We told you it would be all about the budget now, and so it has... not been? What has happened since the Kansas Legislature reconvened on Wednesday appears to be a lot of backroom deals and head scratching. As soon as one idea is floated (close loopholes in the tax law for small businesses) we hear that this is a "non-starter" (lobbying groups start massive robo-call campaign to "save" small businesses).

The 2015 legislative session recessed the first week in April and is nearly concluded, having moved Kansas further along the Governor’s Christian conservative roadmap with the support of limited-government ideologues.

The Kansas Legislature reconvenes next week, on Wednesday the 29th, to hammer out the budget. According to new revenue projections released this past Monday, the State will be short $800 million. That's right, almost a billon dollars short, and $200 million more than they projected it would be earlier this year.

This week is National Volunteer Week and we would like to take this opportunity to thank the many people who volunteer for MainStream throughout the year. Their commitment and support are greatly appreciated.

It is likely that the local elections this past Tuesday were the last Spring elections to be held in Kansas. Next time we have municipal and school elections, they may be on the Fall ballot, their issues mixed in with partisan elections for State or National offices. We have fought this proposed change, and will continue to do so.

The Kansas Legislature has reached its spring break, and lawmakers have gone home to visit with their constituents. As moderate Rep Stephanie Clayton tweeted yesterday:

This is a response from MainPAC, the political action committee of the MainStream Coalition, to an article posted about our endorsements in Tuesday's elections.

Act now to Kansas legislators to oppose HB 2104, a bill in the balance today that would change local and school board elections to the Fall of even numbered years. This is a purely political move by Governor Brownback, Kris Kobach, and their allies in the Kansas Legislature, and is not supported by school boards, superintendents, municipalities, or Kansans.

This is testimony being delivered today by MainStream, in opposition to SB 175, "Exercise of religious freedom by postsecondary education student associations." 

The final deadline to push bills out of the house of origins kept committees busy through this eleventh week in the Kansas 2015 legislative session. The intensity level is rising in Topeka, discourse is bordering on the uncivil, and even though the conservative alliances are getting harder to forge – the extreme push is on.  While we may have known the next big wave of extreme policies were coming the moment the November election results were finalized, this foresight doesn’t make the reality of all the wasted opportunity and pending damage any less appalling.