WATCH: The Post’s forum for 2 Kansas House seats in Lenexa and Shawnee

Candidates vying for two Kansas House districts covering portions of Merriam, Lenexa and Shawnee, participated in a forum hosted by the Johnson County Post Tuesday night.

The Post is hosting more than a dozen separate forums for Kansas Statehouse districts in Johnson County ahead of the Nov. 5 general election.

Thursday’s forum was hosted at Monticello Library in Shawnee.

The two districts covered in this forum were:

• House District 17, covering portions of Lenexa and Shawnee,
• and House District 18, covering portions of Merriam and Shawnee.

Who is running?

House District 17

• Incumbent Democratic Rep. Jo Ella Hoye
• Retired electrical engineer Michael Kerner, a Libertarian

House District 18

• Entrepreneur and U.S. Air Force retiree Steve Hohe, a Libertarian
• Incumbent Democratic Rep. Cindy Neighbor
• Web developer Robert Whitman, a Republican

How to watch the Post’s forum

The Post livestreamed Thursday’s event on our Facebook page, and a recording of the forum is embedded below.

Following the embedded video are the questions each candidate answered during the forum.

Timestamps are included in bold at the end of each question to help you navigate through the forum video if you’d like to jump around.

Questions and timestamps

1. Opening statements [4:00]
2. Biggest priority for your district: We are holding forums for dozens of statehouse districts this fall. What do you see as the biggest priority or need from residents in your district? [9:21]

   

3. Taxes: Earlier this summer, lawmakers passed and Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly signed into law a tax cut package that slashes roughly $2.4 billion in property and income taxes over the next three years. The law reduces state income tax brackets from three tiers to two and eliminates the state tax on Social Security benefits, among other things. Still, taxes — particularly, residential property taxes driven by still-rising valuations — remains a much-asked-about issue by our readers. Are there any other tax cuts or tax relief policies you’d like to see the legislature pursue next year? In particular, is there anything the state can or should do regarding local property taxes? [17:40]
4. Spending (from the audience): Are you willing to trim any specific parts of the budget to accomplish lowering taxes? [24:03]

   

5. Education: What do you think are the biggest challenges, if any, facing public education and how would you approach that if elected? [29:48]
6. Medicaid expansion (from the audience): If you don’t support expanding Medicaid, please explain why. If you do support expanding Medicaid, please explain practically how you would go about pushing for that since this comes up year after year and doesn’t go anywhere, usually due to legislative leadership’s opposition? [37:08]

   

7. Guns: Questioners from the audience on both sides of this issue. One person wanting to know what, in their words “gun-sense” laws you’d advocate for in Topeka. Another questioner asking if prohibiting guns in schools actually makes them bigger targets because shooters know nobody will be armed. So, clearly, audience members on different sides of this, so it will be illustrative to see where you stand on this issue. [42:05]

   

8. Abortion: Two years ago, Kansas voters rejected a proposed amendment that would have explicitly stripped the right to abortion from the state constitution. It was seen as a major victory for abortion rights supporters. But debate about abortion has not stopped. In the two years since, Kansas lawmakers have debated dozens of bills seeking in some way to limit or impact abortion procedures in Kansas, and it’s widely expected that such measures will continue to come up next year. Do you support any new restrictions on abortion… or laws in any way governing the procedure? Why or why not? [49:10]

   

9. Elections (from the audience): Do you think elections in Kansas are secure? And would you take any further steps in the future to make them more secure, if needed? [54:34]