By Charlene Sims, info@linncountyjournal.com
MOUND CITY – Rep. Rick James (R-La Cygne) from the 4th District, visited the Linn County Commission meeting on Monday, Feb. 24, to update them on what was happening in the Legislature. He said because Monday was in the Legislature’s turnaround period he was able to attend the meeting.
James explained that “turnaround” is when all the approved bills that the House of Representative has voted on are filed and turned over to the Senate and the Senate bills are filed and moved over to the House. Both chambers are given a four day weekend during that period.
James said that the Legislature had just ended week six and they had worked on about 300 bills.
James said, “One that is going to go into law and that’s Senate Bill 63, which has been deemed the “Help, Not Harm” bill. He said that it passed by a two-thirds majority and overrides the governor’s veto on that, so that bill will go into law.”
SB 63 prohibits healthcare providers from providing surgery, hormones or puberty blockers to children who identify as a gender that is different from the sex they were assigned at birth. Under the bill healthcare providers who break the law will be stripped of their license. Both the Senate and the House had the two-third majorities to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto.
James told the commissioners that he serves on four committees in Topeka, the federal and state affairs, corrections, insurance and elections. He said there were bills in each that he would like to talk a little bit about.
• He said that one bill that is under consideration will require the Department of Motor Vehicles (DMV) to turn over a list of non-citizens, because now if a person not a citizen he or she can still get a driver’s license. That list will go to the Secretary of State’s office. There, they’ll scrub the list and send back a list of who should not be on the voter list. It will be up to the election officers in the county clerks’ offices to remove those names if they are registered voters.
• Another bill under consideration would regulate a situation that supposedly happened for the first time in Kansas history, James said. While he said he questioned whether that was true, he went ahead and explained about the bill. There was a county office for which no one filed to run.
Current law says if nobody runs for an elected office, the governor gets to appoint a person, he said. The bill being considered would change that so that county commissions will be responsible for appointing individuals to office.
• There is another list that will come out for election officers letting them use funeral homes as a source of information, he said. There’s a lot of people on the rolls throughout Kansas that have passed away, and sometimes it is hard to get them removed because they don’t have the evidence that they need. So that bill will allow the election officers to get whatever information they can from funeral homes.
• The House Appropriations Committee used a different method of determining the budget, James said. Usually the governor submits her budget and the Legislators work off of that. This year the governor and the House Appropriations Committee both submitted budgets. He said that the committee’s budget was $162 million less than the governor’s budget, so it passed out of the House. It is over in the Senate now, and they’ll do some work to it before sending it back to the House for another vote. James said that he thought that was what would happen and then it will go over to the governor for her signature, and we’ll see what happens with that.
• Property tax valuations was another bill that was looked at. James said there was a Senate bill that came out that Senator Caryn Tyson wrote for a 3% cap on property valuations. It came over to the House, and that is probably where it is going to stay. The House thinks that it has a better bill, so they’’ll send that over to the Senate. Somewhere in between, one of those bills will come out, be voted on by both chambers and then sent to the governors’ office.
The commissioners did not have any questions for James.
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