[Lawrence State Sen­a­tor Bar­bara] Bal­lard played key role against amend­ment lim­it­ing courts | LJWorld.com.

It may have been the turn­ing point of the spe­cial leg­isla­tive ses­sion. A late night meet­ing July 1 between Gov. Kath­leen Sebe­lius, a Demo­c­rat, and Repub­li­can leg­isla­tive lead­ers pro­duced no agree­ment, and House Speak­er Doug Mays, who is no fan of Sebe­lius, left the meet­ing in a bad mood. The ses­sion was near melt­down with noth­ing accomplished.

But Mays was influ­enced by House Demo­c­ra­t­ic Leader Den­nis McK­in­ney, of Greens­burg, and Rep. Bar­bara Bal­lard, D‑Lawrence. The three leg­is­la­tors all came into the House in 1992, and Mays said he trusts McK­in­ney and Bal­lard to the fullest.

Bal­lard and McK­in­ney told Mays that the House Demo­c­ra­t­ic cau­cus would not budge in its oppo­si­tion to a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment aimed at restrict­ing the Kansas Supreme Court in school finance lit­i­ga­tion. It wasn’t pol­i­tics, they said; it was a mat­ter of principle.

“They feel just as strong­ly as many of us feel we should do it. They seem very sin­cere about this,” Mays told the House Repub­li­can caucus.

After that, the momen­tum to link school fund­ing to an amend­ment start­ed to unravel.

Say­ing Mays is “no fan of Sebe­lius” is too cute by half. He’s plan­ning to run against her in 2006, and wants to pick (and win) a fight with her. 

Nonethe­less, who says bipar­ti­san­ship is dead? What’s that? Don Dahl of Hills­boro and Judy Mor­ri­son of Shawnee want to make a point:

An idea was float­ed dur­ing the spe­cial ses­sion to post­pone con­sid­er­a­tion of a con­sti­tu­tion­al amend­ment and instead have a com­mis­sion study pro­posed changes and make rec­om­men­da­tions to the 2006 Legislature.

House Repub­li­cans didn’t like the idea.

Rep. Don­ald Dahl, R‑Hillsboro, called it “asi­nine.” He said the com­mis­sion would be packed with “Demo­c­ra­t­ic tri­al lawyers.”

Rep. Judy Mor­ri­son, R‑Shawnee, said she didn’t trust con­sti­tu­tion­al schol­ars who had tes­ti­fied ear­li­er to the Leg­is­la­ture because they “came out of lib­er­al institutions.”

The schol­ars who tes­ti­fied includ­ed law pro­fes­sors from Kansas Uni­ver­si­ty and Wash­burn University.

Appar­ent­ly, a lib­er­al insti­tu­tion is one that dis­agrees with every half-baked idea.

For now, this is the end. Var­i­ous con­ser­v­a­tive mouth-frothers are swear­ing they’ll be back with these same amend­ments next time around.