Key Votes

This amendment to the five-year state budget penalizes school districts financially when staff "encourage, facilitate, or enable" student walkouts — language broad enough to punish a teacher for simply not blocking a door. Public school employees face an impossible choice between exercising professional judgment and exposing their district to funding cuts that hit salaries, staffing levels, and working conditions. The amendment attacks the principle of collective action itself: penalizing institutions for failing to suppress organized protest sets a precedent that could extend to worker actions.

This bill creates a new exception to Kansas law that previously banned prison-made homes from competing with construction workers and manufactured home builders. While contractors must pay regional average wages, that money goes to the state — not the incarcerated workers doing the job — giving contractors a workforce that can't quit, organize, or file safety complaints. The bill undermines building trades workers by allowing a private company to use prison labor for home construction at the Hutchinson correctional facility, setting a dangerous precedent that could expand beyond this pilot program.

This bill repeals the 2013 state law that blocked Kansas cities and counties from setting wage and benefit standards on publicly funded construction projects. After Kansas eliminated its statewide prevailing wage law in 1987, local governments began adopting their own wage standards for public construction — until the legislature preempted that authority in 2013. This bill restores it. It also raises the threshold for competitive public bidding on county construction contracts from $25,000 to $100,000.