Tim Carpenter

speaker

2,284 appearances 17 recordings 1 series first heard Oct 2025 last heard 21 Sep

Tim Carpenter’s voice in public audio — every appearance, attributed to the second.

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Recordings per month over the last 12 months — 17 in all, peaking in Jan 2026 with 3.

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Kansas Reflector Podcast · Kansas Reflector staff recap 2026 legislative session · 6 Apr 2026 podcast

Another missing element made Senator Joe Claes, a Wichita Republican, angry was that he had figured out a way to take a half a million dollars from public broadcasting to help fund in his backyard in Sedgwick County a special pilot program to help people with disabilities get reliable transportation to work.

Well, the budget negotiators in the House and Senate slashed that $500,000 appropriation and actually increased funding for public broadcasting.

So that was a big surprise of the session as well.

You know, there's other strange things in there that are really hard to understand that there's no detail on.

They withheld $21 million from the state's Cooperative Extension Service, pending certification that the reorganization plan for that entity better met the needs of big agriculture industry in Kansas.

Shall I go on?

Here's the non-egregious version.

So the big issue was whether or not Kansas was going to retain a policy that allowed in-state tuition for qualified students at public colleges and universities, qualified students being those who were brought to the United States when they were children, by parents who lacked legal authorization to be here.

So the Senate passed a bill.

voiding the policy.

The House overwhelmingly rejected the Senate's idea and affirmed the policy.

So then the legislature was at a standstill for weeks until the House negotiators folded and basically sold out their House colleagues for the Senate's position, and the House and Senate passed a bill repealing

the program in a bill that was sent to the governor's office.

You know, the difference here is substantial, and the question is whether or not a lot of these students will be able to afford to go to college under the new regime if the bill is put into law.

So, for example, at Kent State, the 2025-26 year in-state tuition is about $11,000, and the out-of-state is $28,000.

So one of the concerns was this is going to cut students out of a higher education.

Quickly, in terms of the budget, there was some targeted investment in the state universities.

The budget is not great.

I doubt it's going to match higher education inflation indexes.

Another big debate by the legislature was to withhold $12 million from the six state universities, $12 million total, so that they can affirm that diversity, equity, inclusion, all vestiges of it, have been wiped out at the state universities.

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