Kansas lawmakers tilt at windmills, ignore how earlier leaders reached bipartisan solutions
The Kansas Statehouse dome and a U.S. flag stand out against a blue sky on May 1, 2025. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Agriculture and industry, as well as municipalities, face looming restrictions on water supplies essential for economic growth. Rural residents experience declines and possible closure of schools, health care facilities, churches, business and professional establishments, and other community services. Federal actions threaten agricultural markets, health care, clean energy, housing and numerous other programs.
The list of critical issues facing Kansans is long.
How do state lawmakers respond? Members of the Republican supermajority join President Donald Trump and tilt at windmills. They outlaw “wokeness” at state universities. They override a veto to assign “pregnancy compassion awareness” to the Republican state treasurer. They stand quietly aside as Trump’s “one big, beautiful bill” does damage to Kansans throughout the state. Their leaders propose an unprecedented special legislative session to gerrymander the single Democrat in Kansas’ congressional delegation out of her seat.
Rather than embracing Trump in attacking imaginary enemies, I would suggest state lawmakers look to the work of past Kansas reformers who led the state in addressing critical issues. Their solutions have served Kansans well over many decades.
Look, for example, to Rep. Jess Taylor, who in 1966 led the Kansas House of Representatives to reapportion a grossly malapportioned house chamber. Taylor, a Republican and former speaker of the House, represented the most malapportioned district in the state. He engaged Republicans and Democrats, urban and rural interests, to bring the Kansas House into compliance with the U.S. Supreme Court’s edict of one person, one vote. Urban and suburban voters gained representation, while 38 of Taylor’s colleagues, mostly Republicans, were turned out of office.
Consider the bipartisan leadership of Gov. Robert Docking, Senate President Robert Bennett, along with House Speaker Pete McGill and Minority Leader Pete Loux, who in the early 1970s steered reforms of the state’s political institutions — legislative, executive, and judicial — mired in constitutional restrictions written 100 years earlier. After careful study, Kansas lawmakers proposed and voters adopted 20 constitutional amendments that transformed legislative processes, strengthened the chief executive and unified a fragmented judiciary. These institutions consequently became more responsive, accountable, and capable of serving Kansans well into the 21st century.
These institutional reforms triggered other initiatives. For example, Bennett and McGill were instrumental in securing passage in 1974 of the campaign finance reforms that have assured a substantial degree of transparency in state politics to the present day.
Once elected governor, Bennett oversaw the conversion in 1975 of a politicized Highway Commission into an up-to-date Department of Transportation, which has operated professionally now for the past 50 years and focused attention on road conditions rather than highway politics.
In the mid-1980s, Gov. John Carlin persuaded legislative leaders of both parties to address the incredibly bad and long-ignored administration of property taxation. Together, they coupled modern and centralized appraisal with a constitutional amendment classifying property for purposes of taxation that stabilized the impact on taxpayers. That plan was adopted and has guided objective administration of property taxation now for nearly 40 years.
Carlin also assembled a bipartisan coalition of urban interests to update the state’s archaic liquor and banking laws and initiated constitutional amendments authorizing a state lottery and tax incentives for economic development. These steps affirmed that state government could and should act to stimulate economic growth.
Gov. Mike Hayden addressed declining investment in infrastructure by making finance of highways and the state water plan top priorities. He worked with bipartisan coalitions to secure a comprehensive highway program and initiate funding for the state water plan. Since 1989, the finance plan for highways has been replicated a number of times, and funding of the water plan has become the foundation for substantial increases in recent years.
In 1992, Senate Majority Leader Fred Kerr, a Republican, and House Speaker Marvin Barkis, a Democrat, stepped up to take on the divisive and difficult issue of school finance. Through back-and-forth debate within and across each chamber, state lawmakers fundamentally rewrote school finance by embracing public schools as a state obligation and shifting the financing of schools from property taxes to sales and income taxes. Property taxes were dramatically reduced throughout most of the state, and the 1992 law has served as a starting point for any adjustment in school finance ever since.
These Kansas reformers are covered in “Reform and Reaction: The Arc of Kansas Politics,” a book I co-edited with Michael Smith that came out last year. They took the job of lawmaking seriously and stepped forward to work on difficult public problems that had lingered years without resolution. They put their political careers on the line, built bipartisan bonds in a competitive political environment and left a lasting imprint on public policy in Kansas.
These leaders provide a better guide for state action on the critical issues confronting Kansans than does an embrace of Trumpism that distracts voters from addressing these issues.
H. Edward Flentje is a professor emeritus at Wichita State University and formerly was director and professor in the Hugo Wall School of Public Affairs at the university. He has written and edited numerous publications, including most recently co-writing and co-editing “Reform and Reaction: The Arc of Kansas Politics.” Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.