Here's why you might get more political mail from Kansas lawmakers in two years

Kansans might start getting more political mail in the future thanks to a postage and printing budget increase for members of the Legislature.

The Legislative Coordinating Council earlier this month approved a policy change intended to provide enough funding for legislators to mail newsletters to every constituent. Those most likely to be affected by the change are unaffiliated voters, as well as Democrats who live in districts represented by Republicans and Republicans who live in districts represented by Democrats.

"I think the vast majority of our constituents would like to hear from their representatives," said Speaker Pro Tem Blake Carpenter, R-Derby. "Instead of maybe just me mailing out to just the Republicans and unaffiliateds, I think the Democrats also deserve to have a session update as well through a physical copy of a newsletter. I don't have everybody in my district's email address.

"I don't, and so the way that I communicate with them is this end-of-session newsletter. I think that it would provide our constituents the ability to know what's going on from their representatives and senators up here in Topeka."

Under the policy change, postage and printing allotments will now be combined, totaling $6,000 for each of the 125 representatives and $18,000 for each of the 40 senators. The allotment can increase when the U.S. Postal Service increases postage rates.

House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita, first brought up the suggestion at the LCC meeting in August. The stated reason was to provide enough funding to allow members of the Legislature to send newsletters to every household in their district, regardless of political party.

The old amounts were not enough to cover the full cost of printing a newsletter and mailing it to every household, let alone every constituents of their same party, lawmakers said. That resulted in some legislators writing a check from their campaign accounts to cover the extra cost.

"I know that every time I send out a physical newsletter, I'm paying $500, $600," Carpenter said. "I know that not everybody has that in their campaign accounts, and that's just a fraction of my district. So I would imagine, hopefully, that this will allow us to be better senators and representatives."

As of his last campaign finance report, Carpenter had $11,000 in cash on hand.

Legislators who do send printed newsletters may still need to dip into campaign funds this year, as the change won't be effective until next fiscal year, meaning no legislators will be able to use the additional taxpayer money ahead of their reelection campaigns.

"Although the amendments will be effective on July 1, 2024, per Speaker Hawkins' motion, legislators would not be able to use the combined postage and printing allotments until January of 2025 since allotment shall not be used by any legislator after the Legislature adjourns sine die in the year of an election for that particular chamber," said Tom Day, director of Legislative Administrative Services. "Since 2024 has both chambers up for election, no legislators would be able to use that combined printing and postage allotment past the date of sine die."

Under the old policy, if every legislator used their full allotment, the cost was about $600,000. Under the new policy, the maximum cost is about $1.5 million. That translates to a potential increase of about $875,000, Day said.

More: More money for political mail? Here's why top Kansas legislators say that's a good thing.

However, only about half of legislators currently send out a printed newsletter every year, which puts the current cost estimate closer to $300,000.

"With electronic mail nowadays, many legislators are strictly sending out an electronic mailing of their newsletters," Day said. "And then many legislators are using both electronic mailing of newsletters as well as the printing and postage of newsletters."

That could change thanks to the policy change.

"With this increase in postage printing allotment, maybe a lot of them will now send out a full newsletter to all," Day said. "... So this could be an opportunity for them."

House Minority Leader Vic Miller, D-Topeka, was the only opponent of the policy change, taking issue with the process by which it came to be. He said he had no notice of what was on the agenda until less than 30 minutes before the meeting, which Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said was because the agenda wasn't finalized until that same morning.

"Well, I'll be voting no today for a couple reasons," Miller said. "Substantively, I don't know if I would vote to approve this or not. But my objections today are primarily procedural in that when we are taking action on basically a $1 million item, I think it requires for the public more than 20 minutes notice."

"Representative, that was a motion from the last meeting that was approved," Masterson said. "You knew for a month that it was coming."

Miller said the previous vote was to create a draft, not to approve the proposal. He also said the matter should be address by the full Legislature.

"Your objections are noted," Masterson said. "I think it's considerably off base."

Carpenter said the funds will still have to go through the appropriation process.

"So at the end of the day, we will pass a budget this next session that will have this appropriation in it," he said. "We can then debate that at the appropriate time amongst our colleagues if that is appropriate or not to have in that budget. So this is not the final debate."

Jason Alatidd is a statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at jalatidd@gannett.com. Follow him on X @Jason_Alatidd.

This article originally appeared on Topeka Capital-Journal: Kansas legislators to get more money to mail newsletters to all homes