Kansas Legislation Preview, Part 2

Kansas lawmakers gathered into Pika last week to kick off their 2021 session. Governor Laura Kelly gave her state of the state address. It's the beginning of a new legislative year. I'm Kay McIntyre, today on KPR presents. We're looking at what's ahead for Kansas lawmakers. We've heard from Stephen Caranda joining us now is Jim McLean of the Kansas news service. Always good to talk to you Jim. Hey, thanks Kay, the same here. Jim, you've covered Kansas politics for almost 40 years now. But it's probably safe to say you've never covered the legislature at a time quite like this. We'll talk about COVID-19 in a minute. But I think we need to start out acknowledging last week's violent protests in the nation's capital and calls for protests in state capitals across the country this week. What's the mood in Pika? How concerned are lawmakers that that could happen here? It's hard to tell actually Kay. I'm sure that lawmakers are concerned. And I know the folks in the governor's office are concerned as well given what we saw take place in DC

and the nature of the threats that are permeating across the country. So I'm reasonably confident that people really are concerned. And yet they're trying not to, they're trying to put on a brave face publicly saying, you know, we're aware of the threats, we think we've got the situation in hand, we have increased security, et cetera, et cetera. So it's really hard to tell how concerned they are. But I'm sure just from talking, having individual conversations with people that there is, there's some real anxiety about what might be coming, not only in terms of potential violence and protests and that sort of thing. But simply the political divisions in the country seem to be deepening to a point where it's going to make everything that lawmakers do this session in beyond that much harder potentially. And so I think there's a lot of apprehension about that as well. A side note that KPR presents Arizona Sunday before the presidential inauguration of Joe Biden. But it also airs on Thursday evening, which is the day after inauguration and the following Saturday.

So if our conversation seems dated, that's why we're holding it before the plan protests this week. The riots in the nation's capital took place as Congress was certifying the results of the electoral college. Results that were challenged by Senator Roger Marshall, representative Jake Latterner, Ron Estes and Tracy Mann. Jim, do you see any political fallout from those votes or for that matter from Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt signing on to the legal challenge the week before? Well, I think Kate tells you a lot about the politics in terms of Kansas's politics in terms of the way those people see it. I covered the U.S. Senate raised Roger Marshall, the Republican, of course, versus Barbara Bowie, the Democrat. And at every opportunity, then Congressman now, Senator Marshall. Sighted with President Donald Trump, talked about his affinity for Donald Trump, talked about how his percentage of how often he'd voted with the president.

So it is clear to me from that experience and just from watching how those freshmen, of course, Estes is not a freshman, but Tracy Mann and Jake Latterner are newly elected members of Congress and how they reacted and how they acted on that very first day to vote against certifying the election results. That tells me an awful lot about who they think their political base is in Kansas. We both know that Kansas politics is changing rather dramatically, particularly in the suburban areas in and around Kansas City. And so you ask about political consequences. Well, probably Jake Latterner, who represents the second district, which is essentially all of eastern Kansas, excluding the Kansas City metropolitan area. And then you have Tracy Mann, who represents the big first district, which is essentially the two thirds of the state going west from about Manhattan. Who knows what the political fallout will be for them because they represent areas that voted largely for President Trump. However, for somebody like Senator Roger Marshall, who represents the entire state, given the fact that Kansas politics is changing, particularly in those urban areas.

I'm not sure that there won't be some political fallout for that vote because he had every opportunity, particularly after the violence, to side with some pretty conservative Republican senators who decided who had said that they were going to vote against certifying the election results. But then in the final instance, after the violence had occurred, did not do it. Senator Marshall had an opportunity to join them and did not. And so there could well be some political fallout for him, although I would say you a senator served six year terms. And so any election accountability that any attempt by voters to hold him accountable is a long way off. Starting with Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service, I'm glad you mentioned that because, of course, Kansas's other senator, Jerry Moran, did not join the challenge to certifying the electoral college results. Do you think his rate of the situation is different? His rate of the Kansas base?

