Republican legislators vote against 900 new jobs in Topeka

The Kansas Legislature formally closed its 2008 session this morning, but not before Republicans got the chance to block legislation that would help bring 900 manufacturing jobs to the Topeka area.

According to Hawver, Rep. Annie Kuether, D-Topeka, proposed the adoption of a conference committee report that would have sent the issue to the Governor to be signed into law. However, Republican leadership voted against the procedural maneuver.

According to the Capital-Journal, Speaker Melvin Neufeld voted against the bill because he felt it was inappropriate to bring up new business during the ceremonial Sine Die session.

Uh, Mel, it's not as if Rep. Kuether proposed a brand new bill. All you were doing is approving a conference committee report. By it's very nature, if something is in a conference committee. both the House and the Senate passed variations of it.

We'll leave it up to you to decide if Speaker Neufeld is deliberately misleading us or is just completely oblivious to the process of lawmaking.

Rough weekend for Mel

Recently, a post of The Kansas Trunkline, the official blog of the Kansas Republican Party (e.g. the one Christian Morgan admits to authoring) asked why the Governor and Kansans might be upset with Melvin Neufeld and the Republican dominated legislature in Kansas. Recent commentary pieces in the Hutchinson Daily News and Kansas City Star shed some light on the subject.

First, the Hutchinson News.

Normally, leadership would be the pre-eminent quality of someone who ascends to the position of Speaker of the Kansas House of Representatives.

"Leader," however, does not describe Rep. Melvin Neufeld. Instead, the words that come to mind are irrational, bully and even hypocrite.

That's just the first two paragraphs. The piece touches on more than just the Speakers general unlikability.

The western Kansas Republican obviously will do just about anything to get his way in the Legislature, which this session is all about overturning the decision of the state's top environmental regulator who would not rubber-stamp Sunflower Electric's massive coal-fired power plant proposal for western Kansas.

That includes swapping votes and obstructing other - more important - legislation. It includes misinformation and expression of some downright bizarre viewpoints, such as saying he thinks carbon emissions are good for the crops.

Surely they're done, right? Wrong. On Neufeld's accusation that the Governor bought votes on the coal plant issue by permitting empty seats to be filled on the state plane (by Legisators who purchased their own tickets with their own money) ...

This bizarre behavior probably shouldn't be dignified with a response except that its nonstop outrageousness begs for expression of some relevant observations.

The free rides to the Final Four were easily explained. Some coal plant supporters as well as opponents went on the plane, and legislators paid for their own tickets. Sebelius probably figured it made sense to fill the seats. Now, taxpayers could quibble over the fiscal responsibility of flying a delegation of politicians to the Final Four, but it probably is an event the governor ought to attend.

And, besides, that debate is not about vote-buying.And Neufeld exposed himself as a hypocrite, because he has been accused of vote bribery himself, though of a more serious nature. Neufeld called the wife of a legislator in 1994 to say her husband had been found in a "compromising position" with two female lobbyists in a Statehouse lounge. That reportedly was the follow-through of earlier threats he made to the legislator in an attempt to convince him to vote Neufeld's way on a particular bill.

Maybe the Kansas City Star's Steve Kraske will have a more cheerful view on the Legislature's accomplishments this year.

You’ve probably never heard of Melvin Neufeld, but there’s one thing you might want to know about the Kansas House speaker: He goes well with jam.

Yep, he’s toast. Or, at a minimum, he’s so charred around the edges that hardly anybody will go near him.

Or not.

Get this: A Republican speaker in a chamber dominated by Republicans couldn’t cough up the single vote he lacked at one point on a test vote to see whether the House could override a Sebelius veto of the plants.

Talk about a canary in the mine. Good speakers keep five votes in their hip pockets just for sport.

Hell, even Nefueld's fellow Republicans blame him for the utter lack of any substantive accomplishments from this legislative session.

Disappointment typically soars at the end of any session. Lawmakers almost never get everything they want. But I was over there last week and I’m here to tell you: This session set a record for utter exasperation.

“Veterans are saying this is the worst legislative year they’ve ever seen,” said Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican.

Lawmakers complain about Neufeld’s closed-door style, his lack of people skills, his unwillingness to accept ideas contrary to his own. His relations with Sebelius are described as uneven. He’s feuding with his second-in-command, House Majority Leader Ray Merrick of Stilwell, who agrees the speaker is in deep doo-doo.

