TheChat: Former Kansas budget director urges voters to check whether lawmakers backed Brownback `experiment’

Good morning.

▪ “Before voting, check out legislative candidates carefully. If a candidate supported Brownback’s fiscal experiment and wants to stay the course, being a financially literate voter requires marking your ballot for somebody else.” — former Kansas budget director Duane Goossen on the upcoming legislative elections.

Goossen, who worked as budget director under both Democratic and Republican governors, has been harshly critical of Gov. Sam Brownback’s fiscal management of the state. Goossen pointed out that Brownback declared April to be Financial Literacy Month in the state and opined that Brownback and GOP lawmakers are flunking state financial literary.

▪ “We want to put conversations about medical decisions back in the hands of doctors and their patients.” — Jack Cardetti, spokesman for New Approach Missouri, which wants to make Missouri the 25th state to allow medical marijuana for patients with debilitating illnesses.

The ballot measure would allow doctors to recommend medical marijuana to patients who have serious illnesses, such as cancer, epilepsy and post-traumatic stress disorder. The secretary of state’s office is counting signatures to verify whether the effort qualifies for the ballot this year. Altogether, five ballot initiative petitions were submitted by the 5 p.m. Sunday deadline.

▪ “If you were going into a lab and build out of spare politician parts what people are angry about in Washington, you would build Roy Blunt.” — Democratic U.S. Senate candidate Jason Kander speaking about his Missouri rival, incumbent Roy Blunt.

Kander was quoted in a Washington Post story that talked about the Missouri race as more competitive than originally expected. Donald Trump is having a hand in changing the race’s math. Blunt, by the way, described himself as a conservative guy who can still get things done.

▪ “In essence, this formula punishes K-State and KU for conducting research and successfully securing federal research grants that bring new dollars to Kansas.” — KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and K-State interim president Richard Myers in a joint message to Gov. Sam Brownback urging the governor to veto a budget provision that hits the state’s two biggest universities.

The two university leaders argue the budget whacks their budgets by a greater percentage than the state’s smaller universities. Also upset is the Brownback-appointed Board of Regents that oversees higher education in the state.