TOPEKA — Kansas senators are threatening to derail foster care reforms in an attempt to leverage support for stripping the health secretary of the ability to fight infectious disease.
Leaders of the House Children and Seniors Committee have been meeting with leaders of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee to merge several bills based on recommendations from an interim foster care oversight committee. Sen. Richard Hilderbrand, a Baxter Springs Republican, led the oversight committee and also serves as chairman of the Senate health panel.
Negotiations fell apart Wednesday when Hilderbrand, a Baxter Springs Republican, demanded the foster care bills be packaged with Senate Bill 489, which takes away the authority of state and local health officials to order mask mandates or conduct contact tracing. Members of the House panel, led by Rep. Susan Concannon, a Beloit Republican, rebuffed the proposal.
Concannon told Hilderbrand there were a “a lot of questions and issues” with Senate Bill 489.
“Our committee deals with children and seniors, and child welfare issues,” Concannon said. “We really feel like this is an issue that needs to go in front of judiciary.”
The standoff places several foster care reforms in jeopardy. Senate Bill 12 would require the Kansas Department for Children and Families to implement performance-based contracts for contractors that provide child welfare services. House Bill 2582 directs DCF to share information with law enforcement agencies. House Bill 2632 and Senate Bill 460 would require examinations of alleged victims of child abuse or neglect.
Those bills follow recommendations made by Hilderbrand’s oversight committee after a series of hearings last fall.
After several meetings Wednesday failed to produce a compromise, Hilderbrand said senators would be willing to package the foster care bills with a single section of Senate Bill 489 that removes the responsibility of law enforcement officers to enforce a public health order.
Concannon refused Hilderbrand’s offer, saying the authority of public health officers “does not fit well with the package that we’re talking about with DCF” policies.
“Unless that piece gets put in,” Hilderbrand said, “I don’t see Senate Bill 12 moving forward.”
Supporters of Senate Bill 489 appear during a March 8, 2022, hearing of the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee. (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
The Senate passed Senate Bill 489 by a 24-15 vote earlier this session, following a committee hearing that featured a crowd of anti-vaxxers, including a Johnson County resident who compared the potential of being ordered to quarantine by a public health official to being placed in a concentration camp.
In the same hearing, former state Sen. Greg Smith, who now works for the Johnson County Sheriff’s Office, said law enforcement officers didn’t like having to enforce the governor’s executive orders during the early weeks of the COVID-19 pandemic. The proposed legislation deals with public health orders and wouldn’t apply to a governor’s executive actions.
The Senate and House are running out of time to reach a compromise on a legislation package before the scheduled end of the regular session, which is Friday, although the two sides could pursue a deal when lawmakers return at the end of April.
