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County staff finalize legislative platform drafts, add election date language and senior-care funding requests
Summary
Staff briefed commissioners on edits to the Sedgwick County legislative platform ahead of a scheduled commission vote, including appropriations requests for senior services, new election-date language for special-question ballots, and notes about appraiser and election-office funding.
Tanya, a county legislative staff member, briefed commissioners on updates to Sedgwick County’s legislative platform and the changes staff plans to present at the commission meeting scheduled for formal adoption.
The platform changes highlighted funding requests from the county’s aging services partners: staff added language to "support" a request to increase base funding for the state Senior Care Act and to add funding for nutrition services for older adults. Tanya said the platform text currently lists a $5,000,000 request to the Senior Care Act base funding and $3,000,000 to nutrition services for older adults as items the county would support on appropriation grounds.
Tanya also said election-office staff requested and supported adding a new item that would standardize the dates for special-question elections. The platform now includes language backing legislation that would require special-question elections submitted by counties, cities, school districts, community colleges or townships to occur "on the first Tuesday in March, August, or November." Tanya said election officials supported the addition as a way to consolidate special-election timing to a small set of regular dates.
On funding for the appraiser and election offices, Tanya told the commission staff had prepared figures to show the county’s current general-fund support but that no single statewide funding request from the county was finalized. Staff noted Sedgwick County provided approximately $12.3 million in general-fund support to the appraiser and election offices in 2024 and that auto-license support drafting shows projected increases, but Tanya said the county had not yet drafted a definitive appropriation request for those offices.
Commissioners discussed whether state-funded functions being delivered at the county level should be subject to state appropriation, with one commissioner urging the county to "create a narrative" for the legislature that local government carries costs for state functions. Staff and commissioners also discussed the Kansas Association of Counties (KAC) survey and responses on mandated services; Tanya said the county would provide a response to the KAC survey and share it with the commission.
No formal vote on the platform text occurred at the staff meeting; Tanya said the platform would appear on the commission agenda for formal consideration at the scheduled meeting and that county lobbyists already have draft testimony prepared for some items.
Ending
Tanya asked commissioners whether any additional edits were needed; commissioners asked staff to read platform items at the public meeting so the public can hear details. Staff will bring the final platform for the commission’s formal vote at the scheduled session.