Well, Jerry Moran is a mature politician. He's been in the US Capitol, either as a member of the House of Representatives or the Senate for a long time now. And he's an institutionalist, much like we should mention Pat Roberts, the long serving US Senator that Roger Marshall replaced. They have some real fidelity and affection for the institution of Congress and the US Senate in particular. And so I think that Jerry Moran. That was a thoughtful move on his part. And he suffered at least some rhetorical backlash from his base. I mean, I saw some people on social media calling him a traitor to the cause, etc. But I think he believes it was a principled vote. He put out a statement saying, you know, I am a conservative Republican. I did think that President Trump had every right to challenge the election results. However, when all those challenges, more than 60 of them had been adjudicated and literally only one of those cases were found to have any merit at all. And that was a fairly minor victory for the president. I think Senator Moran simply concluded that he had to vote to certify those election results. It was his constitutional responsibility given the role that the constitutional lays out for members of Congress simply to certify that the votes had been counted correctly by the states.

He didn't think that he had a lot like Vice President Pence, frankly, he didn't think he had a lot of options there. On the other hand, I think Senator Roger Marshall's vote was very much a political statement. So it just tells you I think there's some differences between the two men ideologically. And again, I think Senator Moran had been in the institution for a long time and probably had a little bit more and at least in his mind more political capital to spend. As if things weren't tense enough after last week's riots in DC, the legislative session is beginning amidst the COVID-19 pandemic. How is that affecting the mood of lawmakers as they kick off the 2021 session? Well, it's weird. I mean, we're back in Topeka now, so we're not talking about Congress any longer. We're talking about Kansas lawmakers. But when we were over there picking up our press credentials the other day, I mean, the House is not admitting any media into the House chambers at all this session, at least not initially as the session gets started and all the committee rooms have been reconfigured. They're urging people who want to provide testimony to the committees to do it remotely and not show up in person. They're going to restrict, I think, very significantly the number of people who are allowed in and out of the building on a daily basis. So it's going to be a very weird session for sure.

And I think that is going to have a couple of consequences. I think it's going to restrict the legislative agenda pretty significantly. And depending again on how quickly that we roll out the virus and how quickly people feel like we're starting to get on top of the pandemic and curbing the outbreak. The last all session. And so I do think it's going to, it's just going to result in a very strange legislative session, a lot less interaction with the general public than you would normally see restricted agenda like last session recall. When the pandemic hit, they essentially did the work they knew they had to do IE, they passed a budget and did a couple of other things and got out of town for several weeks before they came back at the very end to try to wrap it up. It's hard to tell exactly what impact it will have. One would hope, frankly, in this situation given the unusual circumstances and in the crisis that were all in the midst of that it might pull people together in the spirit of doing the people's business.

But we've also seen this very same phenomenon, deep in political division. So it's really hard to tell now which way which route it will take in the state. A really visual representation of that I think our photos that I've seen and cancens of seen coming out of the state house with some lawmakers wearing masks, some lawmakers not wearing masks. Do you feel like that is adding to that sense of partisan tension? Absolutely. Let's go back to Washington for a second and when members of the U.S. House of Representatives were sequestered while the violence was going on and they were all sequestered in a room and you've seen the video as have I where you had members Democratic members largely of the house strolling around the room offering the Republican colleagues masks and the Republican colleagues were declining time after time after time. And so we see the same phenomenon here. I don't know, honestly, after covering politics for 40 years, I don't know how a mask in the middle of a contagious disease pandemic became such a political football. It just doesn't make any sense to me, but that's where we are.

And you literally have people who believe that wearing or not wearing a mask makes some sort of profound political statement about who they are. And you see that playing out in DC, you see it playing out in Topeka. And yes, I think symbolically you can look at it and say, well, that's just a small thing. Obviously, it's not because if it's effective in preventing the transmission of the disease, it's a very big thing. But I think it is indicative of where we are politically in terms of how deep the divisions run and you would think that somebody could make that small accommodation for a colleague regardless of party. But we're seeing that people can't bring themselves to do it. And so I do think that speaks volumes about where we are. COVID-19 has really shined a spotlight on the tension between Governor Kelly and lawmakers about the bigger issues of who decides who has the authority to act. Jim, do you see this as a partisan issue, Democrats versus Republicans or an institutional issue, the executive branch versus the legislative branch or local control?

