Good morning everyone:
Lots of action at the Capitol from Wednesday to recap this morning, starting with the Senate’s evening approval of the Kansas Farm Bureau’s health plan. But the biggest news hit this morning….
Pompeo out of Senate race
Various media outlets are reporting Thursday morning that U.S. Secretary of State Mike Pompeo is ruling out a bid for U.S. Senate in 2020 to replace the retiring Pat Roberts. This should open the door for any number of candidates and leave the field wide open going into next year. Here’s the coverage this morning from NBC News, Politico and CNBC.
Farm Bureau health plan
After a spirited debate, the Kansas Senate approved the Kansas Farm Bureau’s plan to offer a health benefit to its members. Here’s the final vote on the bill.
The plan was criticized because it would avoid state and federal regulations and offer a limited scope of coverage. Supporters said it would make insurance available to farmers who can’t afford health coverage on the exchanges set up by the Affordable Care Act. 
The Farm Bureau estimated that the bill would save its members 30 percent compared to health care options available on the market.
Democrats tried to amend the bill a couple times, including one measure proposed by Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley that would have required the health plan to cover pre-existing conditions. Hensley’s amendment lost on a 24-15 vote.
Democratic state Sen. Pat Pettey tried to amend the bill to expand Medicaid. The Senate killed the amendment on a 28-12 procedural vote.
The Republican resistance
The Associated Press’ John Hanna explores the Republican resistance to Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Hanna reports that many leading Republicans aren’t impressed with her win over Kris Kobach in last fall’s elections, in which she garnered 48 percent of the vote. As a result, they’re not in a hurry to pass any of her initiatives.
As Hanna notes, the GOP-led Legislature has derailed her plan to refinance payments to the state retirement system, passed a tax plan she clearly opposes and is not moving toward expanding Medicaid while school finance sits idle even as a court-imposed deadline looms.
More corrections problems
As if the Corrections Department doesn’t already have enough problems. The agency revealed Wednesday that 591 inmates have hepatitis C while briefing a House committee on inmate health services.
The cost of treating all the inmates infected: $9 million. The state is current spending $1.5 million on treatment.
Here’s the Wichita Eagle’s coverage of the health problem confronting the agency. You also can listen to the testimony here. The discussion about hepatitis C starts at about the 2:06 mark.
Unused computer equipment
The Topeka Capital-Journal has this interesting story about the fate of $10 million in unused computer equipment that had been stowed away in the Docking Building. The newspaper reports the equipment will be donated to Kansas State University where it will be used for research, among other things. The Cap-Journal’s Celia Llopis-Jepsen — now at Kansas News Service — first raised questions about the equipment in 2017.
And one…
Utilities debate
A bill calling for a study of the state’s electric rates is going to be sidelined for a while so a compromise can be hammered out.
The chairman of the Senate Utilities Company said he wouldn’t work the bill until after turnaround because of concerns that the legislation would change the way the state sets utility rates.
“This is isn’t just a request for a study. This is a change in the law,” Sen. Ty Masterson said in an interview. “It definitely motivated me to get everybody in a room and figure out what we’re looking for.”
