COVID-19 puts extraordinary spin on planning for 2021 session of Kansas Legislature

TOPEKA — Members of the Kansas Legislature will have standard hot-potato political challenges during the upcoming 2021 session, but their work is likely to require unprecedented discipline by lawmakers during the COVID-19 pandemic and adoption of technological innovation to maintain transparency in state government.

The Legislature’s information technology office has been working on an overhaul of visual and audio systems at the Capitol to improve the quality of communication among committee members and connectivity with the public. The project involves new cameras and monitors in the building, as well as a litany of behind-the-scenes infrastructure changes, that must be installed and tested ahead of the mid-January session.

House and Senate leaders on the Legislative Coordinating Council are scheduled to discuss next Thursday options for conducting the annual session in Topeka. Questions remain about how legislators would vote in the House and Senate chambers; whether committee meetings would be in-person, virtual or a hybrid; what level of office assistants, interns, pages and security would be appropriate; and to what degree public access to the statehouse could be modified without jeopardizing government transparency.

Another issue centers on whether everyone in the Capitol — including all 165 legislators — would be subject to a mask mandate. At this point in the pandemic, House and Senate members are free to remove masks during committee meetings or in their offices.

Read more: https://kansasreflector.com/2020/11/13/covid-19-puts-extraordinary-spin-on-planning-for-2021-session-of-kansas-legislature/