That's a really good question. Okay. And I think it depends on the person, frankly, the member. But I think big picture sense, I think it's largely political. I don't think it's mechanical in terms of separation of powers and so forth. I think that unfortunately we're in a situation in this country where political campaigns never end. And Governor Kelly, of course, is a Democrat. And it's not as if we haven't had Democratic governors. I mean, I've seen several of them in my 40 years at the state house, John Carlin, of course, Kathleen Sibelius. And so it's not like this is a novel situation, but with such large Republican majorities in the House in Senate. And there are certainly a lot of people in the legislature who have ambitions about being governor or being a member of Congress, that kind of thing. It does seem to me that sometimes people go out of their way to pick partisan fights and situations where really that isn't in the best interest of the public that they serve.

And so to some degree, of course, I think that there is a genuine desire to make sure that we keep the executive power of the governor in check and that the legislature, although it's a part time legislature and only meets seasonally, has some say in the policy of the state in particularly in regard to the ability to shut down businesses and to interrupt commerce for public health reasons. Nevertheless, I do think it's largely a political fight. And just the other day, I was asking some members of the Republican leadership about the prospects for Medicaid expansion decision, something you probably want to talk about a little bit later. I was surprised by their answer, frankly, because instead of making a mounting a policy argument against expansion and against the potential cost of it and against extending health care benefits to low income canzans who are quote unquote able bodied those were the arguments in previous sessions. The argument I got back the other day was, hey, the governor isn't able to handle the responsibility she already has in terms of rolling out unemployment benefits and vaccine for the COVID-19 vaccine. She's not able to handle those things very well. So why would we want to give her another big responsibility on top of that? And I thought that was that portended that signal kind of where they were going to be in terms of the going to continue taking

the political shots at the governor for what they perceive as as ineffective rollouts. I mean, clearly the unemployment situation has been bad. There's no doubt about that. We can talk more about that later about why that might be. But they also perceive that she's vulnerable in terms of how fast the vaccine is getting out there. And so that very much seems to me like they're trying to soften her up for defeat perhaps in two years at the ballot box. Yeah, you've highlighted some some issues that will will delve into a little bit deeper. I want to go back to COVID-19 for a minute. We've talked about how it's affecting the mood, how it's affecting the institution itself. How will COVID-19 dominate the policy agenda this year? Well, clearly it's going to have an impact. The biggest thing that lawmakers do each year is of course formulate a budget and decide how much money to spend. And of course, COVID-19 pandemic is going to have an impact on how much money the state has to spend. So that's going to be one big thing right there. Then I think just as you said, this debate over who how is the power to do what the governor versus the legislature, the attorney general, even intervening in that in that conversation.

That's going to find its way one way or another into a lot of different debates too. And it may make it even harder for lawmakers and the governor to come to agree one on some issues because I think it's going to kind of infect the session generally speaking of that debate will. I think the pandemic will have and particularly depending again on on how once President Biden is inaugurated, you know, he is promising to really enhance the partnership between the federal government and states in terms of getting the vaccine out there and and making sure that it's getting to the people who need it. If that continues to if we continue to struggle to keep pace and get the vaccine out there in the way that people are anticipating, I think that could have a big impact to on the comedy of the session generally. Jim, the COVID-19 pandemic has had a huge effect on the Kansas economy. What do you see lawmakers doing to address that?

