Bill restricting public health authority in Kansas passes Senate, but it's not veto-proof

Republican senators succeeded in passing a bill undermining government public health authority, but division within the GOP means the bill wouldn't have enough votes to override a gubernatorial veto.

Senate Bill 6 passed 22-18 on Thursday with seven Republicans joining all Democrats in voting no. The bill largely strips the Kansas Department of Health and Environment secretary and local public health officers of their powers.

"It doesn't stop experts from recommending," said Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover.

Jenna Moyer, an assistant revisor of statutes, said existing state law gives the KDHE authority "to adopt rules and regulations that would designate infectious or contagious diseases. And these would be things like polio, tuberculosis, measles, mumps — if you think anything that's pretty contagious and infectious that we've dealt with in the past, those would be on that list."

Under the bill, KDHE loses the authority to designate infectious diseases and also loses the power to quarantine or isolate infected people, require they seek treatment or limit public gatherings to limit disease spread.

Similarly, local health officers would lose their quarantine and isolation order authority, and law enforcement would no longer be required to enforce the law. School teachers and administrators would no longer be mandated reporters of infectious disease outbreaks.

"This bill is extremely concerning because we take away the tools that are out there to help protect the public," said Sen. Cindy Holscher, D-Overland Park. "The idea is to help prevent disease."

The bill was introduced by Sen. Mark Steffen, R-Hutchinson, who decried public health mandates.

"We are not a dictatorship, and it's important that we maintain our individual freedoms," Steffen said.

Sen. Kristen O'Shea, R-Topeka, was one of the Republicans to vote against it.

"This bill is an overreaction to an overreaction," O'Shea said. "Extreme people seem to like overreacting. I'm frustrated that we're passing bills like this but not even willing to have hearings on bills that could provide solutions to health care challenges."

More:Kansas passes 10K COVID-19 deaths as bill aims to strip public health officers of authority

Sen. Beverly Gossage, R-Eudora, who chairs the Senate's public health committee, said the bill was inspired by the government reaction to the coronavirus pandemic.

"All of us have seen in recent history that there was a bit of an overreach, and churches were closed, we saw other businesses that were closed," Gossage said.

Kansas hit 10,000 deaths from COVID-19 last week.

"It's unfortunate that we feel like we still have to be armchair quarterbacks two years after a pandemic that killed 10,000 people in Kansas," said Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City.

She raised concerns over removing public health power while granting some disease authority to the Legislature.

"Do we just expect that we'll watch these infectious diseases spread throughout our communities and hopefully that they'll come to an end?" Pettey said. "This not only is health-related, but also costly as well."

"This is the United States of America," Gossage said. "Rather than mandating things and closings churches, deciding what's going to be opened, deciding what's going to be closed, the way I read the bill is they can recommend and they can educate and then let people decide."

More:Anti-vaccine politics return to Kansas Legislature. This time, it's more than COVID-19.

Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, said the bill "puts them (public health officials) in the place of advising," but also said, "They've proven to us that they are incapable of giving proper guidance" after they "blindly followed the recommendations of the CDC" during the COVID-19 pandemic.

"The public is very well capable of making their own personal health decisions," Thompson said. "I just think this bill is pure common sense and freedom."

Holscher raised concerns that weakening public health endangers immunocompromised people.

Gossage dismissed the concern because immunocompromised people "always have to be careful when they go out in public and where they go currently."

Holscher highlighted that while a handful of doctors supported the bill, none of them were epidemiologists or infectious disease specialists.

"This was another hearing where we had the same cast of characters coming in as far as proponents," Holscher said. "We had a sleep specialist, a bariatric surgeon, an individual who hasn't had a medical license in Kansas since 1990, and these were the experts speaking to this bill and why it needs to be passed."

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas Senate passes bill restricting public health mandate power