Iola’s new city government will be designed in a charter ordinance written by current city commissioners under the home rule amendment to the Kansas Constitution ap-proved by the state’s voters, 55 percent in favor, 45 percent opposed, in 1960.
The reason for the amendment is thoroughly explained in “Kansas Politics and Government — The Clashes of Political Cultures” in a chapter devoted to the constitution.
For the first 100 years of its history, Kansas towns and cities governed themselves under state laws. A federal court ruling known as Dillon’s Rule declared that cities had no powers other than those provided to them by the state. As a consequence, state statute books became clogged with hundreds upon hundreds of laws passed in response to specific requests to the Legislature from city officials.
Most of those laws applied only to the communities that had requested that they be created; many soon became antiquated. Legislators from urban areas complained that the plethora of city laws on the state’s books complicated city government. The Kansas League of Municipalities tackled the problem and found guidance in Wisconsin and elsewhere.
Studies were initiated that resulted in creation of the home rule amendment that was passed by the Legislature and submitted to the voters. The amendment allows all of the cities and towns in the state to govern themselves; to design their own municipal governments as well as passing other laws applying to local affairs. The amendment also limited the power the Legislature had to tell cities what to do.
The amendment ends with the following statement: “powers and authority granted to cities pursuant to this section shall be liberally construed for the purpose of giving cities the largest possible measure of self-government.”
AS THE AUTHORS of this new political history relate, passage of the home rule amendment was followed 12 years later by a series of amendments designed to streamline government by giving the governor and other state-wide office holders four-year terms, creating a governor’s cabinet, creating a unified court system and providing for the appointment of some district judges and a tax levy to pay for construction of state buildings.
Two years later, nine more amendments to the constitution were made, perhaps the most important of which was the elimination of the re-quirement that every one of the state’s 105 counties have at least one representative in the state House of Representatives, a change that had to be made to make that body truly representative of the state’s population without making it impossibly large.
In 1976, an amendment was passed establishing the use-value system of assessing agricultural land for the purpose of taxation.
In 1980, the state finally was allowed to use federal monies for internal im-provements, such as highways and research laboratories on state university campuses.
Still more fundamental changes were made to the constitution in 1986 and 1988. Adopted in 1986 were amendments authorizing: the state lottery; liquor by the drink, pari-mutuel betting and spending of state funds for economic development projects. Two years later use of federal census figures for apportionment of legislative House and Senate districts was allowed, adjusted by redistributing students and military personnel to their hometowns for the purpose of state legislative representation.
IT IS WORTH noting that all of these changes in the state’s basic law could be considered progressive and that they enjoyed bi-partisan support in almost every case. Robert Docking and John Carlin, both Democrats, were governors when most of these amendments became law and they worked with legislatures controlled by Republicans most of their years in office.
Historians Ed Flentje and Joe Aistrup wrote that the Kansas Constitution “emerged from this 20-year period of reform as a modern political document…..” Other observations made by Flentje and Aistrup in their very useful book will be summarized in other essays.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.