Well, there isn't a lot they can do. I think Republicans perceive that's why they're so determined to keep the power of the governor in check in terms of ordering businesses close to people to stay home as we did initially during the pandemic. Many of them believe that that is was really harmful to the economy. There's no doubt that it was. I mean, the debate, of course, is can you have a healthy economy if if we do not keep the spread of the coronavirus in check? And so I think. But anyway, I do think that the debate over over the powers of government to restrict commerce are going to be a big deal. And then as I said, of course, with so many more Keynesians unemployed, that is going to affect the flow of taxes into the state, which is going to diminish the revenues that we have to spend. Depending again on on whether the federal government decides to help local governments and states with their budget situations. And so clearly that's going to have an impact on a couple of fronts in terms of the functioning of the legislature.

I'm visiting with Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service. We're talking about the Kansas legislative session, which just kicked off this past week. Jim Governor Kelly announced her plans to create one big department of human services. What would be the effect of that? And how likely do you see that as happening? Well, it's interesting because she's essentially trying to recreate the old Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, which was created way back under former Democratic Governor Bob Dockin in the 60s. Bob Harder, Robert Harder, the long serving Secretary of SLS. I think he was the longest serving cabinet secretary, served governors of both parties for many, many years, created that department. And the idea then was there was only disparate social programs. They wanted to roll them all under one roof so that they could be more efficient and more effective because there are obviously connections between the food stamp program and the TANF program, which is the temporary assistance for needy families program. There are all kinds of connection points between those social service programs. So the idea then was let's coordinate it better by putting it all in one place.

Well, then former Republican Governor Sam Brownback came along and he reorganized state government and he created K-dads, the Department for Aging and Disability Services. And then he created DCF, which is the Department of Children and Families. And so the structure that we have now has not been around all that long. And essentially what Governor Kelly is proposing is to go back to the old structure of one big social welfare agency arguing again that there would be increased efficiency and accountability in doing that. I think that's debatable, frankly, and I don't expect a lot of Republicans to see that as a priority. One thing I do think, though, will factor into that debate is the troubles we've had in recent years with the state's foster care system. I mean, that system just does not seem to be working well. You recall that a couple of years ago, there were just story after story about foster care children that have been misplaced in the system. Literally, the Secretary of Department of Children and Families didn't know where they were, didn't know what their status was. And so I think we're still trying to get on top of that problem and get that system working.

And that's one of the arguments Governor Kelly is making in terms of going back to this single social service agency in terms of increasing the accountability and the efficiency and the connection points between those programs. But I don't really have a feel for how that debate will turn out. She tried it last year, didn't work. My guess is, depending on how partisan the session gets you, she will not be successful again this year. Jim, is that foster care system working better now? Probably working better. I think there's an awful lot of, I mean, Laura Howard, who is the Secretary right now. She actually is a Secretary of both agencies right now, even though they aren't combined, has made it a real priority. And I know that there's been a lot of changing of the guard in the department in terms of lawyers and other frontline workers there. And so I think that they're really some attention focused on it. And clearly it's working better than it was. But to say that it's affixed, I think we're far from that. Jim, let's go back to Medicaid expansion, which you touched on briefly. That was one of Governor Kelly's top issues when she was first elected Governor back in 2018.

There was some room for optimism that it might happen in 2020. What happened? Well, there was a political deal and it fell apart. I mean, COVID-19 happened. I think that that was so disruptive. But you're right. I mean, last year, what happened? Just prior to the session starting, Governor Kelly sat down with then Senate with your leader, Jim Denning from Overland Park, a Republican who had been opposed to Medicaid expansion. But said he was open to talking about it. So he and the governor sat down, talked about it and came to a deal. They came to an expand, a deal to expand Medicaid. And there was a big press conference held in the return of the State House. And there was a great deal of optimism that this was an issue that was finally going to, this was finally going to happen. Well, there was still plenty of Republican opposition to it, namely Senate President Susan Wagle, from which you saw who is no longer the Senate president, but was at the time. And she literally accused Jim Denning of being a traitor to the Republican cause and made it clear that Medicaid expansion was still going to be having uphill climb.

