UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Friday, March 18, 1994
7
Valerie Bontrager / KANSAN
Catching rayzzzz...
Farshid Tahmoresi, Shiraz, Iran, junk takes a nap in the sun behind Wescoe. She said that the warm weather reminded her of her homeland, which is celebrating the new year today.
TOPEKA — State Rep. Clyde Graeber, R-Leavenworth, said yesterday he would move, possibly as soon as today, to have the House concur in the narrowly-drawn Senate version of the death penalty bill.
Senators give ultimatum on death bill
The Associated Press
Graeber's declaration came during a conference committee meeting at which senators said it was their way or no way in getting a capital punishment bill passed this session.
Graeber said he expected his motion to be approved by the House. If it is, it goes to Gov. Joan Finney who has said repeatedly she would let any bill that reached her to become law without her signature.
State Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Hays, ranking senator on the conference committee, said there was no chance the Senate would negotiate a tougher death penalty bill — in effect giving the House a take-it-or-leave-it ultimatum.
Graeber, who is head of the conference committee trying to resolve differences between versions of the bill passed by the two houses, said given the Senate's solid position he had no alternative but to persuade the House to accept it.
If the House does not concur in the Senate version, then the bill is killed.
"I have a responsibility now to go back to the House and move for concurrence," Graeber said. "There will be no future conferences.
"If it goes down, then the majority [of the House] has ruled. The House must vote on it.
"I feel I will prevail, and a majority will vote for it."
The House version is much broader, encompassing all premeditated murders, felony murders — deaths that occur in the commission of a felony
The Senate version calls for death by lethal injection a possible alternative punishment to life in prison for those convicted of seven specific types of murders — relating to kidnapping, sex crimes, killing of law enforcement officers, inmates and guards, and multiple murders.
— plus four selected types of murders.
Kansas Open Meetings Act may be approved
The Associated Press
TOPEKA — A bill plugging what supporters of the Kansas Open Meetings Act considered a major loophole went to Gov. Joan Finney yesterday when the House concurred in Senate amendments. 111-8.
The Senate had approved it on Wednesday, 38-2, after Sen. Dick Rock, D-Akansas City, abandoned his effort to allow two members of bodies to confer on official business.
If Finney signs the bill or lets it become law without her signature, the bill will make the law apply to telephone conversations and all other types of interactive communication
among members of public boards and commissions in the state.
Speaker Bob Miller, R-Wellington, said the Legislature had "closed the loophole and closed the book on this unfortunate issue.
"This correction is overdue and appropriate. The people of Kansas are entitled to honest, open government and decision-making. Today, after a two-month hiatus, we restore that entitlement."
The bill makes the law apply specifically to telephone conversations and other forms of interactive communication — including messages relayed by a third party.
It also removes from the law a
requirement that the conversations be prearranged, meaning it would now cover chance meetings that result in a discussion of governmental business.
A state Supreme Court ruling in January said the two decades-old law was worded so that it did not presently apply to telephone conversations among members of public boards and commissions.
Senate President Bud Burke said he believed the Open Meetings Act needed an in-depth review. He said that he would ask the Legislative Coordination Council to send the issue to an interim committee for study ahead of the 1995 session.
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