TOPEKA — A lawmaker’s personal grievances took center stage in a hearing over his proposed legislation to scrutinize communication from public schools about bond issues.
Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, said House Bill 2451 would strengthen existing law that prohibits public employees from electioneering while on the clock or with public resources. He said the Hutchinson school district’s communications last year on a failed bond issue blurred the distinction between educating the public, which is allowed, and advocating, which is unlawful.
The legislation clarifies that educators could be charged with a crime for crossing that line.
Critics of the bill said the real goal was to prevent administrators and teachers from saying anything about a proposed bond issue. They pointed to past clashes between Waggoner and school figures, his contributions to a campaign to defeat the bond issue, the fact that he doesn’t even live in the school district and couldn’t vote on the bond issue, and the double standard that he enjoys as a legislator to spend tax dollars on his partisan newsletters.
“I believe this bill’s sole purpose is to criminalize speech that Mr. Waggoner doesn’t like,” said Stacy Goss, who submitted testimony in her individual capacity rather than as the school district’s communications director.
Big, beautiful mailer
Hutchinson voters by a three-to-one margin rejected the school district’s $109.5 million plan to build a new middle school and support other projects. The district featured educational information, as vetted by an attorney, about the bond issue in place of a regularly planned newsletter.
Waggoner and Allison Reed, who volunteered for Waggoner’s legislative campaigns and defended him taking photos of a decorated teacher’s house in 2022, seized the opportunity to build resistance around the idea that the school was using taxpayer money to persuade the community to raise property taxes.
Waggoner testified in front of the House Elections Committee, for which he is also the vice-chair, and said it was “shocking” to see what he viewed as “standard campaign advocacy” in the school district’s communications. He said schools have a right to educate the public, but they are not supposed to advocate.
“I think that clearly is not followed at all in many ways. It’s just skirted,” he said.
Reed presented the committee with a PowerPoint presentation that showed, in her mind, how school materials closely resembled the messaging used by a campaign to support the bond issue. She denounced the eight-page, glossy “beautiful mailer” the school district had sent to residents.
“It doesn’t necessarily say ‘yes,’ but it certainly gives you an idea of where the person that produced this is coming from,” she said.
She noted that teachers wore buttons that said “I support Hutch kids” and included the same logo that was used as part of the advocacy campaign.
That would be the school logo.
Reed also complained that the school district unpublished a video of the school board meeting in December where administrators “admitted” they had spent $10,000 on the mailing and $4,000 on yard signs.
Goss, in response to Kansas Reflector questions, said the video in question no longer appears on the school district’s Facebook page because Facebook removes live videos after 30 days. However, Goss said, she would provide a copy of the video to anyone who emailed her. She provided a copy to the Reflector.
‘Troubling perception
In her written testimony for the committee, Goss said that while Waggoner’s bill is framed as a way to prevent misuse of public resources, it is overly broad and could silence “legitimate public education efforts.” The actual effect of the bill, she said, was to “chill lawful communications.”
