GOP House, Senate negotiators attempting one more bite at anti-vaccination apple

TOPEKA — Republican House and Senate negotiators made a fresh attempt Wednesday to cobble together a bill restraining power of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment and county health officials to issue public mandates in response to spread of infectious disease.

The proposed deal — both Democrats on the six-person negotiating committee said they wouldn’t vote for it — would drop a Senate GOP plan to exempt businesses, schools and child care facilities from routine vaccination regulations and end the policy of vaccinating college dormitory students for meningitis.

In addition, the tentative agreement among the four Republican negotiators nixed the House’s strategy of forming a 26-person task force to study opioid fatalities. The new bill wouldn’t include the House’s attempt to legalize fentanyl test strips so drug users would be more capable of avoiding lethal cocktails.

Sen. Beverly Gossage, the Eudora Republican and lead negotiator for the Senate, said the priority was advancing provisions in Senate Bill 6 to prohibit the KDHE secretary and county officials from issuing orders crafted to help the public avoid illness or death in a calamity reminiscent of the COVID-19 pandemic. Instead of mandates, the bill would limit KDHE and local health departments to release of recommendations on stemming outbreaks.

“We want to make sure they’re not quarantining healthy people,” Gossage said. “Like saying, ‘Everybody has to stay home for two weeks and schools have to be closed.'”

Another piece of the package came from Senate Bill 314. That would block KDHE from requiring children receive a COVID-19 shot as a condition of enrolling in school and child care.

The Senate approved Senate Bill 6 and Senate Bill 314, but the House never voted on either piece of legislation. Nor did the House approve Senate Bill 315, which contained the anti-vaccination initiatives tied to meningitis and other vaccination exemptions.

Rep. Will Carpenter, an El Dorado Republican chairing the House negotiation panel, said the agreement would be inserted into an overhauled House Bill 2390. The House passed its version of the vaccination bill on a 121-0 vote. It featured language on fentanyl test strips and the opioid review board.

Carpenter said the test strip provision wasn’t abandoned and would be included in a separate bill yet to receive a vote in the House and Senate.

Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City, and Rep. Jo Ella Hoye, D-Lenexa, said as Democratic negotiators they wouldn’t support a bill diminishing the professional judgment of state and local health officials. Allowing unvaccinated children to attend schools and child care centers posed an unacceptable risk to public health, they said.

“I find that to be very problematic for our adults and for our children in schools,” Pettey said.

“This is not ready for prime time,” Hoye said. “I still stand opposed to moving forward with saying that schools don’t have to report infectious diseases. That is extremely dangerous.”

The Immunize Kansas Coalition, including 26 organizations, urged legislators to reject attempts to water down of the state’s vaccination policies or laws.

Geovannie Gone, executive director of Immunize Kansas Coalition, said the House and Senate ought to “deny any policies that would undermine current vaccine requirements and the ability to respond quickly and effectively to future infectious disease outbreaks in the Sunflower state.”

Previous iterations of Kansas’ anti-vaccination legislation “took a very dubious path,” said Tracy Russell, executive director of the organization Nurture KC working to lower infant mortality and improve family health. Nurture KC, she said, was disappointed with content of the anti-vaccination legislation as well as the legislative process relied upon to push reform at the Capitol.

On the Senate floor, Democrats and Republicans challenged opposition to the House proposal for a panel to study the surge in opioid deaths and for legalization of test strips so people could avoid inadvertent overdoses tied to fentanyl.

“None of the components of the (Senate) bill received a hearing in the House and ultimately the conference committee does not include conferees from the House health committee, sidestepping potential opposition to this legislation,” Russell said.

She said the Legislature should vote down anti-vaccination bills that ignored the majority of Kansans committed to protecting the public from preventable disease.

“Why would we jeopardize a fundamental expectation that our government will protect us from disease? Where is the clamor for this action?” Russell said. “Make no mistake, if approved, this will galvanize continued attempts to eliminate required vaccination, putting our children and the vulnerable at risk.”