CAPTION: Debra Teufel with the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce moderates a legislative forum with Kansas House of Representatives Paul Waggoner, District 104 (left), and Kyler Sweely, District 102 (right) at the Stringer Fine Arts building on the Hutchinson Community College campus February 15.
By Kate Irelan
About 70 people attended the first legislative forum for 2025, hosted by the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce at the Stringer Fine Arts building on the Hutchinson Community College campus on February 15.
Reps. Paul Waggoner (District 104) and Kyler Sweely (District 102) attended the forum and talked about their stance on a variety of subjects based on questions from the audience, including education spending, KPERS investing and a recent comment made by Sweely as reported in the Kansas Reflector. Other representatives could not attend due to scheduling conflicts or illness.
K-12 Education Spending
Debra Teufel, president/CEO of the Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce was the moderator for the forum. She asked the representatives what they were doing to represent their constituents on the topic of public (K-12) education.
Waggoner said that for educational funding, “It is a new budget process this year. Rather than the House and Senate working at the same time, the House is doing the budget. It’s the Legislative Budget Committee, working from that. It’ll be voted on, I believe, next week. And then from there, it goes to the Senate. And then the Senate looks it over, which is different than what it used to be. The Senate makes whatever sort of revisions, and then they’ll pass it back out, and then we’ll have a chance to revote on what the budget would be, and then it would go to the Governor from there. So it is different than it has been in prior years.”
“And I would imagine part of the question is what is happening with the special education funding. Again, the basic argument is that if you look at the total spending, and how it’s increased, if you look at the totality of the money that comes into K-12 as far as local option budget and such, if you allocate the percentage of that, that is if 25% of your kids are in the special needs category, you should actually be allocating 25% of that budget. And with that, you have a very doable figure as far as the districts,” said Waggoner.
“There is a state law, where the districts are supposed to tell us exactly if you use a 92% figure because you had a lot of variety. Some districts were at 50%, some districts were at 150%. Very few districts plugged in the figure which is something that I think for the sake of the general public, to sort of pinpoint on this issue is going to be very helpful information.”
Sweely said, “It’s kind of hard to touch on topics after Paul just said everything, but I’m completely dedicated to fully funding public schools. This year there was a lot of talk about special education that wasn’t fully funded, but it became a state statute last year, I believe, at 92%, that $75 million was funded last year in special education. And the misconception is that we’re cutting special education, which is not true at all. We’re continuing to give the $75 million that we gave last year, and actually increasing it by another $10 million, which I’m completely okay with.”
“I would have been okay with $30 million extra going to special education, but I don’t sit on appropriations, and they cut it down to $10 million. So we’ll look at the budget when it goes to the floor this week, on Tuesday or Wednesday, I believe, and we’ll see if we agree with everything on that. But Paul kind of hits everything on the head, I guess,” said Sweely.
Teufel asked the representatives to expand on the education budget by talking about Senate Bill 75 and tax credits for children enrolled in private schools versus public schools.
Sweely began the discussion and said that he hasn’t seen everything in the bill and doubts that the house will pick it up.
“But I do believe in school choice to an extent,” said Sweely. “We have to fully fund public schools and special education before we even look at that. I believe that parents should have the right to choose a child’s education, but I do believe that public schools and special education shouldn’t just eat the brunt of that. I’ve seen the overall fiscal number of it, and it does seem like a big number. So we’ll see. And it’s supposed to continue to grow. After year four or five, it’s supposed to get up to upwards of $300 million, which kind of seems like a budget problem at this point.”
Waggoner said that he didn’t think they’d had a hearing yet.
“If the fiscal note is as high as Kyler said, that’s going to be a bit of a trick just because that is as far as school choice programs that we considered here before have had a much lower note,” Waggoner said. “Again, I will say I campaigned on this. It’s been an issue that’s come up in every election. I think it makes public policy sense. It’s been done in a number of states. It’s actually a growing number of states.”
“The general notion of the money should follow the child, I actually think it is very wise and very astute. If the 50,000 kids right now who are going to private schools or home schools, change their minds and flood back into the public schools, we would have to raise income taxes by 15% to 20% in Kansas to pay for all those additional students, which conversely means the fact that they are going the alternative route is actually saving everybody else that 15% to 20% income tax increase that you would be obligated to do if you had that higher of a head count in public schools.”
