The 2022 legislative session saw some significant policy advances, particularly putting Kansas on the path to eliminating the regressive sales tax on food. But far too much time in the legislature was spent on hot button culture war issues, such as bans on trans girl athletes and a so-called school transparency bill that would have led to censorship of curriculum and books.
Fortunately, Kansas Interfaith Action and our coalition partners were able to stop many of these bad bills from becoming law.
Gov. Laura Kelly’s victory last fall, along with the sound defeat of the abortion amendment in August and the national repudiation of MAGA in November, gives everyone in Topeka the chance to take a deep breath and work together for sensible and moderate policies on important issues facing our state. It is in the hope of playing a positive role that KIFA has developed its agenda for the 2023 Kansas legislative session.
At the center of our 2023 priorities is a “protection of democracy” platform. Democracy is the ideal that underlies the United States. Much of our struggle toward greater justice has been a struggle for greater democracy, including securing equal citizenship for African Americans, voting rights for women, and justice for LGBT folks.
Our faith traditions consider it our moral duty to respect one another and build a diverse society where “all are created in God’s image, and all have the right to equal protection under the law.”
Without a functioning democracy, we can’t address any of the other issues that face us. Yet over the past several years, our democracy has been under attack like never before. KIFA’s democracy platform has three planks:
Support for public education. Public education is a cornerstone of our democracy, both because we need informed citizens and because it’s one of the few projects that we undertake collectively as a society. KIFA supports full funding of public education (public money for public schools) as well as our students’ right to learn, including the history and literature of historically marginalized communities — what we call “teach the truth.”
Support for the right to vote and to have that vote counted. What Kansas certainly doesn’t need is further restrictions on this fundamental right vote based on the specious and disproven “big lie” of large-scale problems with our electoral system.
Personal autonomy and authentic religious liberty. KIFA supports the ability of everyone to live according to their identity and conscience, and we oppose efforts to force one kind of religious belief (rightwing Christianity) on everyone else.
KIFA’s economic and racial justice priorities include support for increased access to work and family supports. We are concerned by the establishment of a “welfare reform” committee in the Kansas House. Kansas already has some of the most stringent restrictions on access to work and family supports of any state — at great cost to Kansas families — and we will strongly oppose any efforts to double down on this cruel policy.
We also support the repeal of the ban on access to SNAP food supports of those who have drug felony convictions. Hunger is neither an appropriate punishment nor a means of rehabilitation.
KIFA is part of Kansans for Payday Loan Reform, a coalition of faith, labor and civic organizations that aim to reform this predatory industry. We also continue to support Medicaid expansion, which would help about 175,000 (mostly) working Kansans access affordable health care. It would bring millions of dollars in tax money back to the state and help keep rural hospitals open. This moral imperative is long overdue.
In the area of climate and clean energy, KIFA supports efforts to develop a comprehensive plan to address western Kansas’ water needs.
We will also continue our longstanding support of Kansas’ vibrant clean energy sector. In particular, we see solar energy as an area of huge, unrealized potential. We will advocate for legislation that would ease restrictions on home-based solar energy, including fixing Kansas’ restrictive net-metering law, and support passage of a solar access law to prevent private homeowners’ associations from restricting or forbidding rooftop solar on their members’ homes.
Having lived through many ginned-up moral panics in the past, we note the vilification of corporate environmental sustainability policies in rightwing circles. KIFA will strongly oppose any efforts to punish companies and investment funds, including KPERS and our universities, from making sensible, forward-looking decisions about investments, including in the energy sector. Although legislative leadership continues their “see no climate change, hear no climate change, speak no climate change” attitude, the market is speaking volumes, and there should not be politicized opposition to these important efforts.
We urge legislative leadership to take advantage of the opportunity that the last election affords them to take a big step back from confrontation and culture war, and to search for policies that can receive bipartisan support and move our state forward. If they choose not to, then KIFA and our coalition partners stop their bad ideas from becoming law — again.
