’s a huge undertaking to talk about just stopping that train.”
For Weseman, the matter was further complicated by the fact that Lawrence, a growing district, was in the middle of building new schools. He and other administrators watching the stalemate in Topeka began preparing to ask the Kansas Supreme Court to allow schools to continue paying certain critical expenses.
An ‘intense’ July 1 meeting
But the schools never closed. Two things happened in quick succession that appear to have pushed the legislative process forward. One was a closed-door nighttime meeting July 1 in Sebelius’ office, with key players like Morris, Hensley and Mays all present.
Mays reportedly left abruptly, dodging the questions of reporters waiting outside the room.
Hensley described the meeting as “very intense.” Mays knew, he said, that Democrats and moderate Republicans had been discussing a bill to comply with the court.
The other event, the next morning, was an order from the state Supreme Court, which wasn’t pleased with the Legislature missing its deadline. The justices gave state lawyers six days to prepare for appearing in court and presenting any last-minute arguments against blocking the flow of money to schools.
In the days that followed, the House and Senate negotiated.
“We basically had to pay the ransom and make sure the schools were going to open,” said O’Neal, who was one of the six negotiators.
They reached a resolution, and both chambers signed off on it two days before state lawyers were due back in court. That was a relief for moderate Republican leaders like Morris.
“It felt like we had taken a load off,” he said. “We had done what we needed to do.”
‘Quite a bit of reform’
O’Neal said conservative Republicans didn’t leave the negotiating table empty-handed. The final law approved by both chambers on July 6 included a raft of policies O’Neal and others pushed for.
Those included a policy goal for schools to spend at least 65 percent of their state aid on instruction, new procedures for filing school finance lawsuits against the state and provisions barring the courts from enforcing any rulings by cutting off money to schools.
“We felt like we got quite a bit of reform in exchange for writing a bigger check,” O’Neal said.
All attempts in 2005 to pursue a constitutional amendment, which would have required a two-thirds majority in each chamber before proceeding to a public vote, failed.
As for the statutory ban on closing schools, which lawmakers did pass, it’s not clear that the courts consider it binding absent a constitutional amendment. In more recent school finance rulings, cutting off money to schools has remained an option on the table despite the 2005 law.
Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.
Joyce L. Wiseman, 79, of Russell, Kansas, died on December 30, 2017, at the Wheatland Nursing Center in Russell.
Cremation has been selected and a memorial gathering will be held at 1:00 P.M. on Monday, January 01, 2018, at the Calvery Chapel at 540 Ober, Russell, Kansas. Pohlman-Varner-Peeler Mortuary is in charge of the funeral service arrangements.
New Year’s DayMostly cloudy and cold, with a high near 12. Wind chill values as low as -11. Calm wind becoming south southeast 5 to 9 mph in the afternoon.
TonightMostly cloudy, with a low around 0. Wind chill values as low as -12. Southeast wind around 8 mph.
TuesdayPartly sunny, then gradually becoming sunny, with a high near 26. Wind chill values as low as -13. South southeast wind 6 to 11 mph becoming west southwest in the morning.
Tuesday NightMostly clear, with a low around 14. Wind chill values as low as 3. Southwest wind 7 to 10 mph becoming northwest after midnight.
WednesdaySunny, with a high near 33. North northwest wind 7 to 11 mph.
STAFFORD COUNTY —The Kansas Highway Patrol is investigating an injury accident that occurred just after 1a.m. Monday in Stafford County.
The Kansas Highway Patrol reported a 2001 Dodge pickup was southbound on NE 90th Avenue two miles north of Stafford.
The driver lost control of the vehicle. It entered a field on the east side of the roadway. The pickup re-entered the roadway, traveled into the field on the west side of the road and rolled.
Clinton J. Sanders, 20, and Taylor S. Keller, 20, both of Stafford were transported to the Stafford County Hospital. They were not wearing seat belts, according to the KHP.
The KHP is still working to determine who drover the pickup.
