Topeka Capital Journal
April 27, 2001

The Kansas legislature is a lot like pro basketball. Both have a season that goes on for months and doesn’t decide much, and then they start over and get serious about it. The major difference is that when it’s over, the NBA declares a champion., while the legislature declares adjournment sine die, which is Latin for “We’re out of money for per diem,” Latin for public trough.

The legislature also is comparable to the NBA in that all the players are overpaid.

The legislature is a lot like the XFL Football League, and that the longer they play, the lower their popularity ratings. The legislature is exactly the same as the Dog of the Year Contest in that we know how going in, how it’s going to turn out.

Clearly, our lawmakers need to improve their image, and it will be tough to do in the current overtime session, with $185 million missing from the till, and with every area of government, particularly education, claiming a budget crisis.

The overall approval rating for the legislature probably is around 30 percent, and maybe that’s generous. What legislators need to do is improve their image, and it just so happens I know how they can do it. Drastic steps must be taken, and I mean more than prayers to St. Jude, the patron saint of lost causes, because he has let it be known he can’t save politicians who have voted for a tax increase.

But maybe he could, and would, if the politicians gave the taxpayers something in return. Maybe, too, The public would look more kindly on lawmakers who were big enough to give them something they crave, to ease the pain of the hated tax boost.

Obviously, beyond slot machines at racetracks, and gambling devices and convenience stores, private clubs and church basements, what is needed is a tax increase. For a politician, this is like sticking your head into the oven, no matter how badly the boost is needed.

There is one chance for the legislators. Voters might find the increase acceptable if, at the same time, bills were passed imposing term limits on the lawmakers, and giving citizens the rights to initiative and referendum.

If legislators did this, they would, of course, grandfather themselves into perpetuity so long as they could get elected. The new law would apply only to new members, but eventually there would be a legislature where representatives and senators served a maximum of eight years – four terms in the House, and two in the Senate.

As for initiative, it would mean ordinary folks could by, by petition, get proposals on the ballot, such as low taxes or no taxes, 12-month schools, free beer on the 4th, and subsidized transportation to Kansas City to catch an airliner.

If the two bills became law, a stunned public would wonder if lobbyists had spiked the punch, or if legislators had inhaled too much secondhand smoke that drifted over from the crack houses. Eventually, however, there would be dancing in the streets, some strange faces in the legislature, and a bunch of strange new laws.

A legislator voting for either bill would be assisting in his own death. If he votes for term limits, he’s voting himself out of a job. If he votes for initiative, the first thing that would make it to the ballot would be a proposal for term limits. It’s a lose-lose situation for them, but a new world for the masses.

And, in case you haven’t already figured it out, another one of the early proposals on the ballot, would revoke the tax increase that passed at the same time. Kansas might find itself out of money, but a lot of citizens would say, “better broke than yoked.”

What you would have here is the legislature doing three things right – raising taxes for education, imposing term limits, and giving voters reason to shout, “Free at last” – but also three things that could lead to turmoil. We might decide we’d rather have 165 solons doing very little, rather than have two million doing whatever came to their minds.

A local columnist wrote once, “You can mark it down as dead certain that limits and initiative are ideas whose time will come in Kansas.” Now, It appears that his time will come before that does.

Term limits may not be dead, but it is not making the strides at once did. It has sent members of Congress and legislators all over the country home early, but you don’t hear much about it.

My idea is still as sound as a ruble. Voters are pretty dumb, as proven by many of the question marks holding public office. But right now, our legislators can stand tall by offering to sacrifice themselves to finance education.