Democrats warn against locking down budget, tax bills before revenue picture clear

TOPEKA — Gov. Laura Kelly marked close of the Kansas Legislature’s regular session by signing a bipartisan bill forbidding applicants for about 85% of state government jobs from being rejected solely due to lack of a college degree.

Kelly, the second-term Democratic governor, said she previously implemented that standard in executive branch agencies under her jurisdiction. The House and Senate approved Senate Bill 166 to formally emphasize a person’s prior experience or specialized training when determining work readiness for state government jobs.

“I am pleased to sign this bill to codify this practice,” she said. “There are a multitude of factors that go into employment consideration, and a postsecondary degree should not always be the deciding factor.”

No more than 15% of state employees worked in positions for which a college degree was necessary. These jobs would be exempted from the new state law.

“Countless Kansans chose to build their careers rather than take on debt for a degree, and it’s time we recognize and reward their skills,” said Rep. Sean Tarwater, a Stilwell Republican convinced he learned more on the job than in college earning a master’s degree.

The governor signed a cluster of noncontroversial bills last week as the 2025 Legislature brought the regular session to a close Thursday with a flurry of partisan activity. These pieces of new state law require higher educational institutions to update accreditation policies regularly, allowed dependents of military personnel stationed in Kansas to enroll in school early, voided a discriminatory residential covenant inhibiting a Wichita State University project and expanded college financial aid to Kansas National Guard members and their families.

Kelly will have an opportunity to sign or veto additional bills piled on her desk before the Legislature’s scheduled return April 10. House and Senate leadership want to quickly conclude their business for 2025. The goal of GOP leaders has been to tie the hands of Kelly in terms of budget and tax policy, while avoiding a repeat of the 2024 special session devoted to passage of a monumental state income tax cut.

Matter of perspective

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, praised the House for its dedication since the annual session began in January. He deflected questions about whether he would run for state insurance commissioner in 2026, but touted work of the 125-member House under his control.

“We have done a great job this year,” said Hawkins, referring to the first session since legislators salaries nearly doubled their salaries. “Do you realize that not once did we go past midnight. ”

Lenexa Sen. Dinah Sykes, who leads Senate Democrats, said the session was artificially shortened by GOP leadership to get the House and Senate out of Topeka before issuance of new state revenue estimates in mid-April. Normally, the Legislature would rely on that revised financial report to set final spending and tax policies before adjourning. This year, she said, Republicans insisted on flying blind and risked unnecessarily cratering the state budget.

“Republican legislative leaders condensed the schedule this year to complete work before we fully understand how the tax cuts we passed affect our budget,” Sykes said. “It’s irresponsible to make critical decisions without knowing the full consequences. In the future, we need to slow down and work together on bipartisan solutions that address real challenges in our state and benefit all Kansas families.”

In 2024, the consensus revenue group met April 17 to revise estimates made in November 2023 based on the additional six months of actual data.

Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, a Wichita Republican, pushed back.

“We have done a tremendous amount of work, and I believe a lot of good for the people of Kansas,” he said.

Veto pen at ready

The bipartisan harmony that greeted Kelly’s signing of a cluster of bills Friday clashed with the governor’s work on a pair of bills this session on election and health are reform. In both instances, the Republican-dominated House and Senate responded to Kelly’s vetoes with two-thirds majority votes to override her.

The House and Senate agreed to punt Kelly’s veto of Senate Bill 4, which ended the three-day grace period for advance mail ballots arriving late at county election offices. Kelly said the bill would disenfranchise voters. State lawmakers also derailed her veto of Senate Bill 63, which prohibited health care providers from delivering gender-affirming medical care to minors. The governor said the law ignored a Kansas value of respecting parental rights.

“As I’ve said before, it is not the job of politicians to stand between a parent and a child who needs medical care of any kind,” Kelly said.

Kelly will have additional opportunities to veto bills that range from much-debated legislation on taxes, education, elections and child support for fetuses to lower-key bills on firework sales, sex education, government secrecy, horse racing and employee background checks.

