Death penalty hits Senate

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Feb 21, 2005 by Tim Carpenter Capital-Journal

Chambers anticipate busy 'turnaround week'

A flurry of bills --- about 100 in the House alone --- will be up for consideration this week as legislators reach the 2005 session's midpoint.

The Senate will raise the temperature today with floor debate on the death penalty.

Senators will consider a bill that eliminates state-sanctioned capital punishment in Kansas and another that amends the death penalty statute found in December by the Kansas Supreme Court to be constitutionally flawed.

Neither are likely to pass.

"It will be interesting though to note the debate on the repeal on the death penalty," said Senate President Stephen Morris, R- Hugoton. "It's been 11 years since we've had any kind of protracted debate on the death penalty."

He said the Senate was likely to pass a resolution urging the U.S. Supreme Court to overturn the Kansas court's decision on capital punishment.

House Speaker Doug Mays, R-Topeka, said the "turnaround week" --- ending Friday and marking the session's halfway point --- would create a rush to move as many bills as possible out of the chamber of origin.

The House, as well as the Senate, will work overtime to deal with high volume.

"We have no idea how many of those are controversial," Mays said. "If none of them are controversial, we can get done in two days. But it just takes one or two to hang us up."

Mays said committee hearings on school finance would take center stage in the House. The committee's package would add more than $100 million to public school funding next year. The Senate is at work on a proposal for phasing in over three years a $445 million increase in spending on education.

Mays renewed a pledge to craft a plan that would neither raise taxes nor bankrupt the state treasury.

"I'm confident that we can do that without raising taxes, without devastating the ending balances and without gimmicks," Mays said.

The state Supreme Court gave the Legislature an April deadline to improve education funding.

Mays said the House wouldn't complete work on any gambling legislation this week.

He said that likely wouldn't bother the gaming lobby, which has promised that expansion of gambling would pump millions of dollars into state coffers.

"Gaming is waiting, hoping and praying that we get tied in knots and can't figure out how to fund education," he said. "That's a gamble."

Tim Carpenter can be reached at (785) 296-3005 or tim.carpenter@cjonline.com.

Please see CHAMBERS, Page 7A

Chambers: Hearings focus on schools