(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Sept. 26, 2016)
This state government/politics business is getting more and more complicated—and at some point hard for most of us grownups, who remember when air conditioning or even FM radios were options on new cars, to decide whether to spend much time fretting about.
Latest furor or maybe—what’s one less than a furor?—is the decision that those state agency budget requests that are supposed to include an option for 5 percent cuts aren’t public records.
Nobody doesn’t like public records, but Gov. Sam Brownback and his budget director, Shawn Sullivan, have decided that those budget requests aren’t public records. So far, they’re just inter-administration memos, probably all neatly typed out and with footnotes about what the budget cuts would mean to actual Kansas residents, not just those who wear white shirts to work, but, at this point, they’re just in-house documents.