Recent Kansas editorials

The Kansas City Star, March 29

Once again, Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly has acted to protect her constituents, imposing a statewide stay-at-home order on Saturday in response to the global coronavirus pandemic.

Without nearly enough equipment or tests, not to mention ICU beds, and no vaccine or proven treatment beyond the ventilators no hospital in the country has enough of, the best we can do right now is attempt to slow the spread of COVID-19. And the only way to do that is with the kind of aggressive but absolutely necessary shelter-in-place order Kelly has now given.

In a failure of leadership and failure to listen to those who know better, Missouri Gov. Mike Parson, meanwhile, continues to ignore the out-and-out pleading of doctors and other public health officials pushing him to take the same action.

At a self-pitying Saturday news conference, Parson said, “To the people and the reporters that do nothing but criticize others, you don’t need to listen anymore to this briefing today.” With Missouri cases mushrooming from 106 just one week ago to 903 cases and 12 deaths as of Sunday, Governor, we can neither stop listening nor stop pushing you to save lives with more aggressive action.

Parson also quoted from Teddy Roosevelt’s speech about “the man in the arena.”

“It is not the critic who counts,” he said, “not the man or woman who points out how the strong man or woman stumbles … The credit belongs to the man or woman who is actually in the arena.” Please be strong enough to see how this is going to end - strong enough to change course. And by all means, get into the arena in a way that gives Missourians a fighting chance against this pandemic.

After Kelly issued the order, the Republican leadership in the Kansas House said in a statement that it “will no doubt impact our families and our businesses. As members of the Legislative Coordinating Council we have a duty to carefully assess this executive order and the reasons for it” to “make sure we are on the right path.”

Predictably, Republican Kansas Senate President Susan Wagle questioned the Democratic governor’s decision.

“While I appreciate the Governor’s very difficult task, I am concerned about a ‘one size fits all’ solution to reducing the spread of COVID-19,” Wagle said in a statement. “Our state has varying economic concerns and differing population bases.” It does, but the coronavirus doesn’t care where you live, and economic concerns have got to be secondary right now.

Former Kansas GOP executive director Kris Van Meteren, whose political consulting firm has worked with former Gov. Sam Brownback and Sens. Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts, pushed Republican lawmakers to try and rescind Kelly’s order in a series of Facebook posts. “Power seized like this will never be surrendered,” he said in a post that called Kelly a “little wannabe tin-cup dictator.” On Sunday, he posted that “this glorified cold bug … smells more and more like a contrived ‘crisis.’ “

After the Kansas Chamber endorsed the stay-at-home order, and after GOP leaders were assured that the order exempts gun stores and churches at a Sunday afternoon meeting, they did not vote to override it, but backed off and let it stand. Kansas Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning said that with the number of cases doubling every four to five days, he understood that the order was “trying to keep hospitals from being overwhelmed.”

Kelly said she is trying to buy hospitals and other health care facilities time as they prepare for the peak of the coronavirus, which she said in a Friday interview with The Star Editorial Board could come in late April.

Her order would supercede any federal back-to-work order, she said.

“We’re simply not ready for what we anticipate will be the peak of this pandemic,” Kelly said at a news conference on Saturday.

She’s right to say this so plainly, and we need to take her warnings as seriously as if our lives depended on it, because they do.

In the Friday interview, she said that the lack of ventilators, personal protective equipment and testing “continues to be a major problem.”

On the federal level, “We really did get a very late, slow start out of the gate on this,” she said. “When things were popping over in Asia, and it was clear we had a potential pandemic coming, there should have been a lot going on at the federal level to increase those stockpiles so that we didn’t run out of masks, so that we didn’t run out of test kits. That’s what we should have done.”

Even now, the Trump administration’s refusal to nationalize the market for these supplies, as he could choose to do under existing law, is worsening the problem.

The president has said that’s the responsibility of each state, but as Kelly said, “This is not something each individual state can manage on their own. In fact, by taking that approach, what has happened is that because there’s a shortage, because the Defense Production Act has not really been implemented, states are competing with one another for the equipment. We’re experiencing some of that.”

One Kansas hospital’s CEO told her the hospital had put in an order for 300,000 masks, only to be told that masks that had been going for 80 cents were now $4 each.

“We’re not waiting for them,” Kelly said of federal officials, “but the reality is if they don’t get on board, it will continue to be a problem, because production has not been ramped up enough.”

“I have consistently relied on the input from my professionals,” she said, so the actions she’s taken “have not been something that I’ve just sat in my office and decided OK, now’s a good time.”

If you hear nothing else, please hear this from one of those governors who is listening to science: “The worst is yet to come,” Kelly said. “The U.S. has passed China and Italy for the most cases, and the line on the graph is still going upwards. So the surge is still ongoing, and I think will continue to go. I don’t think this is going to peak and be over in a couple of weeks.

