The failure of the Kansas Legislature to act this year on a bill easing penalties for marijuana possession was a missed opportunity that could have saved $1.2 million in the state budget, a Lawrence lawmaker said.

The bill passed the House, but it did so too late in the session to be considered by the Senate. The Legislature, which today enters the 103rd day of a session that was supposed to last no more than 90 days, is largely focused on passage of a state budget and a tax plan to fund it.

Under current law, first-time marijuana possession is a Class A misdemeanor, while second and subsequent offenses are felonies. House Bill 2049 would have lowered first-time possession to a Class B misdemeanor and second-time possession to a Class A misdemeanor. Subsequent offenses would have remained felonies.

The bill would also order a state study of industrial hemp and allow limited production and sale of hemp oil to treat seizures.

The Kansas Sentencing Commission estimated that reducing second-time offenses to misdemeanors would take 449 felony cases “out of the system,” saving $1,150,000 in fiscal year 2016, which starts July 1. The commission expected to save an additional $788,986 on a state-paid substance abuse treatment program because an estimated 184 participants would not have to enroll if they were misdemeanor instead of felony offenders.

Dennis Boog Highberger

‘Missed opportunity’

While the bill had a number of supporters, evidenced by its passing the House 81 to 36, Lawrence Democrat Rep. Boog Highberger said the House waited too long to act on the bill for it to feasibly pass through the Senate.

Highberger, who sits on the House committee that sponsored the bill, said the House leadership wanted to wait to act on the bill until after the April 7 vote in Wichita, where voters decided on an initiative to decriminalize first-time marijuana possession. Turnaround day, the day by which most bills have to pass at least one chamber, was April 3.

There are procedural ways around that rule. Highberger said representatives “offered to put (HB 2049) into another bill in conference committee,” but were denied when “at least two Republican members (of the conference committee) thought it was too soft on crime.”

“The Republican Senate turned down an opportunity to save $1.2 million (after other costs are factored in) from the state budget,” Highberger said.

Opponents such as Topeka Republican Rep. Dick Jones worried the bill would be “a foot in the door” to full legalization, according to the Associated Press. But Highberger said the bill’s financial and prison-capacity benefits to the state should outweigh legalization anxiety.

“It came from the Kansas Sentencing Commission, not from some person crusading for marijuana legalization,” Highberger said.

Highberger said that if the bill does make it to the Senate floor next year, he thinks it will pass.

“A Pittsburg State University study found that 63 percent of Kansans favor marijuana decriminalization and this was nowhere near decriminalization,” Highberger said. “It seemed like a no-brainer to me.”

On Monday, Democratic Sen. David Haley, of Kansas City, wanted House and Senate negotiators who drafted the final version of a bill for helping victims of human trafficking to insert the marijuana proposals.

But Republican Sen. Jeff King, of Independence, said putting those proposals into the human trafficking measure would violate the state constitution’s requirement that each bill have only one subject.

Packed prisons

In addition to saving money, the sentencing commission said, the bill would help the state save room in packed prisons. It estimated that 46 beds would open up if second-offense marijuana possession were no longer a felony. Last month the Kansas Department of Corrections reported that state prisons are over capacity by 155 people.

Lawrence criminal defense attorney John Frydman said he’d always thought the Legislature “wouldn’t change the penalty (on marijuana) until it hits the state’s pocketbook.” And while he thinks it’s the potential money-saving properties of the bill that pushed it past the House “rather than the humanitarian fact that we’re imprisoning people for non-violent crimes,” he said the bill’s near success is encouraging.

“Felonies should be reserved for someone who is truly a danger to the community,” Frydman said. “It’s great that some movement toward sanity is occurring.”

Douglas County District Attorney Charles Branson said he has recently begun to look at marijuana prosecution policies in Chicago, Brooklyn and Seattle that have de-emphasized jail in favor of treatment.

“If there are appropriate treatment options, then I think those should be explored over costly incarceration,” Branson said.

Hemp oil

The fact that the bill hit a roadblock is “so frustrating, it’s heartbreaking,” said Democratic Rep. John Wilson, of Lawrence. Wilson has pursued the legalization of hemp oil since 2014 after speaking with constituents who moved to neighboring Colorado to obtain such treatments for their son, who suffers from a seizure disorder.

Fourteen states have legalized some medical use of hemp oil, as the Kansas bill would do.

To get traction for his proposal in the GOP-dominated House, Wilson lobbied hard and swayed many Republican lawmakers behind the scenes due to his willingness to narrow the scope of the bill and incorporate their concerns, said Republican Rep. Dan Hawkins, of Wichita. The bill gained the bulk of the House’s 97 Republican votes to be sent to the Senate.