Capitol Watch: Amid tense times in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback heads for friendlier turf in Missouri

Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback made a foray into Missouri this week. He touted his tax cuts at a couple of appearances, saying they were helping small businesses and creating a “growth environment.”

Any appearances that Kansas is in dire straits are ginned up by the “major” media, Brownback said, as a means to discourage other states from going down Kansas’ path.

Seeing that the Kansas Legislature is trying to close a $650 million budget gap next year, this media outlet agrees that the Kansas path should be avoided. But we liked one thing the Republican governor had to say.

Improved prognosis

Brownback told the audience he would agree to expand Medicaid eligibility if the Legislature presented him a bill that met his specifications, the most important being that the state’s share of the costs be covered. The governor said much the same thing when he spoke to the Kansas Association of Insurance Agents on Wednesday.

“I’ve been pushing that anything we do on Medicaid expansion has to be 100-percent paid for,” he told the agents.

The Legislature is considering a bill that would require health care providers who receive Medicaid reimbursements to pay the state’s share — 10 percent of the overall costs — of Medicaid expansion. Under the Affordable Care Act, the federal government will pay 90 percent of the costs once the expansion is fully phased in.

Brownback’s softer stance on Medicaid expansion can be read as either accommodation or desperation. A recent study showed that expanding Medicaid eligibility would increase Kansas’ costs by $525 million over 10 years, but it would bring in $5.3 billion in federal funding. Kansas could certainly use the extra money.

With friends like this …

Missouri, meanwhile, shows no forward movement on Medicaid expansion.

Instead, senators busied themselves this week with a hearing on a diabolical measure proposed by GOP Sen. Bob Onder of St. Charles. It proposes to revoke the licenses of insurance companies to sell policies in Missouri if they accept federal subsidies to insure lower-income consumers through the exchange established by the Affordable Care Act.

Onder says his bill (though probably unconstitutional) would be a good step toward undoing the federal health care law in Missouri. It would also cause more than 150,000 citizens to lose their affordable insurance policies and wreak havoc in insurance markets.

Curiously, Onder is a medical doctor and supposedly business friendly.

“You wouldn’t expect a state senator to take such strong-arm tactics to manipulate the behavior of private businesses, but that’s exactly what this law would do,” said Andrea Routh, director of Missouri Health Advocacy Alliance.

Kansas schools

The good: The chairman of the House education committee shelved a bizarre bill that would have prohibited Kansans who work in schools or contract with government from serving on school boards. Their close relatives would also be barred. The bill was introduced on behalf of a Wichita resident, who turned out to be the lone proponent.

The bad: In a breathtaking display of meddling, the Senate Ways and Means Committee decided to tinker with the funding that universities had anticipated receiving over the next two years. Members took $9.4 million from the University of Kansas’ main campus in Lawrence and gave it to the University of Kansas Medical Center, for instance. They took $3.2 million a year from Kansas State University and gave it to smaller universities.

This is the kind of cannibalizing that happens in a self-inflicted budget crisis. But it’s inexcusable for legislators to overrule the state’s Board of Regents, not to mention the University of Kansas chancellor, on how funding should be allocated. The full Senate must reject this power grab.

The ugly: David Kensinger, Brownback’s political ally and former chief of staff, caused a scene at a Model UN competition in Topeka.

Kensinger, known as an intimidating force around Topeka, confronted a teacher shortly after she finished an opening speech and said he’d heard she had made repeated references to Brownback. Turns out there was only one; the teacher noted that Brownback had been keynote speaker for the event years ago as a senator and added, “Who could have known?”

Not exactly incendiary stuff. Kensinger should apologize.

This story was originally published March 6, 2015 at 5:50 PM with the headline "Capitol Watch: Amid tense times in Kansas, Gov. Sam Brownback heads for friendlier turf in Missouri."