The Kansas legislative session hit full stride this third week. Committee meeting schedules are full. We met in the House chamber one day to consider the bills that have been passed in their initial committee.

Last week I mentioned issues with unemployment insurance. According to data through the middle of January from the U.S. Department of Labor, Kansas now ranks third in the nation in initial unemployment claims, only behind California and Illinois. That is not per capita, but the actual number of claims. We had more weekly claims than New York despite their population and issues with the virus through December. This is very concerning as we are seeing claims in Kansas at a rate nearly 10 times those being filed in other states on a per capita basis.

Kansas’ unemployment trust fund entered the pandemic with nearly $1 billion. At that point, we were in very good shape. It has been reduced to an estimated $300 million over the last 10 months. With the current claims being paid (the last month was $141 million) we are likely to be out of money within a few months. At that point, we will begin to borrow from the federal government to pay claims.

Looking at the claims paid, it appears we have paid in the hundreds of millions in fraudulent claims. The department did shut down over the weekend to work to eliminate fraud issues.

In addition to modernization of their systems, more must be done to address these issues. This is unfortunate in the identity theft issues, fraudulent payments, and also that it further slows progress on paying legitimate claims.

On a different topic, there is good news on the pension front. The progress of the last decade was helped by a 17 percent return on the portfolio in 2019 and a return over 11 percent for 2020. This has helped us to achieve a new record level of assets within KPERS of $23 billion.

We look forward to continued progress on the funded ratio when the actuary completes the liability analysis later this year. The last two years’ returns provide a cushion for us should there be a drop or lull in market performance.

The governor has again asked that KPERS reamortize the liability to reduce current payments and stretch them over more years. Both the legislature and the KPERS board of trustees have initially rejected the idea. We believe lower payments that again grow the debt could return us to some of the problems KPERS has had in the past.

We celebrated Kansas Day with 81 Zoom participants on the civil discourse topic. Last year on an icy January day we began our discussion with help from the National Institute of Civil Discourse and their program for state legislatures.

We continued that virtually this year, expanding beyond the legislature to include partners among our lobbyists, the Kansas Leadership Center and others.

Our keynote speaker led us through the challenges our founding fathers faced trying to establish a lasting democracy. We continue to find critical importance not in agreeing with each other but in respecting different people and different opinions. I look forward to the next steps the group decides to pursue.

If you have questions or thoughts to share, please call my office at (785) 296-7696 or email me at steven. johnson@house.ks.gov. Have a great week!