Melissa Boisen aims to deny Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, a fifth term in the Kansas House of Representatives.

Boisen, 41, says she’s running against Sloan for the Republican nomination for the 45th District seat because he and others like him have made government more complicated than it needs to be.

“I think we need to make children our top priority,” Boisen said. “Once we do that, I really think everything else will fall into place.”

That, she said, means more money for schools and social services.

Boisen and her husband, Ron, have two children: Chelsea, 15, a sophomore at Lawrence High School, and Joshua, 7, a second-grader at Deerfield School.

Sloan, 56, says he, too, is all for children.

He and his wife, Gail, have three, all of them grown.

But government, Sloan said, means many different things to many different people. To be effective, he said, a legislator must have more than one priority.

“My highest priority is to maintain and improve the quality of educational opportunities in the state of Kansas  from K (kindergarten) to KU,” Sloan said. “My second priority is to protect the environment, and my third is tax fairness.”

Sloan said he’d had a hand in several low-profile bills that had increased Kansans’ clout in tax disputes.

“It used to be when you went in to appeal a valuation on your property, the burden was on you to prove the appraiser was wrong,” he said. “So I sponsored a bill that puts the burden on the appraiser  now, it’s the appraiser who has to prove that he or she is correct.”

Reconfigured by reapportionment, the 45th District now includes much  but not all  of Lawrence west of Kasold Drive, as well as the northwest corner of Douglas County.

Boisen background

Both Sloan and Boisen have doctoral degrees; his in international relations from the University of North Carolina, hers in developmental and child psychology from Kansas University.

Until seven months ago, Boisen was an assistant vice president at The Farm, one of the state’s five regional foster-care contractors.

Earlier, she was a volunteer and director at the Douglas County Court Appointed Special Advocate program. In 1997, she served as president of the Kansas CASA Assn.

Boisen said she had decided to run for the Legislature after lobbying for The Farm for four years.

“I have to tell you, I was amazed by what I saw,” at the Statehouse, she said. “By that I mean, I didn’t see people standing up for kids  kids weren’t the priority.”

Sloan background

Sloan grew up in central New York. He moved to Kansas in 1975 to teach political science and international relations at Kansas State University. He later became associate director of the Kansas State Nurses Assn. in Topeka.

He moved to Lawrence in 1980 so his wife, Gail, could finish her doctoral studies in communications at KU.

For much of the early and mid-1980s, Sloan was chief of staff for Sen. Bob Talkington, R-Iola, while Talkington was majority leader and, later, Kansas Senate president. He later worked as a legislative liaison for the Department of Corrections before heading up KPL’s governmental affairs office during the utility company’s merger with KGE.

Sloan serves on the House higher education, environment and Kansas futures committees. He’s also vice chairman of the House Utilities Committee.

“I am the leading advocate in the Legislature for renewable energy,” he said.

Senate seat

Sloan said that if he were re-elected and if Sen. Sandy Praeger, R-Lawrence, were elected state insurance commissioner, he would seek the Douglas County Republican Party’s nomination to fill Praeger’s seat.

Lawrence real estate agent Mark Buhler also has expressed interest in serving in Praeger’s stead. Praeger’s seat is not up for re-election until 2004.

If the party nominated Sloan, it also would appoint someone to fill the then-vacated 45th District seat in the House.

Both Sloan and Boisen said they expected funding shortfalls  between $500 million and $700 million  to plague the 2003 Legislature.

Sloan said he had voted to raise taxes this year and would again next year.

“l believe that whoever is elected governor is going to have to ask for additional tax increases, and I’m prepared to vote for the ones that are reasonable,” he said.

Boisen isn’t. She’s heard lawmakers say they’ll have to raise taxes, cut spending or both, but she’s not heard much about a fourth option.

“I think there ought to be a department-by-department analysis to see if we’re doing all we can to pull in all the federal dollars that are out there,” she said. “I don’t think we are.”

Sloan disagreed. “The state doesn’t leave very much federal money lying on the table,” he said.