2024 New Year’s Resolution: Be an advocate! 

As we reflect back on our exceptional work to increase voter turnout to record setting levels during the November 2023 local elections, you may be wondering how to carry this momentum into the new year. One way you can keep making an impact is to add “Be an advocate!” to your list of New Year’s resolutions. Our league will make this easier than ever by sending one “Advocate Action” each week in the 2024 legislative session. 

 

If you want to get a head start, identify one issue that you are passionate about and use that as the basis for your weekly Advocate Action!

 

The League of Women Voters Kansas has selected these legislative priorities for the 2024 session of the Kansas Legislature: 

• Voting Rights
• Reproductive Rights
• Kancare Expansion
• Climate Change
• Criminal and Youth Justice
• Water
• Government Transparency 

 

Other issues we expect to be heavily discussed in the upcoming session are:

• Tax Policy
• Education Funding 

 

January 2 Advocate Action: Find your Kansas Senator and Legislator!

Step 1: Open this website: https://pluralpolicy.com/find-your-legislator/

(Note: Alternatively, you can go to  https://kslegislature.org/, click on “Find Your Legislator”, and click “Search by Your Address”, but this route will take you to the same website linked above.)

 

Step 2: Enter your address

 

Step 3: Click "Search”

 

Step 4: View your state representative and senator on the Plural Policy website or return to kslegislature.org to view their contact information, committees, and any bills and resolutions they have sponsored. 

 

Step 5: Now that you know who is representing you in Topeka, add their phone number and email address to your contact list so you can quickly reach out to them throughout the legislative session. 

 

January 9 Advocate Action: Contact your State Senator and Representative

This week, reach out to both your Senator and Representative! Using the contact information you found last week, you can call them or send an email. Introduce yourself as a constituent and let them know your priorities for this legislative session. 

 

Tip 1: Use the proper title and last name.

When addressing a senator in writing, the proper salutation is "Dear Senator [Last Name]". 

You can also use the following salutations:

• The Honorable [Last Name]
• Senator [Last Name]
• Senator [First Name] [Last Name]

 

When addressing a House Representative in writing, the proper salutation is "Dear Representative [Last Name]".

You can also use the following salutations:

• The Honorable [Last Name]
• Representative [Last Name]
• Representative [First Name] [Last Name]

 

If you are writing to either a senator or representative about a specific piece of legislation, you can also address them by their title as chairman or chairwoman of the committee that is considering the legislation. 

 

Tip 2: Be clear and concise in your message.

• Focus on one issue per message. If you have multiple requests you can send multiple communications. 
• Suggest specific actions you would like them to take: introduce a bill, hold a committee hearing for a bill, vote for or against a bill, sustain or override a veto, etc. 
• Be specific and factual. Use examples, statistics, or personal anecdotes to illustrate your point.

 

Tip 3: Maintain a respectful and professional tone. 

• Avoid negativity and personal attacks. Focus on the issue, not the person.
• Proofread carefully. Typos and grammatical errors can undermine your message.
• Show appreciation (if applicable). Acknowledge their past efforts or positive stance on related issues.

 

Bonus Tip: Copy additional elected officials as appropriate. 

• Consider adding leadership (House Leadership and Senate Leadership) so they know what Kansans across the state want. 
• If you are reaching out to a committee, copy your senator or representative so they know your stance. 
• If you are reaching out to someone with a different viewpoint than yours, copy an elected official that shares your view. 

 

January 17 Advocate Action: Learn How a Bill Becomes a Law

This week, we will be learning (or reviewing) how a bill becomes a law in Kansas. The Kansas Legislature created this outline of the process: 

Source: How a Bill Becomes Law-Kansas

 

One step to highlight is: “Bill Referred to Committee.” In the House, the Speaker refers bills and resolutions to the appropriate committees.  In the Senate, the President refers bills to committees. The elected majority party sets the legislative agenda, but either the Speaker of the House or the Senate President could single-handedly stop all progress on legislation! To illustrate, this happened in 2020, when then President Susan Wagle “sent more than a dozen bills that could be used as legislative vehicles for Medicaid expansion back to committee, ensuring they won’t be passed anytime soon” after a separate vote failed in the House. (source: As Kansas lawmakers battle over abortion, Medicaid expansion could be casualty) 

 

If you aren’t seeing progress on a bill you support, you can contact leadership to request that the bill is referred to a committee. Here are a few more people to add to your contact lists:

 

