Weighty challenges on agenda

Topeka Capital-Journal, The, Apr 28, 2008 by James Carlson

By James Carlson

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Legislators return Wednesday to a slew of unresolved issues. Choose your hot-button topic, and it is on the menu: abortion, budget spending and immigration.

Oh, and a little-known bill on a power plant in western Kansas.

In a wrap-up session normally spent on remaining budget appropriations, lawmakers will tackle not only state money but also the biggest bills of the year.

Coal certainly will reign over the Statehouse when the Statehouse bustles again this week. The Senate and House have passed a few bills that would allow the controversial expansion of a coal-fired power plant outside Holcomb, but Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has vetoed both measures. The Senate always has had the two-thirds majority of votes needed to override Sebelius' action, but the House is a different story. In a vote on one of the bills before the regular session adjournment, supporters of the 1,400-megawatt plant addition garnered 83 votes, one shy of the veto-proof majority.

All eyes will be on that chamber to see if legislative leaders in support of the measure can convince enough people to switch their votes.

Kansas lawmakers, like those in other states, tackled immigration this year. A compromise deal was presented to the House late in the session, but a coalition of representatives unsatisfied with what they called a lack of teeth to the bill voted not to approve the deal. Measures proposed earlier in the session included penalties for businesses knowingly hiring illegal immigrants, but pressure from a wide swath of business interests forced the removal of those provisions.

The House may take another vote to approve the compromise when they return, and if that were successful, it would go to the Senate, which is expected to send it to the governor.

If the House doesn't relent, the immigration debate would go back to the House-Senate negotiators.

Coal isn't the only issue on which legislators will attempt to override a governor's veto. Sebelius also wielded her power to reject a bill placing certain restrictions on abortion clinics and allowing lawsuits to prevent late-term procedures. The fate of any veto-override attempt is uncertain. On the final vote to pass the bill, the House had exactly the 84 votes needed to overturn Sebelius' veto. The Senate was two votes shy, with one prominent abortion opponent absent.

And the budget could prove a contentious issue as the fiscal picture has worsened. State budget officials announced recently that the Legislature will have about $130 million less than expected, and the state is likely to meet budget problems next year if it continues on the same budget course already planned.

Included in those plans already laid out is a 2.5 percent increase in state workers' pay. Senate President Stephen Morris, R- Hugoton, said last week that legislators shouldn't back away from that pledge, but the final touches haven't been placed on any pay plan.

James Carlson can be reached

at (785) 233-7470 or

james.carlson@cjonline.com.