Well, so a couple of things happened then, obviously the pandemic and that's through the session into disarray, but also there was an issue that is going to be back again this year. The value them both proposal, which is essentially a proposal by anti-abortion forces to have the legislature reverse a Supreme Court decision of a couple of years ago that said the right to an abortion was was a right that could be found in the state's Bill of Rights, the state constitution. And so there's been an attempt to get a legislative remedy to that, the roll it back so that the legislature legislature can still regulate abortion in the fashion that it had become a constant. And so what's to what Senate president Wagle did is said, you know, we're going to hold Medicaid expansion hostages. And as you're knowing that a lot of people wanted it. I mean, frankly, there were the votes probably to pass it both in the House and the Senate had it come to the floor. President Wagle did not allow it to come to the Senate floor until the constitutional amendment on abortion had cleared the legislature.

The forces that were pushing for the ballot initiative wanted on the primary ballot, not the November ballot because they figured that the primary ballot that more of the people who were likely to vote for that amendment would be coming out in the primary. Well, three Republicans in the House said, no, we're not going to vote for it unless you move it back to the November general election when more voters will turn out. That didn't happen. The amendment did not clear the legislature. And so Medicaid expansion died being held hostage at the very end of the session by Senate president Susan Wagle. So that's what happened to that deal. Everybody was optimistic at the beginning of the session, but at the end still Medicaid expansion was left on the cutting room floor. I'm glad you touched on abortion because right off the bat, Kansas Republicans are saying they'd like to take up the issue of abortion again and and put it on an amendment to the state Constitution. Yeah, that's going to be clearly they serve notice like the session wasn't was only a day old when they held a

conference on the state house steps saying, yeah, we're going to go after this again. And so as we both know, I mean, those particularly with a Republican party, that abortion issue has been frankly, Kansas politics was changed back in the 90s on the abortion issue. The summer emergency protests that occurred in which tall energized people who had not been very active in politics, particularly on the Republican side. That's when starting at that point and right through the last 20 or 30 years is when conservatives really started to assert themselves more in terms of controlling the Republican party. So that's going to be a potent issue. There's going to be no way to ignore it. And interestingly, the governor doesn't really have much to do with this issue. If the legislature passes that proposed a member to the Constitution, it goes on the ballot that does not require the governor's signature. So, but clearly there is a desire in the part of the Republican majority in both the House and the Senate, particularly with new leadership in the Senate to get that done early, so it doesn't complicate everything as it did last year. Today on KPR presents, we're looking at what's ahead for the Kansas legislature, which kicked off its session last week.

I'm visiting with Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service. Jim Governor Laura Kelly released her budget proposal last week. Stuck out with you within that budget proposal. A couple of things. One, she wants to increase funding for mental health services. And she also wants to put another $40 million towards fixing the very much ad equated unemployment system over the Kansas Department of Labor. But in order to have the money to do that, she's going back to a proposal that she had last year, which is to impose a state sales tax on streaming services online services. They call it the Netflix tax, because if you go in, I mean, I know nobody's going in these days to rent DVDs, et cetera, at the blockbuster stores and so forth. But nevertheless, those kinds of bricks and mortar stores, when you go in and you have a transaction like that, you pay a sales tax, but on many online transactions like when you're paying for streaming services, you do not. And so Governor Kelly wants to capture that revenue and then apply it some of it to increasing funding for mental health services in the state and then also increasing sending several $40 million more dollars over the Department of Labor to help to help retrofit and fix this aging computer system that is inhibited hindered the state's ability to get unemployment benefits out in an efficient way.

So that stands out to me as a budget proposal. She's also wants to re-emortize, and this is really getting in the weeds, but it's important. She wants to re-emortize the state's long term debt relative to its pension system. And that's very controversial too, because it would free up about $160 million in the short term, but of course it would increase the amount we would inevitably ultimately have to pay to retire that debt, which now stands at about $9 billion. And it would extend the payments until 2046. And so over the course of that time, of course we would pay more than we would if we if we didn't re-emortize it. But the governor's argument is we need the money now, and that's a way to free up some much needed cash.

