By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt explained that reining in executive branch power through legislative action as he and leading legislators proposed this week isn't new.
"The volume of agency regulations, not just in Kansas, but around the country has grown substantially in the past handful of decades," Schmidt said. "The mechanisms to have oversight of those regulations by elected officials in the legislature has not grown at the same time. Our proposal is to restore a mechanism that used to exist in Kansas law years ago and then went by the wayside that would allow the legislature to call up specific agency regulations and if they think that they are out of bounds, to vote to actually revoke them."
Schmidt thinks this is good policy no matter who resides at Cedar Crest or leads other offices where regulations can be written.
"I think it's good government," Schmidt said. "We came across the old Kansas Supreme Court case that set aside the previous legislative veto that Kansas had and discovered this was quite an issue in the 1980s. Many states had a similar mechanism. Their courts invalidated them. In about half a dozen states, give or take, the people were so enamored of their legislative veto process that after the court set them aside, the people came back and amended their state constitution and reenacted that power, just as we're proposing be considered in Kansas now."
It's Schmidt's contention that this will realign things with the way government was intended to function.
"We all learned that there are three branches of government that are kept in place by checks and balances one against the other," Schmidt said. "What has essentially happened with the modern administrative state is that a fourth branch of government has emerged and that's the regulatory state, generally led by unelected administrative agencies. This creates a meaningful check and balance over how that so-called branch of government exercises power."
The proposal would need two-thirds majorities to get put on a future ballot. The 2021 legislature has already voted to raise one constitutional question regarding abortion this session.
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