The Kansas Senate has approved a bill tightening the rules for a program using bonds to help finance economic development projects.
Advertisement
The measure redistributes $38 million of the more than $4 billion in annual aid to public schools to benefit poor districts.
Masterson, an Andover Republican, and Ryckman, an Olathe Republican, acknowledged that they didn’t much like their own proposals.
Separate but identical measures dealing with how public schools and colleges accommodate transgender students were introduced Wednesday in the House by its Federal and State Affairs Committee and in the Senate by the Ways and Means Committee. The loss would be about $10 million under the Senate bill. Critics fear the state would expand an existing district in Wyandotte County and use existing tax revenues that might flow to the state to back new bonds.
Meanwhile, property-poor districts would have received more aid, although a large portion of that money likely would go to property tax relief.
Republican Rep. Joseph Scapa, who supports the bill, said religious organizations should have the right to require that the members share their faith before letting them join.
“Last year, they added the purse or bag (concealed carry), and we really didn’t speak out”. “This is always the storm brewing”.
This builds on laws adopted in 2013 legalizing open carry and one a year ago to allow for carry in a purse or bag without a permit.
The main components of House Bill 2731 are that it would re-establish the funding mechanism of the former financing formula that was eliminated with the CLASS Act, or better known as the block grant funding bill.
Parents have a reasonable expectation that Kansas public schools won’t allow their minor children to be viewed in various states of undress by members of the opposite sex, and young adults have the same expectation at colleges and universities, the bill says.
“I’m not a fan”, he said, “but I’m not going to take a risk of closing the schools because I don’t like this”.
The House gave first-round approval to a bill that would require the full Legislature to authorize bonds, borrowing against the state’s credit or other debt for projects costing $25 million or more.
Advertisement
But Sen. Greg Smith, an Overland Park Republican, said the amendment gives more specific guidance to judges than the original bill, which he called “vague”.
