In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: In Wichita, historic value is gone in a flash, a flip-flop on drivers permits, and does the city really believe in transparency or was it just a way to get votes? Then, let’s stop calling a vice a sin, and what does the Kansas Legislature really want you to know? View below, or click here to view on YouTube. Episode 74, broadcast February 8, 2015.
Citizens who want to be informed of the happenings of the Kansas Legislature have these resources available.
Legislative documents
The Legislature’s site at kslegislature.org has rosters of members, lists of committees, lists of bills, journals (the daily record of proceedings in each chamber), calendars (the plan for the day, along with topics for upcoming committee meetings).
A useful feature is the “Current Happenings” link for both the House and Senate. This has a link to the bills that have seen movement in some way each day. The page for each bill is generally useful, too, with the steps in the bill’s history, along with links to the bill text, fiscal and supplemental notes, and other material. Fiscal notes — prepared by the Division of Budget — estimate the financial impact of a bill, while the supplemental notes — prepared by Kansas Legislative Research Department — contain background and explanatory information. When attempting to understand legislation, the fiscal and supplemental notes are very useful.
Audio and video
Both the House and Senate broadcast audio of their proceedings. But you must listen live, as the broadcasts are not made available to the public in any other way. It would be exceedingly simple to make these past broadcasts available to the public, as explained here. But the legislature does not retain audio recordings of sessions.
The Kansas Legislature does not make available video of its proceedings.
Documents
Kansas Legislative Research Department (KLRD) has many documents that are useful in understanding state government and the legislature. This agency’s home page is www.kslegresearch.org/klrd.html. Of particular interest:
Kansas Legislative Briefing Book. This book’s audience is legislators, but anyone can benefit. The book has a chapter for major areas of state policy and legislation, giving history, background, and explanations of law. In some years the entire collection of material has been made available as a single pdf file, but not so this year. Contact information for the legislative analysts is made available in each chapter. The most recent version can be found on the Reports and Publications page. The version for 2015 is available here.
Kansas Fiscal Facts. This book, in 118 pages, provides “basic budgetary facts” to those without budgetary experience. It provides an overview of the budget, and then more information for each of the six branches of Kansas state government. There is a glossary and contact information for the fiscal analysts responsible for different areas of the budget. This document is updated each year. The most recent version can be found on the Reports and Publications page.
Legislative Procedure in Kansas. This book of 236 pages holds the rules and explanations of how the Kansas Legislature works. It was last revised in November 2006, but the subject that is the content of this book changes slowly over the years. The direct link is Legislative Procedure in Kansas, November 2006.
How a Bill Becomes Law. This is a one-page diagram of the legislative steps involved in passing laws. The direct link is How a Bill Becomes Law.
Summary of Legislation. This document is created each year, and is invaluable in remembering what laws were passed each year. From its introduction: “This publication includes summaries of the legislation enacted by the 2014 Legislature. Not summarized are bills of a limited, local, technical, clarifying, or repealing nature, and bills that were vetoed (sustained).” 189 pages for 2014. The most recent version can be found on the Reports and Publications page.
Legislative Highlights. This is a more compact version of the Summary of Legislation, providing the essentials of the legislative session in 12 pages for 2014. The most recent version can be found on the Reports and Publications page.
Kansas Tax Facts. This book provides information on state and local taxes in Kansas. The most recent version can be found on the <a href=”http://kslegresearch.org/Revenue&Tax.htm target=”_blank”>Revenue and Tax page.
Kansas Statutes. The laws of our state. The current statutes can be found at the Revisor of Statutes page.
Kansas Register. From the Kansas Secretary of State: “The Kansas Register is the official state newspaper. This publication provides a wide range of information such as proposed and adopted administrative regulations, new state laws, bond sales and redemptions, notice of open meetings, state contracts offered for bid, attorney general opinions, and many other public notices.” The Register is published each week, and may be found at Kansas Register.
Which buildings in Wichita have historic value can change at the whim of the council.
The Wichita City Council has decided that three historic buildings in Wichita are no longer worthy of preservation. Today the council reversed a decision by the Historic Preservation Board and will allow the property owner to proceed with the demolition of three formerly historic buildings in southern downtown Wichita.
The impetus for the demolition is a request by the new property owners, who also own the nearby WaterWalk development.
For those who believe in property rights, if the owner of a building wants to tear it down, that is their right. The owners should not have to ask anyone’s permission. The owners should not have to overcome regulations created by busybodies who claim rights to property based on their assertion that they know what is the best use of others’ property.
But the city council doesn’t feel that way. Council members feel that they are best judges of what should be done with a property.
So it is strange to see the council consent to the request of these developers. The WaterWalk development has received many millions of taxpayer subsidy and has produced very little benefit so far. Even the editorial board of the Wichita Eagle can see that. I’m almost surprised that the council was not skeptical of the judgment of the property owners.
