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The Net #3
Kansas Legislative Network News
February 15, 2008
Tom Thompson
Legislative Coordinator
Sierra Club Kansas Chapter
5001 Rock Creek Lane, Mission, KS 66205
Phone: 913-236-9161; cell: 913-687-2405;
email: tomnthompson@sbcglobal.net
33 State Senators Vote for Global Warming
Overshadowing almost all activity in the Capital this week was legislation concerning Holcomb. What was HB 2711 and SB 515 became Substitute for SB 327 and Substitute for HB 2066 respectively. That's right, a House Bill now has a Senate Bill number and a Senate Bill has a House Bill number making it difficult for most people to follow.
Last week these bills had hearings in committee (see The Net #2). This week they both passed their respective bills out of committee as amended favorably. On Wednesday the full Senate amended Senate Substitute for HB 2066 in a 3 hour debate and passed it on Valentine's Day. The vote was 33 to 7 in favor of 2066. Senators Francisco and Steineger unsuccessfully attempted to improve the bill with amendments.
Many of the arguments in favor of the bill seemed to ignore the testimony of those arguing against the bill in committee hearings. One Senator asked if anyone new anybody who had been killed or injured by CO2. Another said the promised algae center would work fine and the technology had been around for 20 years defying testimony to the contrary.
Those deserving of our thanks for voting against Senate Substitute for HB 2066 are:
Sen. Marci Francisco
Sen. Donald Betts
Sen. Laura Kelly
Sen. Anthony Hensley
Sen. Jean Schodorf
Sen. Chris Steineger
Sen. David Wysong
The rest voted for Global Warming!
The House is expected to do the same starting at 10:00 am on Monday February 18th.
What does this mean? It means there are now 2 bills dealing with Holcomb both of which started as the same bill but each of which have been amended (the House version may be amended further).
Using the Senate bill as an example, the House bill being the same in reverse, the original bill, SB 515 has been substituted into HB 2066. HB 2066 was passed last year by the House and sent to the Senate for consideration. HB 2066 used to deal with transmission lines.
What was in 2066 was removed and substituted with 2711. Why? Because the House already passed 2066, the Senate only must debate and pass the Senate version of the Holcomb Bill without the House getting to. The bill, now passed by the Senate, will go directly to a conference committee. The next step will be for both the House and Senate to vote to concur a conference committee report.
But wait, the same will probably happen to the House Substitute for 327.
There will be two bills to choose from. Leadership in the House and Senate, if they cooperate, can look for the bill they like the most and have that bills conference committee report voted on.
The belief is that, whatever bill is passed, it will be vetoed by the Governor. Since the vote in the Senate was 33 for and 7 against it is unlikely a vetoed Holcomb bill would be sustained (2/3rds vote needed to overturn a veto which is 27 in the Senate and 84 in the House).
Pressure needs to be kept on the House as they start debate Monday.
One other bill for which I testified was SB 452, which had a hearing in the Senate Natural Resources Committee on Thursday. This bill set up improved energy standards for state buildings, schools and local governments.
Full text of bills and a lot of other good information about what is going at in the legislature can be had at the Kansas Legislative website:
http://www.kslegislature.org/legsrv-legisportal/index.do
Tom Thompson
Legislative Chair
Sierra Club Kansas Chapter
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