Office:
284-W. State Capitol
Topeka, KS 66612
785-296-7665
District Office:
900 Massachusetts Suite 601
Lawrence, KS 66044
785-331-0300
785-331-0303 (fax)
pauldavis@sunflower.com
Home:
ISSUE STATEMENTS:
K-12 EDUCATION
Both my mother and my grandmother were public school teachers so the importance
of a good education was instilled in me at a very young age. I am also a product
of the Lawrence Public School system, having graduated from Lawrence High
School. The Kansas Legislature has not given public schools the support they
need over the last decade to prepare Kansas children for the challenges that
await them. While we are fortunate to have very good schools in Kansas, we
are on the verge of letting them slip into mediocrity if we continue to provide
them with inadequate resources.
The current school finance formula has some very significant problems that
the Legislature needs to address. The weighting factors that decide how much
money each school district receives must be adjusted to address the learning
gap that is growing between at-risk students and the remainder of the student
population. Unfortunately, the Legislature has failed to address these issues
to-date. I am hopeful that once the Kansas Supreme Court rules on the current
school finance case, the Legislature will act.
The Legislature also needs to do more to encourage school districts to
reduce administrative costs though district consolidation and to ensure the
dollars are reaching the classroom. Lastly, we will face a very serious teacher
shortage in the next ten to twenty years. Unfortunately, fewer and fewer young
Kansans are entering this profession. Teacher pay needs to be upgraded throughout
the state so that we can compete with the private sector and attract young
people to the profession.
HIGHER EDUCATION
Our regents institutions are central to the future of the Kansas economy.
There are perhaps no more significant economic development tools in Kansas
than our colleges and universities. Unfortunately, much like K-12 education,
our regents institutions have been plagued by underfunding over the last decade.
We are losing outstanding faculty members to out-of-state institutions
because we are not able to keep our salaries at a competitive level with peer
institutions. Classified and unclassified staff are poorly compensated and
deserve better. Many university buildings are badly in need of repair and
cannot be equipped for the technology that today’s students need. Perhaps
most disturbing is that our regents institutions have had to increase tuition
by very significant percentages in order to obtain the funding levels needed
to deliver the quality of education that Kansas students expect.
The legislature made a commitment to higher education in 1999 with passage
of the Higher Education Reorganization Act. However, the Legislature has not
followed through with its funding promises. I am pleased that Governor Sebelius
recommended $8 million of new funding this past session towards meeting these
commitments. Hopefully this will continue in 2005 and beyond.
TAXES
As a member of the House Taxation Committee, I have fought for fair and just
taxation for individuals and businesses in Kansas. While I have supported
limited tax increases for education, I am very conscious of keeping the tax
burden that state government places upon Kansans to an absolute minimum. The
Legislature must be good stewards of our tax dollars and ensure that we don’t
let any money go to waste.
I have supported closing special interest tax loopholes and voted for a reallocation
of the corporate franchise tax that decreased the tax burden on Kansas small
businesses. The Legislature has created far too many sales tax exemptions.
Some of these are justified, but many represent bad public policy. Unfortunately,
the Legislature had not been willing to repeal some of these exemptions.
We must also ensure Kansans that all taxes owed are being collected. The
Department of Revenue in the late 1990’s had a poor track record for
making sure that all taxes owed were being collected. I am pleased that the
Sebelius administration has made this a priority and has taken significant
steps to correct the tax collection problems that were occurring.
HEALTH CARE
Unfortunately, the federal government has done little to address the problems
of access to and affordability of health insurance. We are very fortunate
to have a health care system that provides first rate quality of medical care.
However, it is a costly and inefficient system. Government ought to be a partner
with the private sector in driving down costs and finding greater efficiencies.
I believe the State of Kansas must get engaged in this debate. Several
years ago, the Legislature created the Kansas Business Health Partnership
which seeks to provide small businesses with greater access to affordable
health insurance. We should work through the Partnership to create pooling
mechanisms whereby individuals and small businesses can leverage buying power
to purchase affordable insurance.