Try as they might, the KS GOP can't even convince their own caucus that Gov. Sebelius and Democrats are to blame. How do they expect to convince the people of Kansas?

Massive props to Rep. Josh Svaty (D-Ellsworth)

Rep. Josh Svaty has penned a brilliant piece, outlining his opposition to the Holcomb bill. Rep. Svaty says it better than we could ever dream of saying it, so we'll just let his words speak for themselves. Tip of the hat to Peg at KansasPrairie.net. It's kind of long, but if this is an issue you are passionate about, it's well worth the read.

I am not opposed to coal. I want to see baseload generation built in Southwest Kansas. I do not take my orders from the Governor.

I have tried to avoid the discussion of coal, but this is truly what this session has become, and it deserves a great deal of attention. I want to start by saying this: I have never been more proud of the area I represent than at times like this. These past few weeks have been very difficult – I have been called names, my wife has been drug in to my issues, and we have received many very forceful comments from individuals. I am proud to say that none of those comments have come from this district. I know from your comments that many of you agree with me, and some of you do not. However, those of you that do not have been very respectful in your approach, and I cannot extend to you enough gratitude. Thank you.

I reiterate the points I made earlier – I am not opposed to coal and I recognize the role it will have to play as we transition to the future. However, as this session opened it became apparent that there was to be no compromising in terms of what the final legislation would look like. Hearings were rushed, amendments were pre-drafted and approved by a committee to which no one was publicly appointed. I made my stand; I tried to have them slow down and be more deliberate; but the groups interested in this bill were not listening to a broad swath of Kansans.

We now find ourselves with two basically identical bills. They have been vetoed by the Governor; one has already been overriden by the Senate and both await action by the House. Some of you have wanted me to support Sunflower and Holcomb, but we can never lose sight of an elected official’s job: as a legislator, I don’t vote for issues, I vote for bills. The two bills before me contain public policy so loosely formed and so dangerous in their effect that I can hardly call them “public policy.”

Some would say that there are very good “green” things in these bills – a renewable portfolio standard, net metering only for solar, etc. Those elements are both small and hardly compare to the underlying bill. Besides, they will always be nothing more than window dressing when they are used to bring votes rather than being a genuine policy shift. You could describe these bills this way – a smoker that smokes two packs of cigarettes a day has decided to quit, for the sake of his health. He therefore decides to start wearing a nicotene patch, and limits himself to only smoking three packs of cigarettes a day. He also makes no effort to exercise and be more active (which in the case of our little metaphor would be energy efficiency and conservation, two elements all-but nonexistent in these bills.) Now, he is not only paying for the cigarettes, but he is also paying for the patch, which does nothing for him.

Some would say that Secretary Bremby’s authority needs to be curtailed. That is for the courts to decide. When a cabinet-level Secretary makes a determination that someone does not agree with, they can go to court and seek an interpretation of that Secretary’s statutory authority. Sunflower has done this, and that case is pending before the Kansas Supreme Court. However, Sunflower also decided to preempt that decision and have the legislature change the law (and make it retroactive.) If there is ambiguity in the Clean Air Act’s language – if the Secretary did in fact overstep his bounds - by all means we should fix it. However, on an issue this big we should wait for an interpretation from the court.

Some would say that we need the access to cheap power. This is where I will have to stop for the week, because I do not have the space to devote to this issue. However, it is my humble opinion, after years of energy briefings, that cheap power will be hard to come by in the near term, and it will not likely be coming from coal. Cost of coal plants are skyrocketing, and that is without any monetization of carbon dioxide from the Federal level, which is likely. Every other utility in the state has shelved or postponed its plans for a coal plant until they find out what is going on federally. Kansas City Power and Light is halfway through construction of their new plant in Missouri, and they are already 700 million dollars over budget on a 1 billion dollar plant. To charge in now with the biggest coal plant this state has seen in decades would be foolish, and that foolishness would expose the ratepayers to all of that
risk. In the past that risk was tempered by the fact that the Kansas Corporation
Commission would oversee and approve all of the rate increases by Sunflower to
make sure they were “prudent.”

Oh yeah, one other thing these bills do: they remove the KCC oversight from Sunflower’s rates – that protection would now be gone.

