TOPEKA
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto pen moved swiftly last week.
Transgender athlete ban? Civics and financial literacy requirements for high schoolers? Gun safety education for students using NRA materials? All vetoed. Kelly has rejected eight non-budget bills this year, more than any Kansas governor in the past 17 years.
On Monday, she added to her streak, vetoing 18 provisions in the proposed budget. They include items that would give legislative committees more power over allocation of federal relief funds and ban use of state dollars to enforce mask mandates.
In a statement, Kelly said she supported the majority of the budget but that some pieces were unnecessary or had been resolved in other bills. Others provisions should have been vetted more thoroughly, she said.
Relations between between the first-term Democrat and the Republican-dominated Legislature had already been strained by the COVID-19 pandemic. Over the past year, Kelly and GOP leaders clashed repeatedly over gathering restrictions and mask mandates.
Now the two sides are engaged in a new confrontation over a series of bills rejected by Kelly. The weeks ahead will bring high-stakes fights over whether GOP lawmakers can override her vetoes and enact changes to taxes, public school curriculum and transgender rights.
All of it comes amid early positioning in the 2022 governor’s race. Republicans are working to build their case against Kelly, who is the only incumbent Democratic governor up for re-election in a state lost by President Joe Biden.
The governor has not dwelled on her vetoes, instead emphasizing dozens of bipartisan — and often unobjectionable — measures she has approved.
“I want to thank the Kansas Legislature for working together to pass more than 90 bipartisan bills to help aid Kansas families and local businesses,” Kelly said in a statement. “I will continue to support bills that grow our economy, protect our schools, and reinforce that Kansas is welcoming, inclusive, and open for business.”
A fight over education funding also looms, after lawmakers passed a budget without school spending as Republicans attempt to link education dollars to expansion of school choice policies. It took the Legislature years to constitutionally fund public schools, and some Democrats and education advocates now fear the impasse threatens the progress already made.
Democrats and Kelly allies cast her vetoes as a necessary check on a Republican-dominated Legislature that has moved further to the right this year and focused more intently on cultural issues, including banning transgender student athletes from girls and women’s sports.
“I think that the governor’s making hard choices and that’s what we hired her to do. I think this to me is the most conservative group of Republicans I’ve seen in my five years in the Legislature,” said Rep. Jerry Stogsdill, a Prairie Village Democrat.
Stogsdill said Kelly could have easily doubled the number of bills she’s vetoed, but took action against the “most onerous” of the bills sent to her.
Override attempts promised
Republicans, meanwhile, believe they can paint the vetoes as obstructionist and out of touch as they foment opposition to Kelly ahead of the election. Attorney General Derek Schmidt and former Gov. Jeff Colyer have already entered the Republican race and their nascent campaigns have mostly focused on anti-Kelly messages.
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, said last week Kelly had used her veto pen “to placate the hard left rather than support mainstream policies supported by most Kansans.”
“Each of these common-sense measures were passed by strong majorities. Republicans will respond to the governor’s veto-a-rama with a veto-override-a-rama when we return in May,” Masterson said in a statement.
To be sure, Kelly and the Legislature have advanced some bipartisan proposals. On Monday, Kelly signed into law an overhaul of the state’s unemployment system, which has been plagued by overwhelmed call centers and antiquated computer systems.
Kelly also approved bipartisan assistance programs for utility bills after historically low temperatures in February, new scholarship programs and major changes to the Kansas Emergency Management act which reduced her own emergency powers.
Still, the large number of vetoes this year is unusual and underscores fundamental disagreements between the Democratic governor and the Republican majority that didn’t exist when Republicans controlled both the governor’s office and the Legislature.
The eight vetoes in 2021 come after Kelly issued just seven total during her first two years in office. Not counting budget line-item vetoes, it’s the first year since 2009 that six or more vetoes have been issued. And no governor has vetoed eight bills in one year since Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a close ally of Kelly, in 2004.
Contending with a more conservative Republican supermajority than existed in her first two years in office, Kelly rejected legislation that mirrored pushes in Republican- controlled legislatures across the country on election laws and school sports. She also rejected the latest version of a GOP tax proposal she also rejected in 2019.
Much of the annual Kansas Republican Party convention in Manhattan last weekend focused on Kelly’s vetoes as evidence of the need to oust her in 2022. Party Chairman Mike Kuckleman said he was proud that the governor was forced to veto so much legislation.
“When the right people get elected we see the kind of legislation coming out of Topeka that we saw last session that Gov. Kelly had to get out a stamp and just think how tired her arms are — that is your success,” Kuckleman said.
In addition to Masterson, House Speaker Ron Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, and Senate Vice President Rick Wilborn, a McPherson Republican, have all promised the Legislature will try to override the vetoes. That will be easier said than done.
None of the policies Kelly rejected cleared the House and Senate with the two-thirds support that will be needed to override the vetoes. In some cases, Republican leaders will need to move a half-dozen votes or more to achieve an override.
The most broadly supported bill, barring the executive and judicial branches from altering election law, will still need one additional vote in the House to become law. Legislation banning transgender athletes from girls’ and women’s school sports fell eight votes short in the House and one short in the Senate.
“I think that’s dead on arrival,” Stogsdill said of the transgender athlete ban.
Education fight ahead
In addition to combating Kelly’s vetoes, lawmakers will face a fight on education funding when they return to Topeka next week.
A bill that would have tied the K-12 budget to major expansions of school choice programs failed in the Senate earlier this month, leaving the state without any approved dollars for schools.
It saw steep opposition from Democrats and some Republicans who said it would harm their school districts.
Sen. Tom Hawk, a Manhattan Democrat, called it a “vampire bill” for “sucking the blood out of public schools.” He said Monday he opposed tying funding to policy.
“We have self-executing powers for the State Board of Education,” Hawk said. “They’re the ones that should set those policies and I don’t agree with diverting any tax dollars to private.”
House and Senate budget panels are back in Topeka this week to jump start the final budget process.
Mark Tallman, a lobbyist for the Kansas Association of School Boards, sat in on the Senate’s meeting Monday hoping for mention of education funding.
“Our preference is we want to get the funding done as agreed to for the court,” Tallman said. “Let us move along and get things resolved so districts know what their budget can be and move ahead.”
“We would like to do that without what we would consider damaging or limiting other policy perspectives.”
Senate Education Chair Sen. Molly Baumgardner, a Louisburg Republican, suggested that as an option earlier this month after the education and policy bill failed in the Senate.
But her counterpart in the House, Rep. Kristey Williams, an Augusta Republican, insisted that she would not support any funding for public schools without new policy directives aimed at aiding high risk students alongside it.
Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican and vice-chair of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said Monday he expects education funding to remain separate from the rest of the budget.
“It’s hard to get education policy passed, there’s this misconception that the Legislature doesn’t have an active role in setting policy for our education system,” Claeys said. “Adding budget to it tends to get it across the line a little easier.”
“It didn’t in this past one but we’ll see if there’s a different mix of policy that will get passed.”
This story was originally published April 26, 2021 5:34 PM.