While issuance of specialty state license plates for nonprofit organizations rarely produced controversy, Senate Bill 18 would authorize a plate for Hunter Nation Inc. The organization says it was dedicated to the political or legal fight to build “a grassroots army to promote and protect the traditional American values of God, family, country and the hunting way of life.” Hunter Nation has a litigation fund to pursue its agenda, including a plan to end federal listing of the gray wolf as threatened or endangered in 48 states.

“It’s a very bad policy to use license plates to espouse political or religious causes,” said Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita.

The budget debate

In terms of the state government’s budget woven into Senate Bill 125, Kansas governors have the option of rejecting the entire package or making line-item vetoes of specific spending provisions. Kelly has used this power in the past to jettison earmarks inserted into the budget at the behest of special interests.

In the new state budget, Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City, said she was concerned millions of dollars was earmarked to purchase a firearm-detection software system that would rely on school cameras to remotely identify people with guns. At the same time, she said, the budget didn’t appropriate enough for K-12 special education programs.

Sen. Renee Erickson, R-Wichita, said the Legislature was once again spending far too much. It was wrong to have allowed state general fund spending to climb from $7 billion in 2019 to $10.8 billion in 2025, she said. She said many of her constituents weren’t beneficiaries of that largesse.

“It’s too bad those average families don’t have a lobbyist,” she said.

Sen. Rick Billinger, the Goodland Republican who chairs the Senate budget committee, said the perspective of legislators inevitably ranged from those who argued state spending was outrageous or measly.

“Everybody has their outlook and they’ve got things that they want or things that they don’t want. That’s how the process works,” he said.

Constitutional questions

The House and Senate, with two-thirds majorities, agreed to place an amendment to the Kansas Constitution on statewide ballots in August 2026 that would undermine authority of Kansas governors to appoint members of the Kansas Supreme Court. The current merit-based approach enabled a commission led by attorneys to nominate finalists for Supreme Court vacancies to the governor, who could pick one or reject them all.

Kansas justices stand for retention elections on statewide ballots. However, the GOP-led Legislature has decided Supreme Court justices should serve six-year terms and stand for reelection just like local, state or federal government politicians. Kelly expressed reservations about the proposed change, but constitutional amendments go directly to the ballot. Governors cannot veto proposed constitutional amendments.

“Kansans can reclaim power from the elites who have controlled the Kansas Supreme Court for nearly 70 years,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican who has challenged Supreme Court decisions on abortion rights and school finance. “Should lawyers chosen by other lawyers decide who sits on our highest court?”

Senate Concurrent Resolution 1611 cleared the House 84-40 and was carried in the Senate by a vote of 27-13.

“This is a blatant attack by the legislators on our justices, and it’s part of a decades-long pattern of politicians attempting to punish the judicial branch for issuing decisions on education and reproductive freedom that they disagree with,” said Micah Kubic, executive director of ACLU of Kansas. “We are confident that, just as they did in 2022, the people of Kansas will see this attack for what it is and, once again, take action to defend their constitutional rights from the power grabs of extremist politicians in Topeka.”

During the 2025 session, a slew of proposed constitutional amendments fell short in the Senate and House. The roster included amendments to block public tax dollars from being spent on nonpublic K-12 schools, to allow individuals to vote at age 16, to include ammunition and firearm accessories in the 2nd Amendment right to bear arms, to affirm existing law requiring voters to be U.S. citizens and to allow prosecution of businesses who hire immigrants not in the country legally.

The Senate and House split on House Concurrent Resolution 5011, which would have limited growth of valuations on residential property to no more than 4% annually. The Senate passed the measure 27-13 after the proposed ceiling was raised from 3% and implementation delayed until 2027, but it was defeated in the House on a vote of 37-88.

Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a network of news bureaus supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com. Follow Kansas Reflector on Facebook and Twitter.

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