Category: Gov. Laura Kelly

Flags at half-staff to honor Sen. Dole

Gov. Laura Kelly has ordered flags throughout Kansas to be flown at half-staff to honor Sen. Bob Dole, who died on Sunday.

The flags will be at half-staff until sunset on Dec. 9.

“I was deeply saddened to learn of the passing of Bob Dole this morning,” Gov. Laura Kelly said on Sunday. “Senator Dole was many things — a war hero, a father, a husband, a public servant; and to Kansans, a man who embodied everything good and decent about Kansas and about America.

“In public office, Senator Dole was always a voice for Kansas. However, his work in the Senate also had a profound impact on all Americans. Most notably, his efforts to protect Social Security in 1983 and to ensure passage of the Americans with Disabilities Act in 1990, which transformed the lives of those living with a disability.

“Senator Dole’s legacy goes far beyond the walls of Congress. He was a larger-than-life presence in our nation’s politics and demonstrated a decency, a humility, and a civility that should serve as a model for those of us in public life.

“My thoughts are with his wife, Elizabeth, his family and all those who loved Bob Dole.”

Gov. Kelly also has ordered flags in Kansas to remain at half-staff on Tuesday, Dec. 7, in recognition of National Pearl Harbor Remembrance Day.

“This year marks the 80th anniversary of an unforgettable tragedy – when Imperial Japan launched an attack on Pearl Harbor, killing thousands of U.S. personnel and civilians,” Gov. Kelly said. “I encourage all Kansans to join me in honoring those killed on December 7, 1941, and in recognizing all veterans and service members who have given their lives in the defense of our country.”

Flags will remain lowered until sunset on Dec. 9, 2021, in accordance with the proclamation signed by President Joe Biden honoring the passing of Senator Bob Dole.

Kansas Legislature adopts bill with expanded vaccine exemptions, unemployment benefits

Gov. Laura Kelly pledges to sign bill approved by GOP-led House, Senate

by Tim Carpenter and Sherman Smith, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The Kansas Legislature completed a 14-hour special session Monday night by sending Gov. Laura Kelly a bill packed with generous medical, religious and philosophical exemptions to federal COVID-19 vaccination mandates and the potential of state unemployment benefits to people fired for refusing to be inoculated.

As legislators were voting on the measure, the Democratic governor issued a brief statement saying she would sign the bill when it reached her desk.

The House and Senate began the day by adopting rival bills in response to President Joe Biden’s nationwide order requiring vaccination of millions of federal employees, contractors, health care workers and people employed at large companies. In an unusually short meeting in the evening, six negotiators representing the House and Senate hammered out a deal that incorporated the House version of exemptions and Senate provisions on jobless benefits.

The Senate affirmed the decision on a vote of 24-11, while the House completed the process on a vote of 77-34.

The final version was watered down by dropping a Senate amendment forbidding Kansas businesses from imposing vaccination requirements on employees and an amendment banning discrimination against workers based on vaccination status. The settlement deleted a 2023 sunset of the law and retained a severability clause to preserve the bill if portions were successfully challenged in court.

In addition, the package would funnel civil fines as high as $50,000 paid by businesses for violation of the law to the state’s unemployment fund rather than the general treasury.

Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, and Rep. John Barker, R-Abilene, lead negotiators for the Senate and House, exchanged a couple of offers on behalf of their bipartisan three-person negotiating teams before landing on middle ground. The four GOP members embraced the compromise, while both Democrats rejected the pact.

“In the greater scheme of things,” Masterson said, “we have to stay focused on the priority, which is protecting those people right now that could be losing their jobs.”

Kelly announced opposition to Biden’s vaccination mandates before scheduling the unprecedented special session, which was the first in state history to be triggered by petitions signed by senators and representatives.

Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa, said the bill wouldn’t provide the job security sought by people who believe vaccination by government order to be tyranny.

“They think they’re safe, and they don’t have to get a vaccination,” she said. “It’s not going to change anything for them.”

Rep. Vic Miller, a Topeka Democrat, said the legislation was structured so that nobody will have to claim unemployment. Workers won’t have a reason to quit, he said, because Republicans who wrote the bill “built a hole so big that you can’t avoid driving through it when you exercise your religious exemption.”

“Frankly, I don’t think anybody is going to ultimately qualify for unemployment,” Miller said. “It’s a pretend thing, to pretend that they care about these people. It’s — it’s bulls***.”

Miller said the governor’s staff encouraged him to agree to the deal negotiated between Senate and House members, but he refused. The legislation is “a scam,” he said, that allows anybody who is “just slightly smart enough to apply for the exemption” to avoid complying with a vaccine mandate.

“All they have to do is sign a phony statement that they believe the devil is their religion, and therefore they qualify,” Miller said.

Several Democrats worried about how they should explain their opposition to a bill signed by the Democratic governor.

“That does not help us when the governor is doing one thing, and we’re doing the other,” said Rep. Annie Kuether, D-Topeka.

