Schmidt’s message to KS Senate: No news is good news

In their frustration last spring over the Kansas Senate’s refusal to discuss the expansion of Medicaid, a small group, including a Topeka minister, interrupted Senate proceedings with chants and hymns.

Rather than endure the public humiliation, Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, ordered Capitol police to escort the nine protestors from the gallery and attending media out of the Senate chamber, threatening reporters their credentials could be denied.

Many viewed the Senate actions as heavy-handed.

Both the press and the public have every right to attend such meetings.

Were the protestors a distraction? Absolutely. Illegal? Hardly.

And their dissent was not unwarranted.

Despite overwhelming public support for Medicaid to be expanded so another 130,000 Kansans could receive health benefits, Senate leadership once again refused to schedule debate.

So on May 29, the last day of the 2019 session, those nine gave it their last shot by chanting, “Lord hear our prayer, we need healthcare.”

After making Kansans wait for six years — and counting — to expand Medicaid, the least the lawmakers could do was to hear them out.

Instead, they acted like thugs, calling the police on them; after which they resumed their business.

FOR LEGISLATORS to close the door on their meeting violates not only the intent of the Kansas Open Meetings Act, which invites “sunshine” into the doings of lawmakers, but also the media’s state and federal First Amendment rights. So argued members of the media in a lawsuit they brought against the state.

In June, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt said his office lacked jurisdiction to enforce constitutional challenges to KOMA and dismissed that portion of the complaint.

On Wednesday, Schmidt’s office dismissed the other issue of whether the Senate conducted business outside the public’s view, saying it had found no evidence of it doing so.

Besides, wrote Lisa Mendoza, Assistant Attorney General, under the state constitution, the Senate has carved out rules that exempt it from KOMA, including closing its public galleries.