Anything else within the budget or the governor's state of the state address that jumped out at you? And I think the thing that jumped out at me was the governor's call for bipartisanship. I mean, she does it all the time, and of course she's a Democratic governor in a Republican state. And so I think that it's practical that she just remind people that voters are expecting the two parties to work together as much as they can. It was very strong in her language. She says, I mean, it's, she said, it's the kind of thing that voters expect of us in normal times, but it's the kind of thing that they demand of us in these times of crisis and the pandemic and everything else it's going on. And so it's the language she used there really stood out to me. I don't know how much the Republican leadership will heed that language, but she made a very strong appeal for bipartisanship in the speech, so that stood out to me. The effort she went to to to say that the vaccine, the COVID-19 vaccines that are rolling out now, that those vaccines are safe and tested, notwithstanding the fact that they had been put into production in literally record time, she went out of a way to say that there's been a lot of misinformation out there about the vaccines, I'm quoting from the speech now.

The internet conspiracy theory is complete nonsense, make no mistake, the science behind the vaccines is solid. And so I thought that was interesting too, that she took time in her state of the state speech to do that. Jim, you mentioned Republican leadership. There have been some changes in Republican leadership, Senate President Ty Masterson taking over from Susan Wagle, but some things are staying the same. And it's still Speaker of the House. How will those two leadership positions play out in the year ahead? Well, as we know, these are not household names for many canzens. Those of us who pay attention to what happens at the state house, certainly know who these folks are. Ron Reichman, Jr., who is the Speaker of the House, he's serving an unprecedented third term. I mean, typically the tradition in Kansas has been.

If you're elected Speaker, you serve two terms, then you, you leave, but Representative Reichman is now in his third term. Dan Hawkins from Wichita is the, you know, second term as the majority leader of the House, Tom Sawyer from Wichita is still the minority, the Democratic leader, the big changes, of course, happened in the Senate. I referenced Senate President, former Senate President Susan Wagle before. She has now been replaced by, as you said, Ty Masterson, who is a long time, he's a veteran member of the Senate from Andover, and very conservative and rhetorically gifted. I mean, he's a good speaker and he has been kind of, he founded something in the legislature a couple years ago called the Truth Caucus, which is a caucus of very conservative members, and he led that caucus. And so he always had, he always had a role to play, particularly in the Senate Republican caucus, as kind of the spokesperson for this group of conservatives in the Republican caucus over there, particularly when several moderates got elected in kind of a backlash to the brown back, tax cuts, many of those moderates, of course, are now gone and have been replaced by conservatives, hence Masterson's election to the president's position.

But it'll be very interesting to see how he leads the Senate because he has been very effective, I think, as, and I use this term advisedly, but I think people will know what I mean by it as kind of a bomb thrower, you know, somebody who rhetorically will stand up on the floor and object in will. But now he's in a leadership position and he'll have to figure out how to lead that caucus and how to get the things done that absolutely need to be done and how to work with the governor to get those things done. So it'll be interesting to see how he leads that caucus. There's also a new Senate Majority Leader in Gene Sullen-Trop, he's been around for a while too, very conservative from which saw very much opposed to Medicaid expansion. And so that's a pretty conservative duo. And then Senator Wilborn is going to be the new vice president of the Senate. He replaces Senator Jeff Longbine from Emporia. Longbine was the vice president a year ago was a rather moderate senator. So he was a moderating force in that leadership and that, and Senator Wilborn is not as moderate. So it really is a solidly conservative trio of senators who are leading that Republican caucus now.

