Archive for Wednesday, April 19, 2006
Opinion: The Legislature must act now
Next week, the Kansas Legislature returns for its veto session and guess what? Our elected representatives have yet to reach agreement on the one thing that everyone knew, going in, had to be resolved this session -- school finance.
A coalition of moderate Republicans and Democrats in the House passed a three-year, $633 million plan that proponents claimed would have met the Kansas Supreme Court's mandate, but Senators could not agree on that plan or any other, and so the regular session ended March 31 with no agreement.
Now, push has come to shove. However much it may rankle some legislators that the high court has meddled in their business, that issue needs to be put aside for the moment. (After all, the vote on a constitutional amendment to prohibit such meddling failed to gain the necessary majority.) Legislators wisely decided that their constituents would prefer that they spent their time solving the problem -- which, unfortunately, they failed to do.
The time has come for the Legislature to put aside partisan concerns and think, instead, about meeting the needs of Kansas schoolchildren. If everyone had kept those needs in mind all along, we could have avoided this mess.
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Talking points
Do you think Veterans Day should be a prominent holiday?
Absolutely. We wouldn’t be able to sit here and eat lunch like this if it weren’t for the veterans. We’ve got millions of people that fought and died to save this country; it should be more than a bank holiday.
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