Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoes COVID-19 bill, calls special session of Legislature
With harsh criticism of last week’s legislative session, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly announced Tuesday that she will veto a bill designed to greatly limit her authority to deal with the COVID-19 crisis.
Kelly also announced that with her most recent emergency declaration expiring, she is ending her phased approach to reopening the state economy, lifting practically all coronavirus-control restrictions and placing the onus for disease prevention on individual counties.
She will call a special session of the Legislature beginning June 3 to give lawmakers a chance to redo the legislation that emerged Friday morning after the House and Senate spent 23 hours and 55 minutes in session.
The bill Kelly vetoed, House Bill 2054, “was debated, voted on, and written while most Kansans were asleep and was never intended to address reasonable concerns and bring KEMA (the Kansas Emergency Management Act) in line with our present circumstances,” her veto message said.
“Rather, it was designed to trigger a high-stakes game of political chicken, combining provisions that are essential to COVID-19 response with a wide-ranging, special interest ‘wish list’ of unrelated and unnecessary provisions.”
Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, claimed victory over the governor in making her back down from statewide health restrictions.
“Despite her derogatory politically motivated statements about the legislature, along with few down right inaccuracies, I’m very thankful she’s conceded to our position,” Wagle said in a statement. “She sent authority back to the counties. We’ve been saying it all along; one size doesn’t fit all and today locals won that right.”
Kelly announced she will issue a new and different state of disaster emergency declaration to cover the period between now and the special session.
Unlike the earlier order, which was designed to deal with the public health threat of COVID-19, the new declaration will be specific to the economic damage caused to the state by measures taken to try to limit the spread of the virus.
The new disaster emergency order will allow the state to continue to receive federal funding and medical assistance to fight coronavirus and to use National Guard troops to deliver medical equipment and protect food supplies, Kelly said.
Kelly had hoped to move slowly and deliberately to reopen businesses shuttered by a stay-at-home order and a companion order that limited mass gatherings.
Under Kelly’s new order, all businesses and churches will apparently be allowed to reopen, at their full capacity, with none of the regulations that she had put in place mandating social distancing or other actions to try to slow the spread of coronavirus.
Instead, Kelly’s orders now will become guidelines that counties can follow or not as they see fit.
Kelly had already relaxed many of the rules, but bars and large entertainment venues remained closed.
Restaurants, movie theaters, salons, churches and other gathering places could open, but only if they followed health and safety regulations limiting close contact that could spread the virus.
“The power to administer and regulate the plan will be up to each county,” Kelly said. “If a county wants to remain (under restrictions), it will need to issue its own emergency order to that effect.”
The Sedgwick County Commission, also the county Board of Health, will hold a special meeting at 1:30 p.m. Wednesday to decide whether to reinstate any public health orders for the Wichita area.
“I don’t anticipate having any orders,” Commissioner Michael O’Donnell said. “We might have some regulations, some guidelines, some suggestions, but nothing enforceable.”
O’Donnell said counties are best positioned to set local restrictions based on the severity of the public health crisis, not the governor’s office.
“We’ve done a very good job of not having a massive outbreak,” O’Donnell said. “We need to keep that in mind going forward — that we want to limit that — but we can do that without any mandates or orders. We can do that by suggestions and trusting businesses are going to do what’s best for their customers and employees.”
Commissioner Jim Howell said he’s not in favor of issuing any new county orders at this time.
“I want to give us a little bit more freedom for businesses to create mitigation that makes more sense for them,” Howell said. “I do think if you start opening up bars and dance clubs, that might be a higher risk, so that might be one of those areas where we may have some recommendations.”
Some businesses are likely to reopen without following safety protocols and hold large gatherings, Howell said, but the county shouldn’t arrest anyone for doing so.
Commissioner David Dennis said he’s glad the authority is coming back to the county, where it rested at the beginning of the coronavirus threat.
The county will need a measured approach that balances opening the economy and protecting public health, Dennis said.
He said Dr. Garold Minns, the county’s health officer and dean of the University of Kansas Medical School in Wichita, will be at Wednesday’s commission meeting and he wants to hear Minns’ input before making any decisions on how to proceed.
Commissioners Pete Meitzner and Lacey Cruse could not be reached for comment.
Kelly’s veto of House Bill 2054 will preserve Minns’ authority to issue emergency health orders for the county on his own.
The bill would have changed state law to require commission permission before a health officer could proceed.
Mike Taylor, staff lobbyist and spokesperson for Wyandotte County Unified Government, said Wyandotte will continue the governor’s plan, which was in the second phase of reopening.
“For us, nothing’s going to change,” Taylor said. “Despite the governor’s actions, we’re going to continue to follow Phase 2 in Wyandotte County until at least June 8.”
The bill Kelly vetoed would have largely relegated her office to the sidelines in dealing with the coronavirus threat.
It would have required the governor, a Democrat, to get permission from Republican legislative leaders to take almost any action dealing with COVID-19 or the spending of about $1.2 billion in federal relief.
It also would have also taken the highly controversial step of exempting medical providers and other businesses, including foreign manufacturers of medical supplies, from lawsuits related to COVID-19.
Kelly said the Legislature, particularly the Senate, had acted poorly and passed “partisan, self-serving and short-sighted” legislation in its overnight session that started Thursday morning and ended Friday morning.
“The process was messy, confusing and complicated, but it didn’t have to be,” Kelly said.
She said she hopes a special session will change that.
“I’m calling on the Legislature to come back and put a carefully crafted, bipartisan bill on my desk that will provide the resources Kansans need, in a timely manner,” Kelly said in a written statement following her Tuesday news conference.
House Republican leadership issued a statement responding to Kelly’s announcement, criticizing her veto and saying that it introduces more instability into an already unstable situation.
“The veto of this legislation creates unnecessary confusion about the status of the current disaster declaration, what orders are still in place, and what Kansans can expect going forward,” said the statement, co-signed by House Speaker Ron Ryckman of Olathe, Majority Leader Dan Hawkins of Wichita, and Speaker Pro Tem Blaine Finch of Ottawa.
The statement said Kansans “deserve better than that and we will continue to work with all parties in state and local government to provide it.”
The Republican leaders also criticized the governor for issuing a “statewide four phase plan (for reopening) that went from Phase 1 to Phase 1.5 to Phase 1.75/modified Phase 2 and then was suddenly, and with no warning, scrapped this afternoon.”
This story was originally published May 26, 2020 at 5:05 PM with the headline "Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly vetoes COVID-19 bill, calls special session of Legislature."