And that will obviously make a difference in terms of how they deal with the governor. I should mention too that the, because I do think this is worth noting. Senator Anthony Hensley, if the peak had been the longest serving legislature in the history of the state, he to the surprise of many was defeated last year. And replacing him as the Democratic leader in the Senate is Senator Dynas Sykes from LaNexa. You'll remember that she, she just a few years ago changed party. She was a moderate Republican from Johnson County. She's now a Democrat and she's now not only a Democrat, but she's leading the Democratic caucus in the Senate. That will be interesting as well. It does feel like the end of an arrow with Anthony Hensley being defeated. What will be his legacy? Well, he was a member of the House forever and then he was a member of the Senate forever. I mean, he again, longest serving legislature in the state's history. He was really, really passionate on education and school finance issues. I'm not sure we would, we would have gotten the ultimately gotten the deal that ended the all the litigation and the Supreme Court case on school finance.

I think he had a great deal to do with that. I mean, that was clearly the issue from start to finish that Anthony Hensley cared most about. He was also very outspoken on labor issues over the years. And so I think ultimately those will be his policy legacies, but also he was just a presence in the state house. He'd been around for so long. He knew the rules. It was said that he had the best filing system in state government, which meant that, you know, he could open up his file drawer and pull out something from 20 years ago that was applicable to a debate or something else. And, you know, he just had was was very detail oriented in that way. And so I think his presence will certainly be missed. He was a real real force around the Capitol for a long time, notwithstanding the fact that he was leading most of the time a fairly small minority in the Senate. Jim, a last question. Governor Laura Kelly was elected in 2018. She's up for re-election in 2022 halfway through her term. How would you characterize the Kelly era?

That's a good question. It depends on your perspective. It depends on, you know, whether I'm characterizing it from her point of view or the point of view of some of the Republican leadership in the legislature. But just let me step back from maybe both of those. I think the way I would characterize at least the way that Governor Kelly is attempting the governor of the state. She wants to be seen as kind of the steady hand at the wheel. She's not overly political because she can afford to be as a Democrat and Republican state. Nevertheless, she's not overly political. She's very practical. She's she was on the budget writing committee forever. And so she knows that process inside out. She wants to be seen as someone who is simply trying to manage this state as best she can. And yet I think that they're she's had a couple of unfortunate things. Of course, happened. She she campaign saying she was wanting to repudiate the brown back years saying we're going to go back to a sound fiscal policy. And not dig ourselves into a hole like we did with the brown back tax cuts. I think she's she's really achieved a lot along those lines. Clearly her work with Senator Republican Senator Jim Denning in particular to to in the decades of litigation over school finance and at least for the time being to to end that Supreme Court case and get the state on the right track in terms of financing its public education system.

I think you can credit her with that. She has not succeeded, of course, in getting Medicaid expansion past despite that being a big campaign promise. But I do think a couple of unfortunate things have happened. The pandemic, of course, has been very disruptive to her agenda. And she's had that's front and center. She absolutely has had to pay attention to that and do the best she can. That's led to a lot of friction, of course, with the legislature over her powers versus theirs. And then I think the unemployment debacle. She inherited a very bad system, one that had been neglected by administrations of both parties leading up to this point, one that simply was not up to the task of responding to this crisis when the pandemic put so many people out of work. And regardless of whether or not that was her fault, there is the perception that she hasn't done enough to fix it quickly enough.

And so I think right now it's kind of an uneven performance to this point, again, because of a couple of things she couldn't have anticipated and probably didn't have fully, fully under her control. Nevertheless, she is governor. And so I think she's trying very much to get on top of the unemployment situation. And she's doing the best she can. I think she again was hampered in terms of the state's response to the pandemic by. The federal government is a full partner in that. And so I think that hindered her efforts there. So, you know, she's she's done some pretty, she's had some success in terms of school finance and getting the budget again back in shape. She's she's no longer going to be borrowing money from the state highway fund just to plug holes in the budget. That's a big deal. But I do think the pandemic and then the resulting crash of the unemployment system in the state are things that Republicans are going to continue to criticize her on. And so I'm just sitting with Jim McLean of the Kansas News Service. We've been talking about Kansas politics as the legislature starts its 2021 session. Jim, always great to talk to you.

Thanks a lot. I'm Kay McIntyre. KPR presents is a production of Kansas Public Radio at the University of Kansas.