Representative Daniel Hawkins - Speaker of the House

Phone: 785-296-2302

Email: dan.hawkins@house.ks.gov

 

Senator Ty Masterson - President of the Senate

Phone: 785-296-2419

Email: Ty.Masterson@senate.ks.gov

 

January 23 Advocate Action: Attend A Legislative Coffee

One of the best ways to stay informed of what has happened and what is upcoming in the Kansas Legislature is to hear it directly from your elected senators and representatives. The League’s Voter Information team makes this easier than ever by partnering with local libraries to host several Legislative Coffees throughout the session. You can attend in person or watch the live stream on YouTube. All Legislative Coffees are on Saturday mornings from 10:00-11:00 am. Check the LWV JoCo calendar for the most up to date information. 

 

January 30 Advocate Action: Look up a Bill

 

If you know what bill you are looking for, you can type the bill number directly into the “Find a Bill” section on the left side of kslegislature.org and then click “Lookup.”

 

If you don’t know the bill number, you can search for keywords in the upper left hand corner:

 

Once you are on viewing a specific bill, you can find information including:

• Short Title 
• Testimony and Minutes
• Current Sponsor
• Original Sponsor
• Requested for introduction by
• Bill Versions
• Documents is the actual text of the bill
• SN (Supplemental Note) is prepared by the Legislative Research Department and contains information like a plain language summary of the legislation, background information, and fiscal information. 
• FN (Fiscal Note) which estimates how much a bill would cost. 
• Bill History

 

Not all bills have all of this information. For example, Supplemental Notes and Fiscal Notes take time to create so they are not on every bill introduced. If a bill never gets a hearing, there won’t be any testimony. 

 

Practice Example 1: Here is a bill introduced in 2023 showing all of the information listed above. Can you find HB 2056 on kslegislature.org and locate/view the opponent testimony submitted by the League of Women Voters of Kansas? 

 

Practice Example 2: Lookup HB2284 on kslegislature.org. Read the supplemental note from when the bill was originally introduced. Then read the short title of the bill and the Conference Committee Report Brief. Do these sound like the same bill? 

 

This is an example of the controversial practice known as “Gut and Go” where the original contents of a bill are removed and replaced with a different bill. By using the shell of a bill that was already at the Conference Committee step in the legislative process, Republican leadership was able to bypass committee hearings and eliminated the opportunity for expert and public testimony in their push for a flat tax. Republicans aren’t the only party to use this practice. In 2019, Democrats in the Kansas House used “Gut and Go” to pass Medicaid Expansion.

 

February 6 Advocate Action: Request Committee Agendas

Legislative committees provide a forum for in-depth analysis of proposed legislation, allowing for expert opinions and public input to be considered before bills reach the committee of the whole for debate and voting.

 

There are different types of committees such as standing committees, select (special) committees, joint committees, statutory committees, subcommittees, and task forces. This month we are focused on standing committees. 

 

Most standing committees are created for the purpose of considering proposed legislation and reporting recommendations thereon.  Standing committees normally meet at a regular time and place each day, although the actual number of meetings held is determined largely by the magnitude of the workload. Weekly committee agendas are prepared and are printed in the calendar and online in advance of the meetings.  These agendas also are distributed to members, legislative staff, the media, and the general public. The week’s advocate action is to reach out to the committee(s) in the House and Senate that relate to your top issue(s) and request to receive committee agendas. 

 

Here’s how:

1. Find the committee in the list below and click the hyperlink or find their Committee page on the Kansas Legislature website. 
2. At the top of the page you will see the name of the committee assistant and an email address. 

3. Send an email that can be as simple as: “Can I please be added to the recipient list for committee agendas?”

4. Receive weekly agendas (and updates) and find out what bills have upcoming hearings. 

 

The standing committees in the Senate are:

• Agriculture and Natural Resources
• Assessment and Taxation
• Commerce
• Confirmation Oversight
• Education
• Federal and State Affairs
• Financial Institutions and Insurance
• Interstate Cooperation
• Judiciary
• Local Government
• Organization, Calendar and Rules
• Public Health and Welfare
• Transparency and Ethics
• Transportation
• Utilities
• Ways and Means

 

The standing committees in the House are: 

