Kansas Legislature Week 12 Veto Session: Back to the Brownback Days, amended fetal personhood bill veto overrode, special education funding, and MORE! 🚨
Video Script
Intro
I’m Davis Hammet with Loud Light. The 2025 session is over and legislators have gone home for the year! Here’s what happened in the Kansas Statehouse.
State Budget (SB125) (Governor’s Veto)
Legislators departed from the usual budget process this year to try building the state budget from scratch and finalized their budget the last day of session. The budget is unbalanced spending about a billion dollars more per year than the state raises in taxes which means the $3 billion dollar surplus built up under Gov. Kelly will be used up within a few years resulting in projected billion dollar yearly budget shortfalls.
SPED (SB125) (Governor’s Statement)
The Legislature’s budget kept only a $10 million increase in Special Education funding leaving local school districts on the hook to make up the roughly $400 million per year in unfunded, but legally required SPED services. Additionally, the Trump administration has frozen $23 million dollars in federal aid to Kansas schools which is putting even more strain on local governments to cover the gaps caused by failures of the federal and state government. Local governments will have to divert general education funds or raise property and sales taxes.
Default Budget (SB 14)
Senate President Ty Masterson (R) succeeded in forcing a continuing budget provision into law that allows legislators to ignore, for the first time in history, their single constitutional duty of passing an annual state budget. If the legislature is unable to do their only job requirement then the state budget will default to the previous year’s budget. The Governor had vetoed the bill stating “If this Legislature cannot do what every previous Legislature has been able to do since our founding — through periods of war, famine, pandemic, recession, the Dust Bowl, and even the Great Depression — then they will have to do it over my veto”. The governor's veto was then overridden by the Republican supermajority.
Swindled again - Income instead of property tax cut again (Income:SB 269 & Property:SB35)
In 2012, the Republican supermajority promised property tax cuts, but instead delivered income tax cuts for the wealthiest Kansans resulting in a billion dollar annual budget deficit. In 2025, legislators did the exact same thing, overriding the governor's veto of a bill that would gradually slash income and corporate taxes, ultimately costing the state over a billion dollars per year. Instead of the significant property tax reform promised, the legislature passed a 1.5 mil levy reduction which will save property owners about $40 a year whereas the income tax cuts will save the state’s richest resident, Republican mega-donor Charles Koch, about a million dollars per year.
Abortion & Trans Kansas (HB2062) (HB2382) (HB2311)
A number of controversial bills supported by far-right christian nationalist lobbyists were forced into law by overriding the governor’s vetoes including attacks on abortion rights and LGBTQ kids. Legislators forced new fetal personhood language into several areas of law including child support and even tax law as a result of an amendment by Sen. Patrick Schmidt (D). Further, Republican legislators mandated that school districts must show an anti-abortion propaganda video riddled with medical misinformation if a class discusses human development, growth, or sexuality and increased state funding of crisis pregnancy centers that impersonate abortion providers to lure in women seeking abortions then attempt to coerce and dissuade them with medical misinformation. Legislators also expanded their targeting of LGBTQ kids by providing legal protections to potential foster or adoptive parents with anti-LGBTQ beliefs, no matter how extreme.
Coming Up
This concludes the 2025 Kansas legislative session and Loud Light’s 9th year of covering what happens every week in the Statehouse. Nearly a decade of coverage made possible by Kansans who give a monthly donation at loudlight.org/donate. Be sure to sign up for our email list to learn about opportunities to stay involved even when the legislature isn’t in session. Stay tuned, stay engaged, and until next time, thank you so much Kansas!