“President Obama has settled on Gov. Kathleen Sebelius of Kansas, a key ally with a record of working across party lines, as his top choice for secretary of health and human services, advisers said Wednesday.”
Tag: Kathleen Sebelius
Kansas Governor Addresses Budget Crisis
Today Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius held a press conference at 4:30 pm.
She said she submitted a budget to the legislature five weeks ago, and that the bill just reached her desk today. But the budget she submitted back then, while meeting the requirements of law, didn’t meet the requirements of the situation. It was not a responsible budget. The legislature had to make the hard cuts. See Sebelius’ Proposed Cuts Not Likely Enough and Kansas Governor Not Facing Reality of Budget Crisis.
Today, after the Governor’s action, there is less reduction in K-12 education that what was in the bill sent to her. She said the cuts to K-12 education that the legislature made are unacceptable.
The problem going forward is that the 2010 budget will require even more cutting — more than twice as much — than what took five weeks of this session to accomplish.
Kansas Budget Crisis Heats Up
It’s hard to know who’s on the right side in this matter. Facts seem to be in short supply, with contradictory statements coming from Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Kansas House and Senate Republican Leadership.
The Wichita Eagle’s Wichitopekington blog contributes these posts: Talking points for legislative secretaries, Senate leaders urge governor to call council meeting today, and Governor sends message to state employees, which holds the text of an email message the Governor sent today. Blaming, naturally, Republicans.
The Kansas Democratic Party has a post titled Tell Republicans to Stop Blackmailing and Get to Work, in which you can sign a petition. This site is not shy from using scare tactics such as articles titled Republican Budget Cuts Could Forces Schools to Fire Teachers.
The Kansas Republican Assembly blog has the posts House leadership responds to Sebelius lies and Who will blink first?.
In the post KS GOP Blasts Governor for Playing Politics with State Employees, Christian Morgan of the Kansas Republican Party claims that the Governor has the ability to do what needs to be done, but will not do so. There also the Statement from House Republican Leadership Regarding the Kansas Budget.
The Kansas Jackass is on top of this all with posts like Walkout of State Employees Possible, Employees Threatened, At the Statehouse: Democratic Leadership Responds to GOP Blackmail of Sebelius, and GOP Leadership Blackmails Sebelius, Puts State Payroll in Jeopardy.
The Kansas Trunkline, the official blog of the Kansas Republican Party, has What You Need to Know About the Kansas Budget Crisis and Governor Playing Politics with State Employees.
Can you make sense of this?
The Kansas (Governor Budget) Comedy
At National Review, Denis Boyles makes an observation about Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and her handling of the Kansas budget this year, particularly events this week:
Sebelius knew about this coming shortfall because the state legislature has been telling her about it for months. Instead of following the rules, she let the clock run out, canceled a meeting to discuss the problem with legislative leaders, and then sent out a press release claiming the poor would soon die because Republicans had made her stop sending people their tax refunds. The press did the rest.
The article is That Kansas Comedy.
Kansas budget crisis, now
Breaking: see Kansas Governor Addresses Budget Crisis and Kansas Budget Crisis Heats Up.
The Kansas Liberty story Lawmakers claim Sebelius’ demand for money would violate state statutes reports on a conflict between the two parties named in the story’s title.
What Kansas Governor Kathleen Sibelius wants to do is to shift money from one state fund to another so that current bills, including state employee paychecks, can be paid. Later, the state would pay back the money borrowed.
Republican legislative leaders are not willing to grant this authority to the Governor, however. Both sides accuse the other of playing politics with this issue. The Governor’s press release may be read here.
(Similar information from Kansas House and Senate leaders is not available online, at least not where it can be found easily.)
It’s difficult to be on the Governor’s side on this issue. Her initial attempt at balancing the 2009 budget complied with the law. But the law only required her to address revenue shortfalls based on estimates from two months ago, when everyone knew that the true situation was much worse. She took the easy way out, letting the legislature do the dirty work. (See Sebelius’ Proposed Cuts Not Likely Enough and Kansas Governor Not Facing Reality of Budget Crisis)
For more coverage of this issue, see Wichitopekington, which has some coverage, as does the Wichita Eagle in Kansas may delay tax refunds, paychecks.
Note: Kansas Liberty has recently become a subscription site, so you may not be able to read the entire article referred to above. I recommend, however, that you consider subscribing to Kansas Liberty.
Kansas Climate Change Group Changes
In his piece Separate But Still the Same, climate change alarmist watchdog Paul Chesser writes “A global warming alarmist group that masqueraded for the last few years as an objective consultant for many states announced this week that it has been disowned by its global warming alarmist parents.”
This article describes changes made at the Center for Climate Strategies. This is of interest to us in Kansas for at least one reason. Here’s Chesser’s paraphrasing of CCS’ pitch made to states:
There is a human-caused global warming crisis and the states must do something about it, because the federal government is not. We ask the governor to issue an executive order that confirms this crisis and creates a commission to study greenhouse gas emissions — but call it a “climate commission.” Appoint members who buy into the anthropogenic global warming crisis, and include some representatives from utilities and business, but not too many or they might screw things up. Once you hire CCS, we will take care of everything for you from then on: run the meetings, set the agendas, write the meeting minutes, provide technical analysis, maintain the website, and establish the voting rules. Oh, and the Rockefeller Brothers Fund and other global warming alarmist foundations have provided the funding for our work, so don’t you worry! Just let CCS do its thing.
