The Manhattan Mercury, March 22
State needs to do its part in helping higher ed, K-State
Kansas State University is making reasonably intelligent moves to try to attract more students.
It’s far past time for the state of Kansas step up to help.
The state Board of Regents, which governs higher education in Kansas, approved a plan to trim tuition costs for high-achieving students from certain states that K-State wants to target. K-State is offering a price break to try to haul in more students from Arkansas, California, Colorado, Oklahoma and Texas. (The price break is already in place for students from some other Midwestern states, including Nebraska.)
That makes good sense. Enrollment at K-State has dropped alarmingly in recent years. As any business might do, K-State is cutting the price to try to sell more widgets.
There are other things that the university can do, and we’re confident that the leaders on campus will figure that out. That’s just the sort of place it is.
The real problem is that the financial support from the state government has dwindled. There’s basically been no increase in 10 years. Expenses, of course, continue to rise, so the university is forced to rely on donations and tuition to continue to do its job. Well, raising tuition appears to be hitting its limits - as we just said, K-State had to institute a price cut to try to attract more out-of-state students.
Certainly the KSU Foundation will continue to reel in more donations, and that will help.
We’re also aware that the state government’s budget itself is under plenty of pressure. There are many needs. We’re not naive.
But the thing is that support for higher education is actually in the state’s best interest. It is what drives a state forward - the vast majority of the jobs and businesses of the 21st century require college degrees. Just think about Manhattan, for instance: The biggest economic development project in many generations here is NBAF, which will require a lot of extremely highly trained people. And were it not for the presence - and excellence - of Kansas State University, that project would have gone somewhere else, probably Texas.
To put it in simple terms, it’s seed corn. You need to plant it to be able to harvest anything later. If you feed it to the cattle instead, you’re going to have a lean winter.
So, sure. Offer a sale on tuition. Keep working on the marketing pitch. Keep improving the product. That’s what K-State has done for many years, and will continue to do.
But let’s get some help.
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The Kansas City Star, March 21
Kansas Senate is only thing standing between 150,000 Kansans and access to Medicaid
More than 150,000 Kansans who need access to affordable quality health care are closer than ever to seeing that become a reality.
Last Thursday, after some dubious legislative legerdemain, the Kansas House approved a bill expanding Medicaid coverage in the state. That’s enormously good news for patients who need help with their insurance, rural hospitals and clinics that are struggling to keep their doors open, and every Kansan who believes their neighbors deserve help when they need it.
The vote was 69-54.
“Medicaid expansion to me is not just an ideological thing,” said state Rep. Tom Cox of Shawnee, a Republican. “It’s about real people’s lives.”
The future health of those “real people” now rests in the hands of the Kansas Senate and Senate President Susan Wagle, a Republican.
Wagle is an opponent of Medicaid expansion. Surely, though, the vote in the Kansas House is enough to convince her and other senators that expansion should at least get a vote in their chamber.
If enough senators oppose the House measure, Wagle’s view will prevail.
But if enough senators approve the House bill, Gov. Laura Kelly will almost certainly sign it, and the will of Kansans will be clear and a matter of law.
“Over 70 percent of Kansans support Medicaid expansion,” Kelly said in a statement Thursday. “I encourage the Kansas Senate to join me, this bipartisan coalition, business leaders and the overwhelming majority of Kansans in support of Medicaid expansion.”
Kansans should congratulate the bipartisan coalition in the House that reached a surprising agreement on Medicaid expansion.
It must be noted, though, that to pass the Medicaid proposal, lawmakers used the controversial “gut-and-go” procedure, a tactic that involves stripping a bill and then inserting an unrelated measure. The Legislature should stop using gut-and-go. Had the Kansas House leadership allowed Medicaid expansion to come to the floor normally, gut-and-go would not have been necessary.
True legislative reform does not mean unilateral political disarmament. Transparency and openness mean full debate on both sides of the aisle, a fact Democrats and Republicans should remember this session.
That’s why Wagle should let the House bill come to the Senate floor. Expansion supporters should not be forced to look for a secret way to submit the bill for debate and a vote.
There are critics of the House Medicaid expansion bill. They’re worried about the cost to the state - an estimated $47 million annually. The federal government would pay about 90 percent of the cost in Kansas, but opponents argue that the federal money might go away, and that the expansion bill lacks an aggressive work requirement.
Those concerns are overblown. But the Kansas Medicaid program can be tweaked in future years if necessary. For now, the most important goal is extending coverage to those who need it.
Kansas continues its slow, steady recovery from the poor decisions of the past decade. The House vote and a Senate debate will continue that progress.
“The time for blocking progress has long since passed,” Gov. Kelly said Thursday. “Now is the time to expand Medicaid.”
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The Wichita Eagle, March 20
Wichita’s ballpark is a go - but the backroom deals need to stop
Now that Wichita city leaders have voted to approve a riverfront ballpark development - despite lingering questions about the project’s investors, design and financial prospects - they want to move forward with haste.
But it’s important to pause and make one thing clear:
Their credibility took a hit - and rightfully so.
More than 30 members of the public addressed the council Tuesday night, many of them furious about the backroom negotiations and “just trust us” approach that Mayor Jeff Longwell and others have touted as necessary.
Wondering why you didn’t know about the private development agreement earlier?
Wondering why the city didn’t notify the public that it planned to sell public land?
Wondering why the rush and secrecy?
That’s just the way business is done, Longwell says.
But that’s not the way it’s supposed to be.
The city’s own staff members acknowledged Tuesday that they didn’t follow established guidelines for the sale of city property.
Scot Rigby, assistant city manager, said “the catalytic nature of this project” and the quest to attract a Minor League Baseball team meant the city ignored procedures outlined in a 2014 document that governs the sale of city-owned land. That document calls for soliciting offers through a time-tested request-for-proposals process.
“We did go around, I guess you could say, the development policy that we had,” Rigby told the council. “But in order to do a catalytic development, this is what had to occur.”
City Manager Robert Layton further noted that city leaders should have made clear months ago that private development was a linchpin for the ballpark deal, and that public land was part of the negotiations.
“I think we all knew it. We were working on it for several months,” Layton said. “But it’s apparent from the community that it’s an issue of trust and that we maybe didn’t live up to expectations in that regard.”
Supporters of the ballpark project may claim this is another battle of visionaries vs. naysayers, that those who question the city’s process just don’t want Wichita to grow and thrive.
That’s clearly not the case.
The crowd of citizens at Tuesday evening’s council meeting included men and women, young professionals and retirees, conservatives and progressives. Most of them, including several who said they support the new ballpark, voiced concerns about transparency and said they hope city leaders will be more upfront in the future.
Wichita landed a Triple-A baseball team, and that fact should be celebrated. The next year will mean fast-track development on the patch of dirt that once was Lawrence-Dumont Stadium and huge changes to Wichita’s Delano neighborhood.
Moving forward, the public must continue to press leaders about numerous issues that remain unresolved. Among them: the exact boundaries of the land being sold, the names of the ballpark developers, commitments to the National Baseball Congress, and the protection of public sight lines and access to the riverfront.
Now that this deal is done, let the smoke out of the back room. And pledge not to hide there again.
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