Thanks to Gov. Sebelius, Rep. Svaty and the other legislators who were able to withstand the bullying tactics of Speaker Neufeld and do what is right for Kansas.

Hey Mel, you're going the wrong way!

Another day, another cockamamie attempt at passing a coal bill from House Speaker Melvin Neufeld.

This time the boys on the right decided to bundle the coal bill with some totally unrelated projects to stimulate economic development in Johnson County. In addition to needlessly putting these important projects at risk, but Senators on both sides of the aisle view it as an unconstitutional grouping of non-germane bills.

Nevertheless, the bill passed the Senate and was sent on to the house. Now, after getting 83 votes on the last bill, and then only 80 votes on the attempt to override the Governor's veto, Mel and his buddies managed only 76 votes today. A full eight votes short of the necessary 2/3 majority needed to override the Governor's likely veto.

Another failure in Melvin Neufeld's seemingly endless attempt to win this petty battle and another example that he will do anything and put any project at risk just to get another (or a first?) notch in his belt.

If you play with fire Melvin, you're gonna get burned.

Melvin Neufeld is a sore loser

Having been soundly defeated in his attempt to override Governor Kathleen Sebelius' veto of the Holcomb coal power plant bill last week, Melivn Neufeld and his cronies in the House have threatened to file a (frivoulus?) lawsuit against Governor Kathleen Sebelius for...well...we're not really sure. Disagreeing with them?

"[Lt. Governor Mark Parkinson] came out and said regardless of what we do we don't have any grounds to do
what we're going to do," Merrick said. "It's us saying there is a separation of
power issue, and we're going to take care of our interest and protect our
members because we are an equal body."

Uh, we're no political science majors or anything (oh wait, yes we are!), but this seems more to us like a case where the separation of powers has been markedly successful.

Merrick and Neufeld had a chance to override the Governor's veto (her check on the powers of the legislative branch) and failed. The fact that Neufeld and Merrick couldn't muster the votes to override the veto just means they were on the wrong side of the issue. The mere opportunity to do so is the separation of powers in action.

Nowhere in the Constitution, state or federal, does it say that the outcome of such maneuvering has to be to the liking of the majority.

The Wichita Eagle's Phillip Brownlee hit the nail on the head in his blog today.

The Kansas Supreme Court will decide whether Bremby followed the rule of law. It would be a waste of taxpayer money for the Legislature to go to court over the same issues.

What are they suing her for again? My head hurts.

UPDATE: HOUSE YET TO VOTE ON OVERRIDE

The house is in session right now and has yet to vote on the override. Rest assured, if Speaker Neufeld had the votes, the vote would have already taken place. One thing we know, Neufeld has not given up yet. He is still whipping votes and threatening legislators. There is still time. Email your legislator IMMEDIATELY. Tell them to stand up to Speaker Neufeld's strongarm tactics and do what is best for the people of Kansas.

More Coal Plants = Higher Energy Bills?!?!?

Sunflower Electric has been arguing that they desperately need two giant, CO2 belching coal plants in Holcomb, KS in order to bring cheaper energy to western Kansans. And the "Melvin Neufelds" of the state have been all too eager to take up that corporate drum beat.

But, wait! (insert record scratch here)

A report released yesterday by Innovest, an independent leading global financial firm , announced that coal can no longer be considered the cheapest source of power - if you account for coming federal regulation of carbon emissions. From the Wichita Eagle:

The report found a political and regulatory environment nationally that is tilting away from new coal plants and imposing significant new costs on them. Among the trends: The U.S. Supreme Court last year signaled its approval of federal carbon regulation. This session, Congress has introduced a flurry of carbon cap and trade bills, and the question "is not whether legislation will be enacted, but when." Moreover, the study noted the soaring costs of plant construction.

All of this has changed the underlying economics of new coal-fired plants.

The report finds that while the Sunflower expansion would provide additional baseload capacity, "the carbon risks associated with an increased reliance on coal present significant financial risks for the company's owners and ratepayers."

So, this pretty much takes the wind out of Neufeld's sails. Not that he had much wind in them anyway. (What happened to overriding that veto, Melvin?)

Now that they can no longer claim "cheaper energy" as their number one reason for holding up the entire legislative session - what excuse will they have? Do you think they'll fall back on the ol' "but joggers emit more CO2 than gigantic coal plants do" line?

'Cause that one was really stupid.