Kansas lawmakers override vetoes on taxes, guns, elections

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Republican lawmakers on Monday cut Kansas’ income taxes, lowered the age for carrying a concealed gun and tightened state election laws by overriding Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s vetoes of those measures.

A series of votes in the GOP-controlled Legislature demonstrated that its Republican supermajorities can control policy — and push the state back to the right — if they hold together. Centrist and left-of-center activists took Kelly’s election in 2018 as a sign that voters were repudiating conservative management of state government, but elections in 2020 moved the Legislature to the right.

“They listened to folks back home,” House Speaker Tem Blaine Finch, an Ottawa Republican, said of GOP lawmakers. “It’s because of, really, the grassroots in their communities telling (them), ‘Hey, this is important to us.’”

But Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat, derided the “veto override-a-rama.”

“Today leaves no doubt: The Kansas Legislature is more extreme than ever,” she said in a statement.

Republican leaders realized their goal of tax relief for individuals and businesses that have been paying more in state income taxes because of changes in federal tax laws at the end of 2017. The measure will save Kansas taxpayers about $284 million over three years.

The vote to override Kelly’s veto was 30-10 in the Senate, giving GOP leaders three votes more than the two-thirds majority needed. The House vote was 84-39, the exact number of required yes votes.

A key change will allow people to claim itemized deductions on their state returns even if they don’t on their federal returns. The federal tax changes in 2017 discouraged itemizing, making some Kansans unable to itemize on their state returns.

“This bill corrects a huge injustice for our middle-income taxpayers,” said Republican Sen. Jeff Longbine, of Emporia.

Democrats criticized the bill because it also contained tax relief for some large businesses. Kelly vetoed two tax-cutting bills in 2019, and she called this year’s bill “reckless” and “short-sighted.”

She suggested Republicans were moving back toward a nationally notorious tax-cutting experiment in 2012 and 2013 under then-GOP Gov. Sam Brownback. Those cuts were followed by persistent budget shortfalls and were mostly repealed in 2017.

“It’s as if legislative leaders want to return to the days of budget crises,” Kelly said in a statement. “I’ve never met a Kansan who wants that.”

The Legislature overrode Kelly’s veto of a bill that would create a special concealed carry permit for 18-, 19- and 20-year-olds, and that’s a major victory for gun-rights advocates. The state already allows people 21 and older to carry concealed guns without a permit and adults can carry them openly, but Kelly’s election had advocates of tougher gun laws hoping for a roll back of Kansas’ generally loose policies.

The votes were 84-39 in the House and 31-8 in the Senate. The measure also expands Kansas’ recognition of other states’ concealed carry permits.

Republicans overturned Kelly’s veto of an elections bill making it harder for individuals and groups to collect absentee ballots and deliver them for voters. It will be a misdemeanor for someone to collect and return more than 10 ballots.

The votes were 85-38 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate.

GOP lawmakers said they are preventing fraud, arguing that the more people who handle absentee ballots, the more likely those ballots are to go missing or be altered.

“Having someone cherry pick whose ballot gets picked up and turned in is not appropriate,” Finch said.

But Republicans are curbing a practice used by some Democrats and Democratic-leaning groups for decades to help disabled, elderly and poor voters.

“We should be making it easier for people to legitimately vote,” said Rep. Brett Parker, an Overland Park Democrat.

Republicans also overrode Kelly’s veto of a bill expanding the number of specialty license plates available to drivers willing to pay an extra fee. The votes were 86-37 in the House and 28-12 in the Senate.

The governor and other Democrats objected to a provision allowing a special plate featuring a coiled snake and a “Don’t Tread on Me” slogan. They’re featured on what’s known as the Gadsen flag, after its Revolutionary War-era creator, who owned a wharf where an estimated 100,000 African slaves arrived. Critics also see the flag as a symbol of white supremacist and alt-right groups.

Supporters of the bill rejected those associations. The money raised by the $25 fee would go to the Kansas State Rifle Association.

Push against trans athletes in girls’ sports fails in Kansas

TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Conservative Republicans in Kansas failed Monday to overturn the Democratic governor’s veto of a proposed ban on transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports, unable to convert successes in other states or Caitlyn Jenner’s support into enough momentum.

The state Senate voted 26-14 to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto, leaving supporters a single vote short of the necessary two-thirds majority. Senators’ decision blocked a vote in the House.

Kansas became the second state within two weeks, after North Dakota, where a legislature with Republican supermajorities failed to override a GOP governor’s veto of such a measure. Lawmakers in more than 20 states have considered such bans, and they’ve become law in Alabama, Arkansas, Mississippi, Tennessee and West Virginia after Idaho enacted one last year. Florida lawmakers recently approved such a measure, and South Dakota’s governor imposed a policy by executive order.

The vote in Kansas came two days after Jenner, the former Olympic decathlon champion and reality television figure who came out as a transgender woman in 2015, said she opposes transgender athletes in girls’ and women’s sports as a “question of fairness.” Kansas conservatives seized upon her comments to a TMZ reporter in arguing that they were trying to protect fair competition and opportunities for female athletes.

“No one can accuse her of being anti-trans or interested in causing suicides, or whatever accusation they had of me for that,” Senate President Ty Masterson, a Wichita-area Republican, told reporters before the vote.

Kelly had called the proposed ban “regressive,” said it would send a message that Kansas was not a welcoming place and predicted it would hurt the state’s attempts to recruit businesses. LGBTQ-rights advocates said it would increase bullying of already vulnerable children.

“We’re not going to legislate discrimination here,” said state Rep. Stephanie Byers, a Wichita Democrat and the state’s first transgender lawmaker. “It’s going to be tough thing to fight, but we’re always going to do it.”

Many transgender-rights advocates have criticized Jenner, saying she has failed to convince them that she is a major asset to their cause. Byers suggested that Jenner is trying get attention for herself.

The proposed ban is likely to be an issue in the 2022 governor’s race, when Kelly seeks a second term. The top two Republican candidates, Attorney General Derek Schmidt and former Gov. Jeff Colyer, have said they would have signed the measure.

Kelly ran as a centrist in 2018 against polarizing conservative Kris Kobach, a former Kansas secretary of state nationally known for advocating restrictive immigration policies and tough voter identification laws. Republicans already have started trying to paint Kelly as a liberal and see her veto of the measure on transgender athletes as evidence of that.

“It shows her true, far-left leanings,” said state Sen. Renee Erickson, a Wichita Republican, a former college basketball player and the bill’s main sponsor. “I think if we make it about what it truly is — it’s protecting those opportunities for girls — that those are Kansas values and that at the end of the day, it will hurt the governor politically.”

Supporters of such proposals across the U.S. generally have been unable to cite local examples of problems. The association overseeing extracurricular activities in Kansas K-12 schools says it has been notified of only five active transgender participants in extracurricular activities, and there is no known case of a transgender athlete having won a Kansas championship.

“After a long reputation of being anti-LGBT, this state is making progress on rights for LGBT people, and it’s making progress on rights for transgender people,” said Tom Witt, executive director of the LGBTQ-rights group Equality Kansas, after tears of relief over the vote.

The decisive factor may have been a concern that sports bodies such as the NCAA would avoid scheduling tournament games in Kansas. Kansas City, Kansas, Sen. David Haley, the only Democrat who was wavering, cited that issue to reporters in explaining his no vote.

Haley previously abstained on the measure, but the Senate forced him to vote Monday. He wrestled with his decision, hashing over both sides’ arguments in an extraordinary six-minute speech.

“David Haley can’t win in this discussion,” he told his colleagues.