“I think we need to be much more realistic and perhaps hope it peaks some time in late April and that it starts to come down, and we’ll have to follow that as we flatten this curve to determine when it is safe to start easing back on some of these restrictions.”

To those who still doubt the seriousness with which the public should take these stay-at-home orders, Kelly said “the first thing I would tell them, this is not overblown. This is a big deal. All of the restrictions and all of the asks we’re making of Kansans are in their best interest. They really need to do their part to mitigate this crisis and to let us get back to normal.”

“I understand how disruptive and how difficult this is for all Kansans, and for some more than others. This is a really difficult thing to have to do, but that’s the key … We have to do this. If we do not do this, people will die, and it won’t bring back our economy.”

Even those Kansans who doubt her now will thank her later, and if Parson thinks the criticism he’s getting now is unbearable, he should think about that.

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The Manhattan Mercury, March 29

In the coronavirus era, open public meetings are problematic at best. At worst, they’re a hazard, and maybe even deadly.

How to proceed?

The state attorney general’s office has essentially checked off on allowing virtual meetings, which many local governments have implemented. The Manhattan City Commission and the Manhattan-Ogden school board, among others, are holding “meetings” with their members in multiple locations, rather than meeting together in one physical location. The “meeting” occurs because they’re all logged in to a common software platform that allows them to talk to each other, and for other people to observe that interaction.

Keep in mind that state law requires local taxing entities to meet in public, with a meeting time and place and agenda announced ahead of time. That’s so as to allow the public to view and participate in the decision-making process. It’s a fundamental premise of the idea of open government, central to the operation of our republic.

But gathering groups of people together could risk spreading the virus, and for that matter contradicts the spirit (if not the letter) of public health officials’ orders to diminish public gatherings. The Riley County Commission, which ironically is the entity that oversees the health department that issued the public-gatherings ban and a stay-at-home order, is still meeting in person. They’re trying to maintain six feet between each other and practice good hygiene.

Virtual meetings are clearly the best practice at this point, from a public-health standpoint. And at the moment, that’s just about the only standpoint that matters.

In the longer run, virtual meetings could continue to be a viable option, so long as the public can observe and participate. The participation angle is clunky, since currently the only way for the public to comment or ask questions involves sending messages to a government employee to read on the screen — and that’s clearly subject to government censorship. Perhaps that problem could be solved technologically.

There’s something lost, though, when meeting on a screen rather than in person. Elected representatives have to look each other in the eye, and they have to look their constituents in the eye, as they’re making decisions. They have to interact, and so there’s a group dynamic. Our guess is that compromise — which is generally what’s required to make real progress — is much more likely when meetings are held in person than on a screen.

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The Topeka Capital-Journal, March 26

As the new coronavirus spreads, it has exposed a variety of societal vulnerabilities. For example, giant cities have seen how their long-touted lifestyle - packing more and more people into less and less space - can endanger public health.

Those in more rural settings shouldn’t feel smug, however. Those sprinkled among the countryside of Kansas are in some ways even less prepared than those in urban areas. The lack of hospital facilities and emergency services is the first gap that comes to mind.

But there’s another shortcoming, one that has been highlighted for years and will only make this experience more difficult. That’s the lack of broadband internet access.

How might that make this current crisis worse? There are several ways. First, with schools across the state closed, educators are moving their classes online. Students in rural areas were already disadvantaged without broadband, but if education itself is primarily dispensed online, where does this leave them?

That’s not all. Routine doctor’s visits are shifting toward telemedicine, which is perhaps ill-named. It’s more accurately described as video-conferencing medicine. Again, without the support of broadband internet, online meetings with your doctor will be all but impossible for rural folks. And with rural hospitals dwindling, that access was already precarious to begin with.

Finally, this is a rapidly changing, historical event. Yet because of social distancing requirements, we are largely experiencing it alone. Social media and other online tools can bring us closer together, if only virtually. Again, lack of broadband makes that challenging.

So what’s the answer? The Legislature has repeatedly talked about this problem, but we haven’t seen decisive action yet.

Internet providers, which are interested in making a profit, don’t see a sustainable business in the miles upon miles of fields and tiny towns of rural Kansas.

Once this crisis passes - and it will pass - lawmakers will need to solve this problem once and for all. Do providers need incentives? Will some sort of public-private partnership need to be created? Surely the problem has solutions, if all sides work toward them in good faith.

What’s unacceptable is seeing rural areas once again being left behind during a time of great social change. These communities, and these residents, are no more or less Kansans than the rest of us.

They deserve access to the same utility services - and that’s what broadband internet is, make no mistake - as the rest of us.

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