This week was the last one for committees to meet for the first half of the Kansas legislative session.

We wrapped up our committee work and will spend next week on the House floor debating the bills we want to send on to the Senate.

Floor action this week advanced several bills that were generally noncontroversial.

One example is House Bill 2243 that allows the KPERS board to extend the time between actuarial experience studies. While the actuarial valuation is completed every year, the study to review assumptions used in the annual valuation is currently completed every three years. This bill allows the KPERS board to extend the experience study to four or five years if they believe the assumptions haven’t changed materially.

This week my committee work discussed several of our state funds.

In commerce, we continue to watch the unemployment fund issues. The fund balance continued to climb off its low point of Jan. 30 and was $273 million on the Feb. 20 report.

Before the measures to stop fraud were implemented at the end of January, we had fears it might be going below $100 million.

Fraud issues are important to continue to monitor but now take a back seat to getting legitimate claims paid. Several questions were asked of the Department of Labor how the claims center set up by Accenture can be enhanced or made to work more efficiently. It is possible when we are finally paying all the pending claims that we could again be drawing down the fund balance.

The Healthcare Stabilization fund was the center of discussion for the insurance committee. We heard testimony in committee on a bill that would increase the minimum and maximum amount of malpractice insurance medical practitioners’ purchase.

The current options total $300,000, $500,000 and $1 million. The new options would be $1 million or $2 million. The new options are endorsed by both the Kansas Medical Society and the Kansas Trial Lawyers Association.

Kansas has done a good job managing these risks and costs and is currently the fifth lowest state in the nation for malpractice costs.

We also heard two bills on KPERS funding.

The first was the bill to authorize bonding a portion of the KPERS liability at low rates (as discussed in previous columns). This bill was passed authorizing $1 billion if the rates are below 3.5 percent, and if not, up to $500 million at a rate not to exceed 3.75 percent. The amounts and rate caps are likely to continue to change if the bill continues through the legislative process.

The second KPERS funding bill was the governor’s plan to re-amortize the liability. The governor can recommend a change, but the KPERS board is charged with the amortization decisions. The legislature sets the KPERS funding through the budget.

We are given the amount needed by the KPERS actuary. We are getting close to the “right” time and funding level to consider re-amortizing. However, another important factor is the amortization method selected. My discussions with the KPERS board and actuary have been to use a method that continues progress of reducing the debt.

The legislature has set the next year’s contribution at $658 million. We need $626 million to pay the cost of interest on the debt ($533 million) and our employer contribution ($93 million). The governor’s proposal reduces the payment to $499 million for the next year. This would increase our liability by $127 million.

I am not in favor of returning to a policy of growing the KPERS debt.

I will be hearing several of the more controversial issues from other committees on the floor this coming week.

Thank you for reading and engaging in our state issues.

Have a great week!

Contact information:

Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Assaria.

Telephone: (785) 296-7696.

E-mail: steven.johnson@house.ks.gov

Sen. Richard Wilborn, R-McPherson.

Telephone: (785) 296-7354

E-mail: richard.wilborn@senate.ks.gov