Revisor presents reorganization of public assistance statute; committee schedules hearing

MANHATTAN, Kan. — The Committee on Welfare Reform reviewed a reviser-drafted reorganization of the state public assistance statute and scheduled a hearing on the draft for next Tuesday, the panel’s chair said.

Representative Francis Aerykamp, chair of the Committee on Welfare Reform, opened the presentation by asking the Revisor’s Office to reorganize the statute “and that is do not change any policy. We don't want it to be a political bill, we just wanna get the statute organized,” he said. The draft is filed as RS 0057.

Jesse Bridal of the Revisor’s Office said the draft moves existing language into program-specific subsections so that temporary assistance for needy families (cash assistance), the food assistance program (the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program, or SNAP), and the child-care subsidy each have their own clearly organized section. “This is the statute that you're working in all the time. This is the statute that governs three of the programs that this welfare reform committee discusses,” Bridal said.

Bridal told the committee the draft does not change program policy but reorganizes current statutory text. He described material placed in the draft subsections: eligibility criteria (including income and resource calculations), work and employment-training requirements, cooperation with child-support enforcement, fraud investigations and penalties, drug-screening protocols for TANF and food assistance, assignment of support rights, and rules governing electronic benefits cards. Bridal said the medical-assistance (Medicaid/KanCare) provisions were not reorganized in this draft.

Representative Bill Riley asked that commonly used terms and acronyms be presented consistently in the draft so readers can follow the document more easily. “It would make more sense to me that either right after B where it says temporary assistance for needy families, program, space, brackets, TANF,” Riley said, suggesting the draft show the parenthetical acronyms at first use and add subsection headings to improve readability. Bridal and the chair agreed the Revisor’s Office could add an outline and clearer subsection titles for the committee to review before the hearing.

Committee staff also noted procedural details: committee-requested bill drafts remain private while in drafting and become public only after a bill is introduced and given a bill number; the Revisor’s Office provided a crosswalk chart mapping current statute locations to the proposed sections so members could verify that no policy language was altered.

The committee directed staff to provide an outline and clarified draft language ahead of the scheduled hearing. Research staff said they will also provide a background briefing on program changes over the last 15 years ahead of the hearing.

Members and staff asked procedural and definitional questions during the presentation, including how terms left undefined in statute (for example, “cohabitating partners”) are interpreted by the implementing agency. Bridal noted that absent a statutory definition, the implementing agency typically interprets such terms in policy or regulation.

The committee did not amend RS 0057 at the meeting; members asked the Revisor’s Office for minor drafting clarifications and for an outline to accompany the draft before the hearing next Tuesday.