http://cjonline.com/...
Excellent article in the Topeka Capital-Journal this morning, written by their education reporter, Celia Llopis-Jepsen. Her article reports that the Kansas Legislature is the only legislature in the country that conducts the bulk of its business via anonymous committee bills. Her research found that "more than 90 percent of bills in the 2015 session didn’t bear the names of anyone involved in authoring or introducing them."
This investigation was a massive undertaking, by all accounts. Ms. Llopis-Jepsen reviewed legislative indexes "dating as far back as the 1920s." This revealed a trend: that Kansas gradually shifted, starting in 1925, "from a state with obvious authorship of most bills to one with increasing anonymity." The trend is startling: "In 1925, 80 percent of bills had the names of lawmakers on them, but 50 years later only half did. By 2005, three-quarters were committee bills. In 2015, 92 percent were."
That's not all. She then contacted the legislatures of EVERY SINGLE STATEHOUSE in the country to find out whether this was normal. It wasn't. Apparently, every other state has some way to determine authorship of a bill. In most states, lawmakers must put their names on bills. Most states never use committee bills, or use them sparingly in special circumstances. Often this information is available online, no more than a few clicks away. Even in Idaho -- the only other state where nearly all bills originate in a committee -- the bill has to contain the name of the sponsor and contact information for the person entity responsible for proffering the bill. When discussing legislative non-transparency, Kansas is unfortunately in a class by itself.
The worst part of this story, though, isn't how bad it makes Kansas look. As a native Kansan, I'm used to that. It's that Democrats and Republicans alike defend this practice.
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