Kansas legislators may soon receive a large increase in their franking privilege budgets, allowing lawmakers to send more political mailings to constituents.
Top legislative leadership moved Wednesday to increase the budgets by 150%, intending for the extra money to be enough for each legislator to be able to send communications at least once a year to each registered household.
Will taxpayers be happy to pay for more political mailings in their mailboxes?
“I think the answer to that is an unequivocally yes,” said Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover. “Because we — your representative member — can’t even afford to send every households one communication that says this is what we’re doing.”
At the current budget, legislators can’t afford to mail newsletters to everyone in their district.
“For most of our members in the House in the Senate, they end up writing a huge check out of their campaign funds to do this one mailing,” said House Speaker Dan Hawkins, R-Wichita. “And typically, even after they’ve written the check, they’re not sending it to every household in their district. Just me, for example, I usually send only to registered Republican and some unaffiliated voters.”
Kansas GOP leader says newsletter reaches half of district households
Hawkins said even after writing a check for several hundred dollars, his newsletter probably reaches fewer than half of the households in his district.
Currently, after an increase due to the U.S. Postal Service raising its rates, the fiscal year 2024 postage allotment is $1,439 for representatives and $4,317 for senators. Committee chairs get an extra $382. A separate printing allotment is $1,000 for representatives and $3,000 for senators.
Starting in fiscal year 2025, postage and printing would be combined for a total allotment of $6,000 for representatives and $18,000 for senators.
That means the state would go from spending nearly $600,000 on franking privileges this fiscal year — if all lawmakers choose to use it — to nearly $1.5 million next fiscal year.
The Legislative Coordinating Council, which is comprised of top Republican and Democratic lawmakers, directed staff on Wednesday to draft the necessary policy changes, but they have not been formally approved. None of the legislators spoke against or voted against the proposal.
Masterson and Hawkins were quick to point out that these mailings aren’t what you would expect during campaign season. Instead, these are newsletters intended to keep constituents informed of what is happening in the Statehouse.
“This is strictly a newsletter that we all use to tell people what we did during sessions,” Hawkins said.
Newsletters used to explain votes, Kansas Republicans say
Masterson said legislators use the newsletters to explain their votes to constituents. Hawkins said some legislators include a survey so they can find out what their constituents think.
“People deserve to know,” Hawkins said. “That’s really the biggest part, is we have to make a decision currently who are we going to send it to because we don’t have enough money in the budget in our franking privileges to be able to send it to all. And so we have to make a decision. This way, every household in our district is going to be able to get a piece of mail from us telling them what we did.”
Jason Alatidd is a statehouse reporter for the Topeka Capital-Journal. He can be reached by email at [email protected]. Follow him on Twitter @Jason_Alatidd.
