Getting logrolled? Legislator survey exposes weakness in Kansas constitutional limit on bundling – Kansas Reflector

The Kansas Reflector welcomes opinion items from writers who share our aim of widening the dialog about how public insurance policies have an effect on the day-to-day lives of individuals all through our state. Max Kautsch is an lawyer whose apply focuses on First Modification rights and open authorities legislation.

Of the 40 senators and 125 representatives serving within the Kansas Legislature, 17 responded inside 4 weeks to the Kansas Coalition for Open Authorities’s legislative reform survey, introduced in a June 8 Kansas Reflector article.

Though any survey with simply over a ten% response charge definitely doesn’t replicate the views of the whole physique, 15 of the 17 respondents, each Republicans and Democrats, agreed with a number of of eight proposed reforms of the legislative course of.

Every of the proposed reforms deserves additional evaluation, however just one, which involved the legislators’ apply of bundling payments, immediately pertains to a constitutional provision designed to assist Kansans observe how payments develop into legal guidelines. That provision is called the “one-subject rule,” which the Kansas Supreme Court docket has outlined as a “constitutional limitation on the Legislature … to forestall a legislative apply often known as logrolling through which unrelated issues which may not have sufficient help on their very own are mixed right into a single invoice to entice the required votes to safe passage of the entire.”

The inclusion of the “one-subject rule” within the Kansas Structure purports to ensure a minimum of a modicum of legislative transparency. If each invoice has just one topic, it must be straightforward for the general public to trace. Nevertheless, the Legislature bundled quite a few payments this session, together with a tax invoice, Home Invoice 2239, cobbled collectively from 29 totally different items of laws.

Legislators’ responses to KCOG’s survey made clear that bundling is an issue.

“All too usually payments that haven’t any affiliation with one another are bundled to reinforce the chance of passage of lesser chance payments,” wrote Rep. Mike Amyx, D-Lawrence.

“There must be a restrict on bundled payments,” wrote Rep. Kent Thompson, R-Iola.

Rep. Linda Featherston, D-Overland Park, reported that she voted in opposition to a minimum of one invoice aside from HB 2239 this previous session “as a result of it bundled too many payments collectively.”

How did bundling develop into so prevalent in Kansas, notably when it’s one in every of a majority of states with a one-subject rule? Our state’s model of the rule seems in Article 2, Part 16 of our structure: “No invoice shall comprise a couple of topic, besides appropriation payments and payments for revision or codification of statutes.” The opposite parts of the “one-subject rule,” which additionally seem in Article 2, Part 16, are that “the topic of every invoice shall be expressed in its title” and “the provisions of this part shall be liberally construed to effectuate the acts of the Legislature.”

HB 2239’s title is 438 phrases lengthy (greater than half the size of this whole article) and incorporates no fewer than 25 separate clauses separated by commas. The subjects included in these clauses vary in scope from issues squarely associated to taxes, equivalent to “offering for a further private earnings tax exemption for 100% disabled veterans” to purely procedural issues like “establishing a deadline for budgets to be filed with the director of accounts and experiences.”

Are these disparate subjects all throughout the similar “topic,” as required by the structure? Or is a number of of the subjects throughout the invoice an instance of “unrelated issues which may not have sufficient help on their very own” to cross?

In different phrases, are we getting logrolled?

A 2017 Kansas Supreme Court docket resolution, rendered within the aftermath of a years-long battle between the courtroom and the Legislature over public college funding, liberally construes the “one-subject rule” to keep away from logrolling. In that case, the courtroom outlined “topic” as “the matter to which it pertains” and rejected the plaintiff’s declare {that a} portion of a invoice associated to trainer employment violated the “one-subject rule.” Within the courtroom’s view, “all of its provisions relate to the identical topic — training.”

Maybe it’s not an excessive amount of of a stretch to imagine that paying academics includes the identical topic as funding public faculties. However does the connection between taxation and establishing price range deadlines, for instance, meet that very same customary?

Even when the Legislature feels HB 2239 complies with the “one-subject rule” because it has been interpreted by our state’s highest courtroom, bundling payments, as identified by an editorial revealed by the Holton Recorder in 2015, is definitely counter to the spirit of the state structure.

The Legislature ought to decide to recognizing and understanding Kansans could be higher off with out stretching the idea of the “one-subject rule” to its breaking level.

Via its opinion part, the Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who find themselves affected by public insurance policies or excluded from public debate. Discover info, together with how one can submit your individual commentary, right here.