All members but Janet Miller (district 6, north central Wichita) voted in favor. James Clendenin (district 3, southeast and south Wichita) did not vote.
Despite having a website with the capability, only about one-third of standing committees in the Kansas Legislature are providing written testimony online.
On the Kansas Legislature website, each committee has its own page. On these committee pages there are links for “Committee Agenda,” “Committee Minutes,” and “Testimony.” But in most cases there is no data behind these links.
In particular, the written testimony and informational presentations provided to committees would be of interest and value to citizens. Most committees — perhaps all — require conferees to supply a pdf or Microsoft Word version of their testimony in advance of the hearing. These electronic documents could be placed online before the committee hearing. Then, anyone with a computer, tablet, or smartphone could have these documents available to them.
Having committee testimony online would be extremely useful for those who attend hearings. Often there is only a limited number of printed copies of testimony available, so not everyone gets a copy.
This would not be difficult to accomplish. It would cost very little, perhaps nothing.
Plus, citizens could access these documents. Of note, many organizations that regularly testify before the legislature make their testimony available on their own websites. Examples include Kansas Association of School Boards and Kansas Policy Institute.
Publishing testimony online would be an easy matter to accomplish and would be a great help to those following the legislature. It would cost very little or nothing.
Following is a list of all standing committees of the legislature and whether they have any testimony online for the 2015 session. A notation of “Yes” does not imply that all testimony is available online. It means that I found some testimony. Some committees are not listed as they do not meet for the purpose of receiving testimony. (Calendar and Printing in the House is an example.)
Of the 40 standing committees that I examined, 26 do not provide any testimony online.
In this episode of WichitaLiberty.TV: Radio talk show Joseph Ashby appears to talk about transparency in the Kansas Legislature and the State of the City Address for Wichita. View below, or click here to view at YouTube. Episode 73, broadcast February 1, 2015.
The video of Titus referred to is now available here.
Judicial panel used cherry-picked data in Gannon decision
By David Dorsey
(w)e conclude that the Kansas K-12 school finance formula still stands as constitutionally inadequate by its failure to assure and implement adequate funding to meet and sustain a constitutionally adequate education as a matter of sound expert opinion from those with relevant and reliable expertise and experience with the Kansas K-12 school system.(emphasis added)
Thus is the opinion, filed December 30, 2014, from the Shawnee County District Court three-judge panel as tasked by the Kansas Supreme Court pursuant to their decision in Gannon v. Kansas in March of 2014.
We reported in a previous KPI blog that the unspecified underfunding of K-12 public education in Kansas identified in this decision is at least $548 million. The judges based their opinion on several categories of adequacy they deemed relevant to the case. One such category in the decision is entitled Adequacy As A Matter Of Student Performance (pp. 20-48). The judges included as its linchpin evidence an interview with Kansas City, Kansas USD 500 superintendent Dr. Cynthia Lane. Dr. Lane provided testimony regarding how a federal grant enabled Emerson Elementary, a USD 500 school, to significantly increase student performance.
In short, Emerson Elementary is a small K-5 school. Several years ago, it gained notoriety for being declared the lowest performing elementary school in Kansas. As such, it was awarded a School Improvement Grant (SIG) from KSDE, authorized by the No Child Left Behind law. The school was given nearly $3 million over a three-year period (2010-11 to 2012-13 school years) to improve state assessment test scores. Dr. Lane testified that “fewer than 30 percent” of the students met state standards in math and reading prior to receiving the grant. According to demographic data published by KSDE, Emerson has about 95% economically disadvantaged students. While Dr. Lane testified that Emerson is ethnically “about 50 percent African American and about 48 percent Hispanic,” KSDE reported that the ethnic breakdown is about two-thirds Hispanic, one-quarter African American and less than 10% white. She told the court that over the life of the grant Emerson’s students performed “on both the reading and math state assessment to have more than 85 percent … meeting or exceeding expectations just in the last three years. It’s a remarkable story.”
Apparently the court agreed, afforded to say:
Given the continuing grade advancement and migration upwards of K-12 schoolers during their school careers, it seems but obvious that for educational advancement, much less the maintenance of results accomplished prior with the earlier funding initiatives implemented, but now abandoned, that the revenue streams which supported those results in that period of favorable funding needed to be continued to be provided in order to properly educate the continuing stream of new faces going forward, either initially entering the school system or advancing in grade. No evidence or proffer of evidence supports otherwise. (pp. 39-40, emphasis not added)
Translated: More money = greater student achievement, and there is no evidence to the contrary.
I will now proffer contrary evidence, a much less remarkable story that should have been proffered in the original court case: Northwest Middle School.
The same year Emerson Elementary was awarded its SIG, another USD 500 school, Northwest Middle School, was awarded a similar grant with a higher amount of $4.77 million. Northwest has similar minority and economically disadvantaged populations to Emerson Elementary (just over half African American and just over one-third Hispanic and 98% low income). But the outcomes pursuant to the SIG were very much dissimilar, indeed.