• Agriculture and Natural Resources
• Agriculture and Natural Resources Budget
• Appropriations
• Calendar and Printing
• Child Welfare and Foster Care
• Commerce, Labor and Economic Development
• Corrections and Juvenile Justice
• Education
• Elections
• Energy, Utilities and Telecommunications
• Federal and State Affairs
• Financial Institutions and Pensions
• General Government Budget
• Health and Human Services
• Higher Education Budget
• Insurance
• Interstate Cooperation
• Judiciary
• K-12 Education Budget
• Legislative Budget (House)
• Legislative Modernization
• Local Government
• Rules and Journal
• Social Services Budget
• Taxation
• Transportation
• Transportation and Public Safety Budget
• Veterans and Military
• Water
• Welfare Reform

 

February 13 Advocate Action: Email Committee Members

Last week you were introduced to committees and next week we will go deep and learn about submitting formal testimony. This week we will focus on less formal, but still incredibly important emails to committee members. 

Emails are useful in a few scenarios: 

• A committee hasn’t scheduled a hearing on a topic, so it is not possible to submit testimony. In this scenario, you would request a hearing so that it is possible to submit testimony. 
• A committee has already had a hearing or scheduled an upcoming hearing on a specific bill. In this scenario, the bill could come up for a vote after the hearing and you would request that committee members vote for or against it. 

Here’s how:

Find the committee page on the Kansas Legislature website to view it’s members. 

You could click on the hyperlink of every member to find their email address under their contact information. Alternatively, if you want to save time, scroll to the very bottom of the page, export the members in a spreadsheet, and quickly copy/paste all of their email addresses into your recipient list. 

Write your email following the same tips from our January 9th Advocate action:

• Use the proper salutation
• Be clear and concise
• Maintain a respectful and professional tone. 

February 20 Advocate Action: Submit Testimony 

What is testimony?

Testimony is a formal statement made by an individual or organization before a legislative committee during a hearing on a proposed bill or resolution. The goal of testimony is to inform the committee members about the potential impacts of the proposed legislation and influence their decision on whether or not to move the bill forward.

Why is testimony important? 

The first opportunity to support or stop a bill is in committee. The more testimony received, the better the chances of getting good bills out of committee or stopping bad bills from moving out of committee. 

If a bill does reach the floor, legislators who aren’t members of the original committee can see how much support or opposition there was for a bill and can also review the testimony submitted. 

How do I submit testimony?

1. Research the committee’s requirements.

   • Every committee can have different requirements. Check the requirements on the committee’s website to find out information such as:

     • What is the submission deadline for testimony?

     • How does testimony need to be submitted? (pdf format, paper copies, etc.) 

     • Are there any additional requirements such as a cover sheet or suggested formatting? 

2. Write your testimony.

   • Here is a general outline to follow: 

     • Introduction: 

       • Thank the committee for their time.

       • Introduce yourself (and your organization if applicable).

       • Clearly state your position (support, oppose, or neutral) and name the specific bill number. 

     • Body: 

       • Provide evidence to support your claims: Use data, statistics, personal experiences, or expert opinions to strengthen your arguments.

       • Focus on the impacts: Explain how the bill will affect you, your organization, or the broader community.

       • Offer suggestions (optional): If you have specific recommendations for amendments or alternative solutions, present them clearly.

     • Conclusion:

       • Thank the committee again.

       • Restate your position on the bill.

   • Important Note: Testimony is public record. Any personal information or contact information you provide will be accessible to the public.

3. Submit your testimony.

   • Email your written testimony to the committee assistant before the deadline. If paper copies are required, find an ally in Topeka to help deliver them.

   • If you also plan on giving oral testimony, in person or remotely, be available for the entire committee meeting and wait until your name is called. 

Here is an example of where to find testimony requirements for the House Committee on Elections. First, click on Committee Documents:

Then, review the committee rules for conferees and notice that this committee has a cover sheet for testimony:

February 27 Advocate Action: Watch a Committee Meeting or Chamber Proceedings

Take some time this week to watch a committee meeting, house chamber proceedings, or senate chamber proceedings. 

Here’s how: 

On the Kansas Legislature website, click the Audio/Video dropdown. You can use either of the two bottom links. 

The Statehouse Live & Archive option takes you to this view. You can view all past and future videos for a specific date on the Calendar - Day/Month view (seen below). Now Playing will show you active live streams or upcoming events. New Recordings will show you past events. 

The House, Senate & Committee Video option takes you to this Kansas Legislature YouTube page. You can view current and upcoming live streams. There is also a playlist for house chamber proceedings, senate chamber proceedings, and every committee so you can view videos in chronological order or find a specific date.