Gov. Laura Kelly rejects bill to limit public health powers, COVID-19 vaccine requirement

Gov. Laura Kelly rejected a measure that would have rolled back the powers of state and local public health officials to issue quarantine orders or curbing public gatherings in light of a contagious disease.

The anti-public health proposal, House Bill 2285, also would have blocked the Kansas Department of Health and Environment from requiring the COVID-19 vaccine as a condition of school or daycare attendance.

Its passage came after a session where lawmakers largely came up short in efforts to roll back the powers of public health officials. A more sweeping proposal that would have eroded many vaccine requirements and limited the power of school officials to report infectious disease outbreaks failed in the Kansas Senate.

Lawmakers returned to Topeka in the waning days of the annual legislative session to pass HB 2285 but did so narrowly over the objections of dozens of Republican lawmakers. While Kelly's veto was all but assured, legislators left town without giving themselves a chance to override her veto.

More: Anti-public health politics get tepid support from Kansas Republicans, but bill still passes

In her veto message, Kelly said lawmakers have sought "to undermine the advancements that have saved lives in every corner of our state."

"That’s most recently evidenced by this bill, an effort by politicians in Topeka to win political points in the short-term while threatening the long-term health and safety of all Kansans and of our economy," Kelly said. "There’s no question: Preventing Kansas’ local and state health officials from providing even basic testing for contagious human and zoonotic diseases — including measles, meningitis, Ebola, and polio — will hurt our ability to stop unnecessary outbreaks in the future."

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, in a statement referenced efforts by Kelly on Thursday to block a legal settlement with a Wichita gym owner who sued the state, arguing his business was owed compensation for a COVID-19 era shutdown.

Hawkins vowed that Republicans would revisit the issue in 2024.

"As we learn from past mistakes, this bill would put the appropriate checks and balances with elected officials who answer directly to Kansas voters and return unelected health bureaucrats back into their intended advisory role," he said in the release.

Limits on quarantines and isolations divide Kansas GOP lawmakers

Kelly's administration has said it has no plans to mandate the COVID-19 vaccine for school attendance, a move that currently only they can make.

But more controversial were sweeping provisions to ban state and local public health authorities from curbing public gatherings and mandating quarantines and isolations for people infected with or exposed to contagious diseases.

"This is a knee-jerk reaction to what we just lived through for the past three years," said Rep. John Eplee, R-Atchison, a family physician. "We're still trying to recover from what happened during the pandemic. The pandemic was unbelievable, and I think well-meaning people in public health tried to make the right decision."

Kelly's veto comes days after public health officials in Wyandotte County announced a small cluster of active tuberculosis cases in the area, though the bill's provisions wouldn't apply to TB cases.

Conservative legislators defended the bill, arguing public health officials shouldn't have as sweeping of powers as they did during COVID-19.

And Sen. Mike Thompson, R-Shawnee, said if the state doesn't take action now, it will be more difficult to do so in the future as the COVID-19 pandemic fades from view.

"The spirit of this bill is to address that," Thompson said on the Senate floor. "And if we go another year or two without addressing that, then these type of arguments that we just heard in this exchange become more likely to be weighted toward, 'Let's go back to having the health officer be able to close churches, be able to shut down schools, be able to do all these restrictive measures' that we felt at the time were overstepping."

This marks the second consecutive year where Kelly has vetoed a similar measure. In 2022, she rejected Senate Bill 34, which would have banned the implementation of face mask requirements, COVID-19 vaccine passports and law enforcement of quarantine orders.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Gov. Laura Kelly rejects COVID-19 vaccine, public health order limits