We also must look to cover the over ten percent of our population that
is uninsured. One idea that we should explore is expanding the Healthwave
program to cover parents of children who are currently enrolled in the program.
By doing this, we can leverage dollars from the federal government to pay
for the expansion.
Over the past five years, the amount of money that the State spends on
the Medicaid program has doubled. Much of this is due to the skyrocketing
cost of prescription drugs. I support joining with other states to leverage
our joint buying to purchase prescription drugs for the Medicaid program at
a much more affordable price.
TRANSPORTATION
In 1999, the Legislature passed a ten year, comprehensive transportation
plan. This plan is important to the infrastructure of our communities and
to economic growth in many areas of the state. Unfortunately, due to the lean
budget years that state has had to endure, the transportation plan has not
been adequately funded. There are many roads and bridges that are badly in
need of repair that must be fixed immediately.
I supported the new funding plan for the transportation plan that was enacted
by the Legislature in 2004. It will ensure that projects like the expansion
of Highway 59 between Lawrence and Ottawa will be built before the completion
of the plan in 2009. The transportation plan is also important to fund for
other reasons. It provides monies for public transportation so that organizations
like Independence, Inc. can transport their consumers around Lawrence. These
programs are vital to many community organizations and I wholeheartedly support
their continued funding.
GAY MARRIAGE
I do not support the constitutional amendment that would prohibit same
sex couples from entering into marriage. Same sex marriage has been banned
by Kansas statute since the 1800s and the Legislature simply is not going
to repeal this statute anytime soon. Additionally, Kansas has a Defense of
Marriage Act (which was upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court recently) that
will not allow a same sex marriage that occurred in another state to be recognized
in Kansas.
The Kansas Constitution should be about our form of government and rarely
amended. There are no court cases in Kansas that give rise to the need for
a constitutional amendment. Therefore, I do not see any reason to amend the
Constitution at this time. Furthermore, I do not support a ban on civil unions
or any other mechanism whereby a same sex couple could acquire partnership
benefits such as the right to visit a partner in the hospital, rights of survivorship
for inheritance purposes or the ability to share insurance benefits.
ABORTION
I deeply respect the opinions of individuals who believe that abortion
is wrong. However, I have always supported a woman’s right to make the
decision of whether to have an abortion. Because this is such a controversial
and divisive issue, I believe we ought to allow individual women to make these
very personal decisions instead of having them dictated by politicians.
I hope that in future years we can move the debate over abortion to how
we prevent abortions from occurring while still making the procedure legal.
I have introduced legislation that would require insurance companies to cover
all methods of contraception, which I believe will help reduce the abortion
rate. We must also do more to promote sexuality education, abstinence and
adoption.
SOCIAL SERVICES
Currently, there are over two thousand Kansans who qualify for Medicaid
waiver programs but have been unable to receive any assistance because of
the state budget situation. These persons are the elderly, physically disabled
and developmentally disabled. As state revenues begin to grow, we must devote
more resources to ensuring that these vulnerable persons receive the help
that they badly need. It is in the financial interest of the state for these
persons to receive this assistance because they otherwise will have to enter
nursing homes, which will cost the state much more money through the Medicaid
program.
The State should also continue to expand funding for Smart Start and other
children’s programs that have shown to be highly effective at giving
disadvantaged children a head start. We know that these programs will save
dollars for the state long into the future if we make the necessary investment
right now.
STATE EMPLOYEE RETIREMENT PROGRAM
The state employee retirement program, KPERS, is facing a financial crisis.
Because the State failed to invest the necessary employer contribution dollars
when times were good in the 1990s, the program is now facing an over $1 billion
unfunded liability. As the baby boomer state employees begin to retire, we
do not have the dollars necessary to pay out the retirement obligations that
will accrue. The State must step up to the plate and invest the dollars that
are necessary to keep KPERS financial stability and guarantee that state employees
will receive their retirement benefits.
