We have about five months, if we pay attention, to get a good idea of just what the upcoming Legislature is likely to consider doing for us—or to us—in the session that will precede next year’s elections for every member of the House and Senate.

Yep, they’re all going to be on the ballot, and if there is a key to re-election it is passing, or at least voting to pass, laws that we’ll like. Or, of course, voting against bills that we don’t like, but someone, somewhere, thinks is a good idea.

The regimen of interim committees that will start this month or next will give us our first peek at just what we have to look out for next winter.

The interims don’t pass laws, or even bills, they just study and hear arguments for and against issues that will likely become bills. While they are public meetings anyone can wander into or listen to over the Internet, most Kansans don’t know much about them or just what legislators do when they come to Topeka out of session.

Well, a big issue that is going to be chewed through is, of course, the possibility of Medicaid expansion: First, the Senate interim committee—which essentially just knows what it read in the papers about the House passing expansion—then the Special Committee on Medicaid Expansion with both House and Senate members.

Key to that process: Probably to try to assemble an expansion bill. Or…to figure out just how the lawmakers who oppose Medicaid expansion can be convinced that it will affect so few people that they can probably look the other way briefly for at least one vote or two, and pass it.

But interim committees are also going to consider legalizing marijuana, probably just for those who can convince their doctor to prescribe it or who can make the point that they’re getting old enough that they represent a solid revenue stream for those doctors so that they will… Chances of general legalization? Slim, but we’ll be watching that medical marijuana proposal to see just how far it will stretch without bogarting that roach…

Medicaid aside, a health interim committee is going to try to figure out why health care is so expensive in Kansas and whether there’s some way to make it cheaper. Look for that to stretch into tele-medicine where you essentially talk over the Internet with a health-care provider who lives outside your Zip code or county or congressional district or maybe even state line. Doesn’t work if you’re bleeding, but chances are good that telemedicine will be part of the key to dropping the out-of-pocket, or at least out-of-insurer’s pocket, expenses.

Oh, and for those of you who watched flood waters creep toward the porch, a committee is going to try to figure out how government at all levels can work together to avoid flooding or at least how to get help to voters and business owners more quickly when the water recedes enough that you don’t need a life jacket to retrieve your newspaper.

Yes, a lot of topics, and a total of 52 days of hearings approved so far…some that will yield proposed legislation, many that will just let lawmakers know how state government is running while they’re out of town and paying for their own lunches instead of gazing at the ceiling while lobbyists buy their meals and drinks.

Those interim committees are also where ideas good and bad are sifted, and they’ll to a large degree determine just what we watch the Legislature debate next session. But some of us remember when the preview was better than the movie. And for many issues, the interim committee is the preview…

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