Miller replied with a wry reference to a directive the governor’s chief of staff, Will Lawrence, gave to former health secretary Lee Norman, as revealed in a Kansas Reflector story last week.

“I think it’s important we stay in our lane,” Miller said.

Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat, said the legislation will require employers to choose between keeping their federal contracts and complying with state law. He joked there was only one reason to vote for the bill: The Kansas Chamber opposes it. Several Democrats said they would look forward to receiving checks from the chamber for supporting businesses, a sarcastic remark about an organization that spends heavily on GOP candidates.

Carmichael predicted major employers that already have implemented mandates will stand by them.

“We will find ourselves over at the federal courthouse as soon as the governor autographs this,” Carmichael said. “Before the ink is even dry, we will have more litigation, and in the meantime, people who think that the Kansas Legislature has saved their job will find themselves on the street.”

The long debates

Anti-vaxxers filled House and Senate galleries and hosted a Statehouse rally Monday to remind legislators of their irritation with Biden’s executive order during the pandemic. In the House, they were repeatedly admonished for jeering, applauding or coughing on the lawmakers below. People opposed to any form of vaccination mandate dominated the joint House and Senate committee hearings on purported government overreach.

“We know that there’s some of you that think it doesn’t go far enough,” said Senate Majority Leader Larry Alley, Republican from Winfield. “This bill protects liberty and protects individual freedom, and keeps Kansans working and protects our religious beliefs.”

GOP Rep. John Eplee, a primary care physician from Atchison, rained on the anti-vaxxers’ political parade by declaring the vaccine “incredibly safe and very prudent to give to our patients.”

So far, COVID-19 has contributed to the deaths of 6,643 and hospitalizations of 15,490 since March 2020 in Kansas. The state has seen 458,000 people with confirmed cases of COVID-19.

“Ladies and gentlemen, if you think we’re going to be done with the virus through this bill or through other things, you’re fooling yourself,” Eplee said. “This virus doesn’t care if you’re a Democrat or Republican, and this virus isn’t done with us. It’s going to continue to percolate along.”

The negotiated compromise excluded the amendment passed by the Senate banning employers in Kansas from adopting COVID-19 vaccination mandates without consent of the Legislature. It was an idea of Sen. Dennis Pyle, a Hiawatha Republican.

“My rights don’t start with the employer,” Pyle said. “Employees feel like they’re being punched in the nose. This says, ‘Merry Christmas for everybody,’ you have a job.”

Business of COVID

The Kansas Chamber issued a statement opposing the COVID-19 legislation, placing it at rare odds with Republican lawmakers. During floor debate in the House, Democrats seized the opportunity to chastise Republicans for proposing legislation that would hurt businesses.

Rep. Rui Xu, D-Westwood, pointed out 14 references to the word “shall” in the three-page House version. In other words, the Legislature responded to a federal mandate with a state mandate.

“If this is not a mandate, what is it?” Xu said. “And if this is not an expansion of government, what is it?”

The labor department plans to approve unemployment benefits for individuals fired from their job because of a vaccine mandate, depending on circumstances of each case.

Sen. Jeff Longbine, an Emporia Republican who owns an auto dealership with 40 employees, said he was opposed to federal vaccination mandates but would prefer constitutional challenges play out in court rather than adopt a series of disjointed responses in the 50 state legislatures.

Employers who ignore either federal or state directives on vaccinations risk financial penalties from either level of government, he said.

“This puts Kansas small business in a very, very difficult situation,” Longbine said. “My biggest concern is we’re giving employers around the state a false sense of security.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/11/22/kansas-legislature-adopts-bill-with-expanded-vaccine-exemptions-unemployment-benefits/

Kansas’ proposed vaccination freedom reform attracts heavy dose of skepticism

Special session offering ‘squishy’ exemption and chum for trial lawyers

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Retired registered nurse Debbie Detmer insisted the Kansas Legislature fight the federal government’s effort to trample religious, medical and personal freedoms by compelling workers to be vaccinated during the lingering COVID-19 pandemic.

The Shawnee grandmother said lawmakers convening Monday for the special legislative session devoted to COVID-19 must reinforce ideals of bodily autonomy by punching back at overreach by President Joe Biden.

“Stop all COVID testing, masking and vaccination mandates — period,” Detmer said. “These federal acts are unconstitutional.”

Registered nurse Kelly Sommers said effective protection of public health necessitated people be immunized against vaccine-preventable diseases. Medical exemptions to a vaccine mandate should be allowed during the COVID-19 pandemic, she said, but not philosophical or religious exceptions.

“It is the role and oath of a nurse to dedicate and devote ourselves to the welfare of whom we serve,” said Sommers, of the Kansas State Nurses Association. “We are there to protect every single person in our community.”

Two registered nurses. Two distinctly different views of the pandemic. Their conflicting assessments illustrate the challenge awaiting members of the House and Senate. They’re expected to juggle health, economic, political, financial and constitutional issues keenly felt by the state’s polarized electorate amid the pandemic.

