Outgoing Republican Gov. Jeff Colyer says the new policy offering paid leave to state employees with new children should not be expanded as a statewide mandate.
“I’m a free market guy,” Colyer told the Sunflower State Journal in a round of year-end interviews with statehouse media this week. “Every business needs to make its own decisions.”
As Colyer neared the end of his short term as governor, he signed an executive order making available six weeks of paid leave to parents of a newborn or an adopted child.
The new policy, announced the night before Thanksgiving, applied to an estimated 17,000 state employees in the executive branch.
It made Kansas one of 15 states and the District of Columbia to provide paid parental leave to all or part of their workforce.
Democratic Gov.-elect Laura Kelly praised Colyer for the executive order and indicated she plans to continue the policy after she takes office next month.
Shortly after the announcement, Kansas Action for Children called on the incoming governor to strengthen and expand the policy so every Kansas family could benefit.
The organization said Colyer’s executive order was a good first step and said state legislators should be paying attention.
Colyer explained this week that the executive order was about keeping state government on an even playing field. He opposed the idea of a statewide mandate.
Colyer said the idea of paid parental leave started with the private sector. As a plastic surgeon, Colyer said he made the benefit available to his employees.
“What we’re trying to do is have a modern, competitive” work place, he said. “One of the reasons we had to do this (was) so we could compete with the private sector so that we can have a younger, more dynamic work force of state employees.”
Colyer said parental leave generally is “a really great policy for most businesses.” Yet he added, “There are reasons why certain policies work better in some companies than others.”
Colyer’s comments came the same day as leading lawmakers considered extending the same benefit to between 130 and 150 legislative branch employees.
The proposal for legislative employees ran aground Thursday when Senate President Susan Wagle expressed concern that it had not been vetted by the legislative staff.
While saying she was supportive of parental leave, Wagle wanted to know more about the fiscal effects and how it fit into policies for managing the legislative branch.
House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr. said he brought up the proposal with the idea of sending a signal to employees about the importance of the issue.
“We wanted to let everybody know this is important to us,” Ryckman said.
The governor’s office has said the change is cost neutral because many employees already take the time and have been using their own personal time paid by their agency.
Under Colyer’s executive order, the leave must be taken within 12 weeks of the birth or adoption of a child.
Employees using the leave policy continue accruing vacation and sick time.
Tom Day, director of legislative administrative services, told lawmaker that the cost of paid parental leave might be felt more on the back end when an employee leaves or retires and the state pays out unused sick and vacation time.
