In rush to finish early, Kansas lawmakers jettison public input and risk poorly crafted bills
Gov. Laura Kelly delivers her State of the State speech on Jan. 13, 2026, in the Kansas House, in front of House Speaker Dan Hawkins, left, and Senate President Ty Masterson, right. Kelly faulted GOP leaders for rushing through the session, compromising the quality of bills and the state budget. (Photo by Thad Allton for Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — The Republican-led Kansas Legislature accelerated the pace of the session in 2026, with bills speeding through, debate ending abruptly on the chamber floors and little or no time allowed for constituents to submit diverse opinions for hearings.
In the end, lawmakers left town a month sooner than usual.
Micah Kubic, executive director of the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said procedural steps taken this year weren’t always about issues or bill substance, and there was no need to move quickly.
“In many of these instances, they have the votes to support the things they want to do,” he said. “They’re doing it hastily just to be able to be out of there in X days. It is an active choice to decide to approach the process, and it is not ordained by the rule, by the law, by the Constitution or by God. It is simply the way they have chosen to approach the question.”
Republican leaders imposed a breakneck schedule that would allow them to hit the campaign trail sooner. Senate President Ty Masterson is seeking the GOP nomination for governor, while House Speaker Dan Hawkins wants the party’s nomination for state insurance commissioner.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, an Overland Park Democrat who is running for governor, saw an additional motive for Republican leaders to speed through the session.
“You have a lot of new legislators who don’t have time to really study the bills as much as they probably would like to, and so they’re more dependent on leadership for direction,” Holscher said. “My guess is that people make decisions on bills and then find out some of the implications and some of the effects when it’s too late.”
Democrats and some advocates warn that the fast pace leads to shoddy legislation and budget problems. Others, such as Kansas Family Voice president Brittany Jones, say it can be helpful to limit debate.
Jones said the session’s speed also means legislators are using taxpayer dollars well and are more productive.
“I’ve seen it used very effectively to help things move along in the process, while still allowing for debate,” she said. “You have to balance those things, the filibustering, where we’re sitting in there for hours and hours and nobody’s opinion’s getting changed. That’s not productive for the people of Kansas. It’s not productive for the legislators.”
Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said legislation this session compared with five years ago is of lower quality because it is drafted quickly.
“This rushed process means that the revisors — who are the lawyers for the Legislature, who actually draft the bills, who put the words on the paper — they are working day and night under tremendous pressure, and they are not able to turn out their best quality work,” he said.
Bills sometimes are internally contradictory, he said, meaning one paragraph disagrees with another.
“We had a bill like that in judiciary just a week or two ago,” he said during a March interview, “and when I raised the topic … the response from Republican leadership in the committee was, well, we’ll let the courts figure that out.”
Rep. Alexis Simmons, D-Topeka, said “no one wants to blindly vote on something.”
“The legislative process was intentionally designed to be tedious, to be cumbersome. It is not supposed to be a quick process. You’re not supposed to introduce a huge piece of legislation with just a few days to vet it.”
Avery Holland, of Wichita, appears at a Feb. 6, 2026, legislative hearing at the Statehouse as part of a demonstration for trans rights. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Unusual year
Tactics to rush the process popped up more frequently and on higher-profile bills in 2026, Kubic said.
“In the past, there were fewer of these, and they tended to be on things that mattered intensely to some people, but did not have the same level of public attention that, for example, the trans rights bill did this year,” he said, referring to the bill that forces people to use the bathroom of their assigned sex at birth in public buildings and rolls back gender marker changes on state documents.
“Testimony and the hearing process is what forces folks to be exposed to different perspectives, and they may take them or not,” he added. “They are designed to give people a chance to be heard, but also they are designed to make it more convenient for legislators to do their work.”
Rabbi Moti Rieber, executive director of Kansas Interfaith Action, said the differences this year have been marked. He said the “gut-and-go” strategy of putting one bill into the shell of another is being used more frequently and earlier in the session.
Here’s how it’s supposed to work: Lawmakers hold a hearing on a bill in one chamber before passing it to the other. The second chamber holds a hearing and may make some changes before returning it to the first chamber.
But sometimes lawmakers will take a bill that only cleared one chamber and insert other, unrelated bills into it before taking a final vote. That’s called a “gut and go,” and the bill is referred to as a “shell.”
In the past, Rieber said, the gut and go primarily was used at the end of the session.
“Now they put it in the shell right away to preclude the possibility of there being organized opposition, or even any opposition,” Rieber said.
In other words, lawmakers can avoid public hearings.
Former Rep. Tom Phillips, a Manhattan Republican, said he saw some of these activities during his eight years serving in Topeka. He left in 2020.
Committee chairs would sometimes shorten the timeframe for public input, rushing deadlines for testimony submissions, for instance, he said.
“There are times when there is a desire to move things forward, but early in the session, you’ve got plenty of time to allow for public input, and you should do legislation in the daylight,” Phillips said.
It frustrated Phillips when people waited to testify during a hearing and were cut short.
“If the room is full of people, let them have a voice,” he said.
Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, seen during a March 26, 2026, House session, says there is no exchange of ideas when processes are bypassed. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Long-term effects
Republicans who are concerned about activist courts should worry about poorly crafted legislation that creates ambiguities, Carmichael said.
The anti-transgender bill is an example of how the Republican supermajority distorted the process, Carmichael said. A lawsuit has been filed to try to block the measure.
Republicans took action on the bill without announcing their plans, then used the gut and go to ensure there would never be a public hearing. House Republicans used a rule against “impugning motives” to silence Democrats during debate and another rule to terminate debate altogether.
It should be a warning sign when one side uses its majority to deflect debate and consideration of other opinions, he said.
“That means you’re not participating in a deliberative legislative process where you exchange ideas, and then you make up your mind,” Carmichael said. “Why have a discussion? Why even listen to your constituents? Just cut off debate, pass your bills and head to lunch. That’s exactly what Republican leadership has done this year.”
Jones, with Kansas Family Voice, said people may not always like the processes, but they are legitimate.
“There have been times where the process has been used against me and I didn’t like it, but I did recognize that that was a valid process,” she said.
Gov. Laura Kelly said the committee hearings and floor debates may be tedious, but that’s how “issues can get worked out.” The processes allow for compromise and consensus to build toward a final product, she said.
“All that was just sort of thrown to the wind this year, and Kansans are gonna hurt from it,” Kelly said. “You know, I’m hoping that they’ll come back next year and clean some of this up.”
The Democratic governor is in her final year in office.
Gov. Laura Kelly answers a reporter’s questions during a Feb. 24, 2026, interview in her office at the Statehouse in Topeka. She complained that the effect of the GOP budget won’t be known until weeks after the session ends. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Budget impact
The governor said the speedy session hurt the Legislature’s ability to make good decisions about the state’s budget.
“Once again, the Legislature completely ignored my statutorily required budget proposal that would have put our state back on track to a structural balance between revenues and expenditure,” Kelly said.
“Instead,” she added, “legislative leadership rushed through this session, drafting and passing the budget before April consensus revenue estimates are announced in just 12 days. While a full understanding of the fiscal impact of this budget won’t be known until April 20, a few of its failures are obvious.”
Kansas Legislative Research Department director Shirley Morrow said her office didn’t have time to produce an “omnibus memo,” which in past years helped guide legislators through budget decisions.
Before last year, the Legislature typically finished the regular session in early April and took a three-week break before returning for the veto session in May. During that break, research staff would review legislation that had passed and calculate the expected impact on state finances. Additionally, research staff is involved in formalizing a “consensus revenue estimate” in late April.
That information would be detailed in the omnibus memo, Morrow said, and lawmakers could decide to appropriate more funding or cut spending.
Morrow said research staff would meet with lawmakers a day before the veto session began to review the omnibus memo.
“That’s not done anymore because we don’t have time, and it’s not part of the schedule,” she said.
This year, there were just eight business days between the Legislature adjourning in the early hours of March 28 and its April 9 return.
Morrow said agencies will have to absorb any unforeseen costs of legislation through existing resources.
“It’s been different trying to communicate all the things that we’ve done in the past that we aren’t doing now, just because of the time constraints in the last two years,” Morrow said. “But consensus revenue is ongoing. It’s going to happen. What’s not going to happen, just like last year, is we will have a consensus caseloads, but there’s no bill to adopt consensus caseloads, because that was always in the omnibus memo too.”
That could affect budgets for the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, Kansas Department for Children and Families, and public schools, she said.
Rep. Alexis Simmons, D-Topeka, standing during a Jan. 12, 2026, session of the House, says the legislative process is supposed to be tedious. (Photo by Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
Slow and steady
Reed Holwegner, whose Substack The Mechanic of Statecraft is a “digital book” about lawmaking and the development of public policy, spent about 13 years working in the Kansas Legislative Research Department. That’s where staff write and revise bills for legislators.
He said legislative processes evolve and most aren’t set in statute or regulation.
“Ultimately, it is the sole responsibility of legislators to decide how they wish to conduct their business,” he said. “This may surprise people, but you don’t necessarily need a standing committee even to hear and work on a bill.”
Each committee sets its own rules, and those can limit public participation.
Holwegner agreed that less consideration given to legislation increases the chance that problems won’t be addressed.
“The risk of fast-tracking legislation is that it is easy to cause the problems of tomorrow, today,” he said.
Moving quickly allows more unintended consequences, Holwegner said, while traditional processes give legislators time to digest public testimony.
Conservative U.S. Supreme Court Justice Neil Gorsuch addressed the issue in a recent court opinion that rolled back President Donald Trump’s tariffs. The justice argued that the policy should have gone through the legislative process.
“Most major decisions affecting the rights and responsibilities of the American people (including the duty to pay taxes and tariffs) are funneled through the legislative process for a reason,” Gorsuch wrote. “Yes, legislating can be hard and take time. And, yes, it can be tempting to bypass Congress when some pressing problem arises. But the deliberative nature of the legislative process was the whole point of its design.”