Sponsors hauled in extra chairs from a nearby room to accommodate the large crowd that attended an Eggs & Issues forum Saturday morning in the Emporia Presbyterian Manor.
Manor marketing director Ken Hanson announced that the “Art Is Ageless” calendars, given to all who attended, contained artwork by an Emporian, Golda Freund. Freund’s painting of misty violets on a gold-edged china plate, was chosen to represent the month of February.
During the forum, state legislators gave brief updates on bills under consideration or pending in both houses and answered questions from the audience.
Energy and clean air took a prominent role in the discussions, which touched on the proposed Holcomb energy plant and other issues.
“Quite honestly, I would like to see the Senate bill much greener,” said Sen. Jim Barnett. “You look at Lawrence. We have 8 major coal plants in the state producing” energy, with one of those plants on the outskirts of Lawrence.
“It’s one of the worst in America and it’s right outside the City of Lawrence, and the City of Lawrence is opposed to Holcomb having a coal plant.”
Barnett said that he considers coal, natural gas and nuclear energy as the base sources for the future.
Rep. Don Hill called the energy bill a “complicated, difficult issue” that has tended to be oversimplified.
He saw potential to develop wind power, too.
“We’ve got good power, we’ve got reasonable rates – it wouldn’t hurt us, by the way, if we had a second reactor over at Wolf Creek,” Hill said, noting the clean energy and the economic boost the existing plant has generated for the area.
The push to develop the energy bill is “frustrating and it’s ugly, but it is the process working,” Hill said. “My guess is we’ll be working on this in April.”
Barnett referred to advertisements showing coal-fired plants with stacks belching smoke into the sky. The smoke, he said, actually was steam and there may have been an ulterior motive behind the advertisements.
“Those ads were paid for by an energy company in, actually, Oklahoma, Chesapeake Energy. It just so happens that Chesapeake Energy sells (natural) gas,” Barnett said.
Barnett said that “every American should be throwing a fit that we continue to be dependent on” energy and products, like fertilizer, from other countries.
“We’re driving ourselves to greater and great dependency on foreign nations,” he said.
Audience member Jim Calvert asked the legislators to make a list of “green sources” and eliminate ethanol.
“It’s my understanding that you put more energy into production than you get out, and you multiply the effect of carbon monoxide. … What you’re really doing is using a lot of water to foul the atmosphere,” Calvert said.
Barnett noted that Calvert had been his physics professor at Emporia State University, and the professor’s teachings remain in his mind.
“You’re very correct, and there’s a great concern about what this is doing to the price of food,” Barnett said.
He suggested hydrogen as a better source of energy for running vehicles.
“Put a glass under the tail pipe,” he said; “What you get out of it is pure water. … There are other sources, other technologies out there to be found and we’ve got to push ourselves to get there.”
Work is underway to help the Emporia school district and contiguous districts as well, Barnett said. The districts stand to lose a considerable amount of state funding, if too many displaced Tyson workers move away from the area. The proposal under consideration includes Emporia, North and Southern Lyon County and Chase County school districts.
“I cannot believe by the end of the day we’re going to walk out of there without doing something,” Barnett said.
Speaking about education in general, Barnett said that putting aside money to finance K through 12 education would help school districts look at future budgets instead of needing to deal on a strictly year-to-year basis.
Chuck Hanna asked about the five-year deferred maintenance plan for universities, and what could be expected.
Hill said that the plan was subject to appropriation.
“What was done last year was not near as much as what was hoped,” Hill said.
“Any business would put 4 or 5 percent aside for real maintenance, and why we don’t do that, I don’t know,” Barnett said.
Maintenance and infrastructure needs, as well as debt reduction and taxpayer relief, were earmarked for proceeds from gaming that has not yet begun because of the court action.
“It looks like now it won’t happen until after the legislature has adjourned and gone home,” Hill said.
Rep. Peggy Mast said that she was both challenged and disheartened by what lay before the legislators.
“We went into the session hoping to limit the growth of government by 5 percent, and we found that we were behind the 8-ball already,” she said.
The casinos that were approved last year to help fund certain areas of state government remain tied up in court action rather than running and producing revenue, benefits from the president’s stimulus package may be less than initially anticipated, and mental health centers appear to be in line for significant cuts.
“We don’t want to harm those centers and so it’s been pretty tough,” she said.
Hill told the group that the average Kansas family will receive about $917 from the stimulus package.
“If half of that is spent, that will be additional revenue to the state of $27 million,” he said.
Hill, who sites on economic development, tourism and education committees, said recent reports from Kansas Bio and Kansas Technology Enterprise Corporation (KTEC) have been encouraging.
“There’s some really exciting stuff going on in Kansas and the whole area of biosciences,” Hill said. “A lot of new jobs are being created.”
Other issues raised included:
-- a cost-of-living raise for people drawing from the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System. Barnett said the COLA originally was budgeted for 1 percent, though no money has been appropriated for it.
-- sales tax from the Internet. Hill said that Kansas is part of a compact that wants the federal government to change laws to allow some of those tax receipts to reach the local level. It is a long-term effort, he said.
-- school-district licensing of teachers and licensing by passing examinations. Hill said he would not support the expeditious solutions to the teacher shortages, “but I have to tell you, there’s some momentum.” Other states that have experimented with similar solutions already are seeing the down side of those licensing options.
-- a request from Lougene Marsh that legislators take care not to nudge safety-net clinics outside the funding of the “medical home” concept under consideration.
-- a possibility that private-pay residents of nursing homes could be taxed between $1400 and $1500 a year for their payments for services at nursing homes. Hanson and former Lyon County Commissioner Vern McKinzie said that the sales tax proposal is an effort to collect dollars from exceptionally plush and expensive for-profit nursing homes, not the Good Samaritan types sponsored by churches, for example.
“I didn’t know anything about this until my husband told me yesterday,” Mast said. “I don’t know where this idea came from. … The last people I’d want to turn to for more revenue is the elderly.”