On the to-do list will be legislation making it easier for a person to claim a religious exemption to vaccination mandates. Lawmakers also are expected to consider granting unemployment benefits to anyone fired for refusing to be vaccinated or to undergo regular testing.

It’s not clear GOP leaders in the House and Senate have the votes to pass both bills or if they control two-thirds majorities in event of a governor’s veto.

Expect attempts to introduce supplemental legislation during the special session, because history has recorded the difficulty of restraining all 125 representatives and 40 senators thrown together in the Capitol cauldron. The 2022 governor’s race, likely pitting Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly against Republican Attorney General Derek Schmidt, could add more fuel to the fire.

Extraordinary blowback

Republican leaders in the Legislature said they responded to calls for a special session by appointing the Special Committee on Government Overreach and the Impact of COVID-19 Mandates.

The committee began by conducting two days of public testimony with about 100 people denouncing Biden and other public officials who embraced pandemic limitations adopted since March 2020.

At times, it took on the appearance of political theater as witnesses compared the murder of millions of Jewish people in World War II to decisions by Kansas officials to require wearing of a paper mask during the pandemic.
Another witness compared workplace vaccination requirements to an order to eat a roll of toilet paper to preserve a job.

The GOP-led committee hosted another day of testimony to solicit input on the proposed legislation tied to a religious exemption and unemployment benefits. It produced a flurry of blowback from the Kansas Chamber and other business organizations that declared the legislation went too far. At the same time, the anti-vaccination organization Kansans for Health Freedom argued the legislation didn’t go far enough.

Debbie Mize, co-founder of Kansans for Health Freedom, said the special committee prepared for the special session by drafting a “squishy” bill in response to people forced from their jobs over refusal to accept injections of COVID-19 vaccine.

“Do you really believe this will offer protection for Kansan workers? Kansans want language that will protect their right to keep medical circumstances private and the right to refuse any medical procedure,” Mize said.

Michael Poppa, executive director of the Mainstream Coalition, said the proposed reforms would open a floodgate of spurious claims based on religious grounds. The changes also wade into the waters of separation of church and state, he said.

The result will be circumvention of a private employer’s right to protect employees from COVID-19, he said.

Dan Murray, state director of the National Federation of Independent Business, said the legislation was flawed because it would create opportunity for aggrieved employees to file lawsuits against business owners who deny religious exemptions from the federal vaccine mandate.

“We do have concerns this bill could put employers in the unenviable position of choosing compliance with the Biden mandate or opening themselves up to civil litigation from employees,” he said. “We fear the proposed new civil action could chum the waters even more for Kansas trial attorneys.”

Kansas Chamber lobbyist Eric Stafford said piling on a state mandate in response to a federal mandate was problematic. He said a state law providing unemployment benefits to someone who refused to get vaccinated created a slippery slope in the workplace.

He said such a policy would foster an environment in which workers could “turn in a frivolous claim for an exemption only to be entitled to unemployment insurance and a lawsuit against their employer.”

Seek ‘collective good’

Laura Klingensmith, vice president of a health care business consulting company and part of lawsuits filed in Johnson County against mask mandates, said the base bill offered by the special House and Senate committee for consideration in the special session was “worthless.”

It doesn’t put a stop to discrimination and segregation of people based on vaccination status, she said.

“Will you fight for our health freedoms?” Klingensmith said. “Or, will you choose the agenda of lobbyists, special interests and the Kansas Chamber over us?”

Senate President Ty Masterson, a Republican from Andover, said criticism wouldn’t deter the Legislature from working to strengthen the right of Kansans to be granted religious and medical exemptions to unconstitutional directives issued by Biden.

“We really need to get back to focusing on the fundamental right of the individual,” Masterson said. “We’re not going to let the Biden administration force businesses to play God or doctor and determine whether a religious or medical exemption is valid or not. We’re going to trust individual Kansans.”

Kelly, the Democratic governor seeking re-election, denounced Biden’s vaccination requirement for federal workers and contractors as well as large businesses. Once presented a petition signed by more than 110 Republicans and one Democrat seeking a special session, Kelly relied on power granted governors in the Kansas Constitution to convene the Legislature in special session as of 10 a.m. Monday.

“I’m eager to identify solutions that balance the collective good and individual rights,” said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, D-Lenexa. “I am skeptical that the Legislature will be able to come to a compromise that does that, particularly in light of the positions taken by Republicans during the special committee on government overreach.”

Rep. Jason Probst, a Democrat from Hutchinson, said the special session was a waste of taxpayer money. He said the special session was a $65,000-per-day demonstration of how “extremist lawmakers” inflame debate about COVID-19 vaccines for political gain.

“These politicians, who are openly and with hostility working to keep people angry, scared and divided, are doing more to destroy our country than any terrorist group could ever hope to achieve,” he said. “When it’s over the people who absurdly think they’re enduring the same abuse as Holocaust victims still won’t be appeased.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.

See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2021/11/21/kansas-proposed-vaccination-freedom-reform-attracts-heavy-dose-of-skepticism/