Friends:   

Thank you to the pages this week!  On Tuesday, March 27th, the pages were Anthony Bellucci (Washburn Rural High School), Duncan Clatfelter (Manhattan and grandson of Jerry and Jean Morgan), Jordyn McCakey (Washburn Rural Middle School) and Morgan Oliver (Christ the King School and granddaughter of Pat Saville, the Secretary of the Senate).  Please see the pictures at right.  

March 28th we had another great group of pages!  Thank you to Tyler Cummings (Jay Shideler), Peyton Smith (Indian Hills), Taegen Sumner (Indian Hills), Jordan White (Indian Hills) and Tyler White (Indian Hills).  Please see the picture at right.  All of the pages experienced a first hand look at the operation of the Senate.     

 **************************************************** 

Friday marked the end of the regular session.  The legislature will return on Wednesday, April 25th for what is known as the Veto session.  Unfortunately, we have a great deal of work left to complete.   

The conferees for the budget conference met late Thursday to reach agreement on the budget.  As you will recall, the conferees are six people representing their respective chambers.  The Senate is represented by the Chair, Vice-Chair and ranking minority member of the Ways and Means Committee.  The House is represented by the Chair, Vice-Chair and ranking minority member of the Appropriations Committee.   This conference committee agreed on all items and sent the legislative staff to work to prepare the budget bill AND the explainer.  Most of the staff worked ALL NIGHT LONG and into the next morning/early afternoon to complete the process.  All 6 conferees sign on a "Conference Committee Report" and then it is advanced to each chamber for an "up or down" vote.  The Conference Committee Report cannot be amended on the floor.   

At 3 pm on Friday the House conferees decided that they did not like some of the wording in the report and hurriedly called another meeting of the conference committee.  After the Senate expressed that this report and language was no different than every other budget bill, the House said they could NOT sign the report.  In this instance, the budget bill was placed in a Senate bill, so the House needed to pass the report first.  With that abrupt ending, the Senate had no choice but to abandon the process.  The House's refusal to pass a budget in regular session will have some serious consequences for our communities.  This will cause a temporarily shutting down of our courts, not taking care of our senior citizens in need of nursing home care, and not taking care of the health care needs of our state's most vulnerable citizens.  This is simply unacceptable!  It is disappointing because Kansas taxpayers are the ones who will be hurt by the House's action.  

***************************************************** 

Another bill was acted upon late Friday.  This was House Sub for House Sub for SB 176.  This is the congressional redistricting map that splits Shawnee County and Topeka, Kansas.  A motion to concur was offered and it FAILED 14-24.  I VOTED NO.  I cannot support a map that splits our Capital City and splits the hometown base of our 2nd District Congresswoman.  The fact is the urban core of Topeka has little in common with rural, central and western Kansas.  Keeping communities of interest intact is one of the Golden Rules of the redistricting process and I do not think we need to deliberately break that rule when there are other options on the table.  This map failed on the Senate floor earlier in the Session.  There was no need to resurrect a bill that the Senate had already voted down.  The Senate redistricting committee has studied a map that keeps Manhattan in the 2nd District and does not split major cities.  I think there will be better options like this to look at when everyone returns to Topeka later this month.