The following table and the accompanying graph show how Northwest Middle School scored on the state reading and math assessments for the three years prior to receiving the SIG and during the three-year implementation of the grant.
As the graphics show, achievement at Northwest had an uptick in both math and reading the first year of the grant, but then fell off dramatically the following two years. To put their performance in perspective the following graphs compare Northwest to Rosedale Middle School (the USD 500 school most comparable to Northwest according to KSDE) and the USD 500 district as a whole.
In reading, Northwest underperformed both Rosedale (which did not get a SIG) and the district as a whole both prior to and after receiving the grant. The trend and gap between Northwest and Rosedale remained amazingly consistent throughout this period. The picture in math is a little different. Northwest students maintained a slight advantage over Rosedale throughout the grant period and nearly eliminated the gap with the district as a whole. However, the overall trend is downward, with just over 40% of the Northwest middle schoolers proficient in math as of the last recorded state assessments.
It is safe to say that in terms of achievement, that $4.77 million granted to Northwest Middle School in Kansas City, Kansas didn’t buy much. This is evidence that, once again, more money does not inherently make a difference in student outcomes. This nationwide study conducted by the Heritage Foundation supports that contention. Even Kansas’s own Legislative Post Audit says in this report (p. 107) that a correlation between increased funding and increased outcomes is inconclusive.
As a 20-year teaching veteran, I know it’s not the money that makes a difference in student achievement. It’s commitment by students, parents, teachers, principals and administrators to make it happen. Trying to quantify that in dollar terms is a fool’s errand. If the increase in education funding prescribed in the most recent Gannon decision were to become a reality, it would mean a nice raise for teachers and likely more administrators, but student outcomes would remain flat and achievement gaps would continue. Think of it as Montoy redux.
Clearly, the judges got it wrong. Let’s hope their decision gets overturned on appeal and an end is put to this seemingly endless carousel of education funding lawsuits. The citizens of Kansas deserve better.
Currently, the proceedings of the Kansas Senate and House of Representatives are not available on video. The audio is broadcast on the internet, but it’s live only. No archiving. You must listen live, or figure out some way to record it on your own. It’s possible, but beyond what most people are willing to do. Given the unpredictable schedule of the legislature, you can’t simply set a timer to start at a certain time each day.
Video of the proceedings would be great. Even better is archived video, where a person doesn’t have to watch live. But these options are expensive. The expenditure would be worthwhile, but there doesn’t seem to be much desire to spend on this.
Based on this tweet, we know the attitude of Rep. Dan Hawkins of Wichita is disrespectful to Kansans who want to follow the Legislature.But for eight dollars per month the legislature could make its audio proceedings available to listen to at any time.
For eight dollars per month at least one podcast hosting company offers an unlimited plan. Unlimited storage, and unlimited bandwidth. That’s just what is needed. Since the audio of the proceedings is broadcast on the internet, it must pass through a computer somewhere. That computer could also be recording the audio. Once recorded, the process of uploading the audio to the podcast host is a trivial procedure. If not being recorded, any number of open source (free) applications like Audacity can do the recording.
But neither Kansas legislative chamber records their proceedings, according to the Secretary of the Senate and the Chief Clerk of the House.
This is so simple. It is almost without cost. It would have great benefit.
Interns can do this.
But the Kansas Legislature doesn’t do this.
This is how much your legislative leaders want you to know.
Those who criticize lower Kansas tax rates tax rates as an experiment that may not work should be aware that we know with certainty what hasn’t worked in Kansas.
There are a number of ways to measure the performance of an economy. Often the growth of jobs is used. That’s fine. Here I present an alternative: the gross domestic product for a state. As with job growth, it is not the only measure of a state’s economy. GDP is a comprehensive measure, encompassing changes in population, employment, and productivity. The nearby static illustration from an interactive visualization shows Kansas (highlighted in blue) compared to some neighboring states.
Real GDP by state, Kansas highlighted, through 2013. Click for larger version.The top chart shows the change in GDP from the previous year. Kansas, highlighted in dark blue, is often near the bottom of a selection of neighboring states. The bottom chart shows growth in GDP since 1997. Again, Kansas is near the bottom of neighboring states.
Neither of these trends is recent. The Kansas economy has been underperforming for many years. We need no experiment to tell us this. It is in our data, and is part of the legacy of decades of moderate Kansas leadership.
The visualization holds data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. You may click on a state’s name to highlight it. You may choose different industry sectors, such as government or private industry.
Click here to open the visualization in a new window. Visualization created using Tableau Public.
But the city council doesn’t feel that way. Council members feel that they are best judges of what should be done with a property.
The visualization holds data from the U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis. You may click on a state’s name to highlight it. You may choose different industry sectors, such as government or private industry.
