HEALTH CARE
We finally had the opportunity to roll out the House Health Plan this week. I am very excited about the future direction of health care in Kansas. One of the things we have learned by studying health care is the number of uninsured individuals has not decreased at all in the past five years despite the additional funding provided to lower this number. Instead of helping the problem of the uninsured, entitlement programs have actually reduced the number of Kansas citizens on private insurance and raised the number of people on Medicaid.

Representative Jeff Colyer and I are now meeting with people from across the state who have different perspectives to work toward addressing as many needs and concerns as possible.

The four key components of KanCare are:

• Make Commercial Insurance more affordable, available and portable.
• Establish KanInsure to transition Medicaid and the uninsured to private insurance coverage
• Medicaid Reform Establish MediKan to preserve and stabilize the safety net.
• Strengthen Charity Care to assist fewer uninsured.

WILDLIFE AND PARKS AUDIT
A reporter from the Wichita Eagle followed up on my encouragement for investigative reporting of a recent Legislative Post Audit report on the Wildlife and Parks acquisition of Park #24. The findings of the reporter were that the Park was acquired by an LLC that benefitted by a tax credit for giving the land for a park. There were 6 members on the LLC, and each one of them had connections with the Governor s office. The same investor owned a building on the Park site that was assessed at $275,000, which Wildlife and Parks agreed to lease for $93,000 a year and then paid $113,000 to remodel. They are now agreeing to purchase the building for maybe as much as $800,000, just three years after it was valued at $275,000! These same individuals donated well over $30,000 to Sebelius s campaign.

STATE EMPLOYEE BENEFIT PLAN
The Select Committee on State Employee Pay Plan sent its plan to the Appropriations Committee yesterday. The plan that was adopted has four major parts. The first is a 1% base increase for all employees permanent, temporary, judges, and elected officials, which would cost $10.7 million. The second part is a 5 percent targeted increase for classified employees that are more than 25% below the market, which includes 1,533 employees and is estimated to cost 1.7 million. The third part is a bonus payment of $1,450 paid in two installments, one bonus payment of $450 on June 29, 2007, one bonus payment of $1,000 on December 14, 2007, which is estimated to cost $28.8 million. This money would be excluded from retirement calculations. The fourth part is $150 per employee 457 plan contribution, matched dollar for dollar by the employee, and estimated to cost 3 million. All of these estimated costs will come out of the State General Fund.

ZERO TOLERANCE
The Zero Tolerance bill (HB 2412) will have a hearing in the Federal and State Affairs subcommittee. We successfully amended the bill to fill a loophole in the current social hosting laws, which only applies to individuals over the age of 21 who host parties. The amendment will lower the age of accountability and hold individuals who are age 18 to 21 responsible for hosting parties where underage drinking occurs.

RELEASE OF THE BUDGET
The Appropriations Committee has been busy working to finalize the budget and it should be out next week.