Kansas Legislature Week 11: anti-abortion bill passes, back to Brownback tax experiments, and MORE! 🚨

Video Script

Intro
I’m Davis Hammet with Loud Light. In their final full week of the year, legislators rushed to pass bills into the night before skipping Friday to go on break early. Here’s what happened in Week 11.

Budget (SB125)
The Legislature passed a budget that would put Kansas in a half billion dollar budget hole in just a few years. The budget carrier, Rep. Troy Waymaster (R) acknowledged that with the budget, Kansas has a “tough road ahead”. Legislators kept a 1.5% across the board cut to help pay for tax cuts made last year and walked back several promises including a multi-year plan to phase in special education funding leaving local communities responsible to make up the legislature’s several hundred million dollar SPED funding gap. With an early adjournment this year, the Legislature will be gone before state revenue projections are released leaving the state in an unclear financial position. The budget bill faced bipartisan opposition in both chambers, but had enough Republican supporters to pass. The Governor can line-item veto the budget and has called on the Legislature to continue working on it during their final days or in a potential special session.

Flat Tax Passes (SB269)
The Legislature sent the Governor a bill that would expand on Brownback style income tax cuts by turning any future budget surplus into an automatic income or corporate tax cut. However, the bill does not have automatic tax increases during deficits meaning it’s a one-way ticket to future revenue shortfalls, budget crises, and likely means all other tax cuts such as property tax cuts are no longer an option. A veto is likely, but given its Republican supermajority support an override of that veto could happen.

Fetal Personhood (HB2062) 
The Legislature passed a bill that would add anti-abortion language into both family and tax law. Bill sponsor Lenexa Rep. Laura Williams (R) proposed modifying child support laws to recognize the legal rights of fetuses from the moment of conception. Topeka Sen. Patrick Schmidt (D) amended the bill to expand this legal recognition into tax law as well by making fetuses tax deductible. The bill is one of dozens being heard in state legislatures across the country in a legal strategy known as “fetal personhood” which aims to ban abortion by convincing the courts that a fetus has more legal recognition and rights than a pregnant person. Similar laws in other states were the basis of the Alabama ruling criminalizing IVF and the justification for arresting a woman in Georgia for a miscarriage. The bill is on the Governor’s desk now.

Three Day Grace Period Override (SB4)
After 4 years of coming up short, Republican legislators overrode the Governor’s veto by a single vote & forced into law a bill that will throw out thousands of mail ballots each election. The law abolishes the 3-day grace period which was passed unanimously in 2017 to address federal mail delivery time slowing down due to USPS closures. Initially, the vote failed, until Manhattan Rep. Angel Roeser (R) flipped her vote to override. Kansas will now have the fewest days in the entire country between when ballots are mailed out and when they must be received back at the election office. The law was pushed through by Leavenworth Rep. Pat Proctor (R) who described it as a way to “chip away” at voter access in Kansas.

Non-Citizen Amendment (HCR5004)
The Legislature passed another constitutional amendment– this one doesn’t technically do anything as it proposes changes to the state constitution to “clarify that only U.S. citizens can vote” which has already been in the Kansas Constitution for over 100 years. The amendment will appear on the November 2026 ballot and was pushed by out-of-state far-right groups and Rep. Pat Proctor (R), who announced he’s running for Secretary of State in the 2026 election shortly after the amendment passed the legislature.

Coming Up
The legislature will return on April 10th for a short half-week to wrap up, attempt to override vetoes, tweak the state budget, and maybe more. Stay tuned, stay engaged, and until next time, thank you so much Kansas!