Salina Journal, Nov. 21
The state unemployment trust fund is being stretched. With some 70,000 residents regularly receiving unemployment benefits, it’s at risk of being depleted next year.
GOP legislative leaders recently proposed using a portion of the state’s federal CARES Act money to bolster the fund. Gov. Laura Kelly shot down the idea, saying that low-interest loans from the government were a better option to cover any gaps that might emerge.
We understand the appeal of turning to CARES Act dollars right now. But Kelly’s decision was the right one.
Federal assistance for rebuilding from the coronavirus should go to towns and cities across the state, helping families and small businesses. That’s what it’s meant to do, and that’s what it should do. Look around your community, look around your region. Do you see pressing needs exposed by the toll of the pandemic? We would expect that most everyone in the state of Kansas answers “yes” to that question.
Some lawmakers seemed to suggest that cities couldn’t spend enough of the CARES Act money by the end of the year. For officials who have so often espoused the virtues of local control, that’s laughable. Conservatives love to talk about flexibility and ability to innovate. They should use this money to allow municipalities to do just that.
Turning to low-interest loans to replenish the trust fund, if necessary, will need to be handled with caution. Lawmakers sounded the alarm about businesses, which pay taxes to support the fund, being called upon to ultimately fund the difference.
That’s a reasonable concern. But these are, as the cliche goes, unprecedented times.
We may believe that we are through with the pandemic, but the pandemic is not through with us. Even if effective vaccines are deployed at the beginning of next year, as seems increasingly likely, it will take much of 2021 for society and commerce to return to a vague semblance of normal. The economic aftershocks could well continue for years.
Navigating these times isn’t about how we spend a single batch of money, or how we handle a single trust fund. It’s about making prudent, long-term decisions for the best interests of the most Kansans possible.
That’s what the governor is doing, and she should be commended for it.
The Wichita Eagle, Nov. 19
Once again, the Kansas Board of Regents has decided that protecting the identity of a few potential job candidates is more important than openness, trust and credibility at Wichita State University.
The board, which oversees state universities and colleges, voted 8-0 Wednesday to conduct a closed search for WSU’s new president.
The reasoning - same as last year, when WSU set out to replace late president John Bardo - is that we’ll miss out on good candidates unless the process is secret.
That’s simply not true, as numerous past presidential searches have proven.
Unfortunately, another closed-door process means another chance for Wichita State to bypass public scrutiny. And it comes as the university has suffered several big hits to its credibility:
WSU hired Jay Golden last fall without public vetting or questioning, and fired him in September without explanation.
It investigated allegations of physical and verbal abuse by basketball coach Gregg Marshall, but sealed the findings and paid Marshall $7.75 million to go away.
Over the past few years, university officials have barred reporters from a discussion about student fees, leased campus property to a private school without a public vote, hiked fees for a controversial new on-campus YMCA, and leased space at a privately built apartment complex without state approval.
Are you starting to see a pattern here?
Regents had a choice this week. They could have returned to the days when candidates seeking the WSU presidency would visit the campus, meet with constituent groups and answer questions in open forums from students, faculty, media and the public. They could have made the process above-board, honest and transparent.
Instead, Board of Regents member Jon Rolph moved to hire a search firm, create a search committee, appoint a committee chairman - Wichita attorney Dan Peare - and keep the names of job candidates secret.
Rolph said he talked with people at Wichita State, and “I think a closed search is the right thing to produce the best candidates right now.”
It could be the easy thing. Maybe even the predictable thing.
Confidential searches benefit headhunters and potential candidates because they keep names out of the public eye and lessen the chance of a recruit being outed to his or her current employer.
But secrecy doesn’t help public universities, particularly ones suffering from widespread mistrust. And hiring WSU’s new president - one of the state’s most powerful and highest-paid education leaders - in secret isn’t the right thing.
The Kansas City Star, Nov. 18
Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly is doing her damnedest to get her constituents to save their own lives. And this time, she’s trying harder to do that without upsetting them.
So yes, she’s issued another statewide mask order in response to the current spike in COVID-19 cases. This one will go into effect next Wednesday, Nov. 25.
But unlike the order she issued in July, which many counties promptly rejected, this one gives local officials “the flexibility to make sure it works best for them,” a Kelly spokesman said. Only about a quarter of Kansas counties have any order in effect now.
It’s more than slightly ridiculous that Kelly has to take the “Hey kids, would you like the carrots or the peas?” approach to getting counties to do what’s so obviously the right thing. But that the governor is willing to try a more collaborative approach is to her credit. Now let’s just hope it works.
Counties can still opt out, though with the number of new cases so high and the science so clear, maybe this time local officials will put lives and livelihoods above all the “free-to-be-maskless me” political posturing. Perhaps the fact that Kansas hospitals are under so much pressure will change the calculus.
Kelly is calling her new executive order part of an “all-of-the-above approach to slow the spread of the virus and to keep our businesses and our schools open until a vaccine is available for all Kansans.”
That messaging underlines the reality that businesses can’t thrive or even survive amid an out-of-control epidemic.
Counties will have a week to come up with their own mask orders before the statewide mandate goes into effect. If they don’t, they’ll be covered by the state order. Again, unless they opt out.
Hopefully, Kelly’s efforts to work with Republicans on public service announcements and a strategy to get local leaders involved in encouraging masks will put the kibosh on the silly suggestion that trying to keep Kansans safe somehow makes the governor a “wannabe dictator.” And no more offensive Nazi comparisons, OK?
Masks will have to be worn inside or in line to enter any public space or business frequented by the public, and anywhere outdoors where physical distancing of at least 6 feet isn’t possible.
On Wednesday, Kelly said this has been “another abysmal week for virus spread in Kansas. … We reported over 19,000 positive cases of COVID-19 over the seven-day period ending on Monday, with more than 7,000 reported over the weekend alone.”
Topeka’s Stormont Vail Health System has no more room for COVID patients, and Cloud County Health Center in Concordia, Kansas, had to transfer a critical patient by ambulance to Omaha after eight different Kansas hospitals said they were out of beds.
“Remember that we are all in this together,” Kelly said. If local officials choose to see it that way, more Kansans will survive.
Please read our comment policy before commenting.