Kansas, by way of Governor Kathleen Sebelius‘s executive order establishing Kansas Energy and Environmental Policy Advisory Group (KEEP), fell for this sales pitch — con job, really — and we’ll be paying for this mistake for years to come.
Drinkwine editorial on Kansas carbon emissions overlooks evidence
Frank Drinkwine of the Kansas Sierra Club has an editorial in today’s Wichita Eagle that ignores some important facts. (Frank Drinkwine: Bremby has and needs authority to protect air, February 5, 2009 Wichita Eagle.)
Setting aside for the moment the climate change hysteria that Drinkwine relies on (and we really shouldn’t set that aside), he’s wrong when he ascribes pure motives to Red Bremby, Kansas Health and Environment Secretary. It’s apparent that when Bremby denied the permit for the expansion of the Holcomb station power plant his motivation was political.
In February 2008, according to Associated Press reporting, Rod Bremby was apparently willing to approve a permit for a Hyperion oil refinery that would emit 17 million tons of carbon a year, when he denied the Holcomb Station power plan expansion solely because of its emissions of 11 million tons. (See Oil refiner wary of coming to Kansas, also Rod Bremby’s Action Drove Away the Refinery.)
Drinkwine writes “No other projects have been presented to Bremby for permitting that even remotely rival the scale of the Holcomb project.” I believe this is true, but a story from last year in the Topeka Capital-Journal reports “Bremby wrote he couldn’t commit to issuing the permit but said if Hyperion submitted the same application as they did in South Dakota, there “should not be a problem with issuance.’” Remember that this is for a plant that would emit 17 million tons of carbon per year, as compared to Holcomb’s 11 million tons.
Why would he be willing to approve 17 million tons of carbon emissions, but not 11 million tons? It’s a good question. Perhaps oil refineries don’t carry the stigma of coal. Perhaps Bremby was just doing the bidding of our governor as she prepared to build her green credentials as she entered the national stage.
Did Kansas Governor Order Budget Cuts Last Year?
Has the Kansas budget already been cut for fiscal year 2009, the budget year ending June 30, 2009?
Some people think so. A commenter to this blog says “the Governor did order these cuts,” referring to cuts made starting last summer.
But is this the case? I asked the governor’s office about this, and they sent a link to a press release from last June. It’s not clear if it refers to actual cuts, or requests to find ways to spend less. It starts like this: “At the State Finance Council meeting today, Governor Kathleen Sebelius announced that she is asking all cabinet agencies to find ways to reduce their upcoming budget by one to two percent.”
(The press release is at www.governor.ks.gov/news/NewsRelease/2008/nr-08-0627b.htm.)
Is this the same as ordering budget cuts? It’s hard to say.
The Associated Press, however, leads us to believe that cuts were never made by state agencies in their 2009 budgets. From their story of November 28, 2008 GOP leaders to Sebelius: order cuts now:
In June, Sebelius informed state agency officials it might be necessary to reduce spending 1 percent to 2 percent in the current fiscal year and to be prepared to trim as much as 5 percent the following year.
After the November election, Sebelius told agencies that planning should reflect a possible 3 percent cut this fiscal year.
Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, said he didn’t believe it necessary for the Legislature to pass a bill because the governor is “seriously intending” to make cuts in the current budget.
Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran said the governor will begin a review next week of recommendations from Cabinet agencies of options for reducing costs. She said Sebelius hasn’t ruled out formal action in the near term.
So did she cut the budget last summer, or didn’t she?
Does “planning for a possible 3 percent cut” mean the same thing as actually spending less? It doesn’t seem so.
Another Misleading Question by GPACE
Yesterday we saw how the website of the Great Plains Alliance for Clean Energy contains a list of ten questions for Sunflower supporters. My post GPACE “Sunflower” Questions Misleading showed how these questions are designed to influence public opinion in a very misleading manner.
One of the ways some of the questions are misleading is that they’re based on a false premise (or two). Here’s question number eight, which provides another example: “How is it a good idea for the part-time, partisan Kansas Legislature to be responsible for thousands of annual permit requests and for enforcing compliance, in addition to other priorities and constitutional duties?”
This question is based on this premise: that because a majority of Kansas legislators want to overrule one decision made by Rod Bremby, Secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the legislature wants to be responsible for all decisions made by KDHE.
That’s quite a leap of logic, and one unsupported by any public statement by any member of the legislature that I’ve seen. This question is obviously designed to evoke a specific response unsupported by facts. It’s misleading.
Here’s something else: The use of the word partisan in describing the legislature. This is designed to convince people that the action taken by the legislature was tainted because it was based on political considerations, rather than other considerations of a higher order such as, say, scientific evidence.
The reality is that the Sunflower electrical plant permit was approved by the professional staff of KDHE. It was KDHE Secretary Rod Bremby, a political appointee of Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius, who decided to overrule his staff and deny the permit. That sounds like partisan action to me.
GPACE’s website states “GPACE seeks to correct an imbalance in the information citizens and their elected representatives have received regarding the critical and complex energy policy decisions facing our state.” From what we’ve seen so far, GPACE’s misleading and loaded questions contribute to misinformation rather than balance.