“I think it’s a very misleading line of argumentation to say that somehow you’re taking the money from public schools and sending it to private schools,” Waggoner said. “The money follows the child. If the child went from Buhler Public Schools to Hutchinson Public Schools, nobody would have any complaint that somehow the money followed the child over to Hutchinson. That would just be a no-brainer.”
KPERS investing
Teufel asked if the representatives could talk about how the state is investing KPERS dollars in digital currency. Sweely responded that he was on the Financial Institutions and Pensions and the Judiciary Committees, which were talking about this problem.
“At the beginning of the year, there was a bill that was brought up that we should invest 10% of our money into cryptocurrency as KPERS money, which I believe KPERS right now is $28.2 billion,” Waggoner said. “That’s the retirement for state employees. I do not agree with that. I don’t think that we should be jumping into something that’s unregulated.”
“One of the biggest things that I’m very proud about this year is that the biggest problem with KPERS right now is KPERS 3. It’s the newest KPERS. But in this specific program, teachers and corrections are not going to be getting the same retirement that they did 50 or 40 years ago. It’s not the same incentive if you work for your community for 30, 20, 40 years, whatever it is, it’s not that financially secure anymore. The one thing that we did was an increase to KPERS 3, so it would be basically a 10% increase right now on average and that is around $2,000 extra a year. It’s one of the biggest things that I think we’ve done in that committee, and we just passed that bill on Friday.”
Sweely said that the talk of 10% crypto currency investment was introduced by a freshman legislature and he doubted it would get out of the senate.
The “elephant in the room”
Teufel said, “Speaking of freshman legislators, there is an elephant in the room. When you are a freshman representative, and you are up there is some kind of hazing exercise. Can you address the events that happened this week and whether that was appropriate behavior and give us your opinion on the process and how things should have been handled?
“It comes out that most people believe it was a joke.,” Sweely said. I don’t think it is something I should apologize for. You can boo me afterward, but please, let me answer it. The least credible paper in Topeka is the only one who wrote about it because everyone thinks it is nothing. You can look at the video. Democrats stood up and clapped. It is another thing to hit me and get everyone distracted and off-topic.”
Waggoner said that typically in the legislature, you have someone who has talked to your family or knows your background.
“You have to realize when someone is a veteran they will do some sort of military riff,” Waggoner said. “Watch it. It was such a nothing. The line of questioning was not directed by Sweely but by Patrick Penn. The military has their language. Take it in their context. He was kind of getting in the weeds about being a military gunner. You have one news source funded by ideological sources. Anything they can get that is mildly awkward, they blow it out of proportion. Send your emails about it to Patrick Penn.”
Teufel said, “We did have a large volume of questions about it, and appreciate you clearing the air about it.”
The Hutchinson/Reno County Chamber of Commerce will host two more legislative forums this year, both at the Stringer Fine Arts building on the Hutchinson Community College campus, 600 East 11th Avenue. The next forum will be Saturday, March 8 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m. and Saturday, April 26 from 9:00 a.m. to 10:30 a.m.
Keith Richardson / February 16, 2025
Calling these Chamber-sponsored events “Legislative Forums” is a serious misnomer. Forums are definitively venues for open discussion, and there’s nothing “open” about the monologues the attendees are forced to absorb at these events. Questions—very probably sanitized—are presented and our legislators can either offer pertinent responses or public pap. In the “forum” on Saturday it was largely public pap. The worst part of the current format is there’s no opportunity for follow-up questions or requests for clarification or a simple plea for some proof to back up some outlandish claim proffered by our elected officials.
Constituents should be able to openly question their elected representatives in a public forum without these inhibiting procedures.
Of course it’s highly probable that if indeed a true public forum was offered and made available to our Reno County representatives, they would find somewhere—anywhere—else to be. “Scheduling conflicts, etc., ya know.”
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Bart Kooiman / February 16, 2025
Why can more than 30 other states figure out school choice (Tennessee last week)? School choice gives more parents (not just the rich) options on how to educate their children. I wonder when the attraction of new businesses into Kansas will be affected by the current status. I love Kansas but we’re behind on this important issue. Let’s catch up. Fear of change can be overcome. PS Did you know 2/3rds of Kansas kiddos are not at reading level?
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Ivan Huston / February 16, 2025
Anything Waggoner and Sweely are involved in, is pure BS. Sweely should have not been elected. He is a carpetbagger from Newton. I am changing my party affiliation next election. There was nothing wrong with Jason Probst except maybe he was too honest.
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