Topeka ? Several years ago, Kansas lawmakers came up with a new kind of maneuver to force a bill through one chamber or another with limited debate and no opportunity for amendment.

It was called the “gut-and-go.” One chamber, either the House or Senate, takes a minor bill that has already been passed by the other chamber. The second chamber “amends” the bill by completely stripping out its contents and inserting an entirely different bill — usually something much more significant than the original bill — then sends it back to the original chamber to accept or reject.

All the other chamber can do is accept the bill as it is, with no opportunity for amendment, or vote to reject the bill and request a conference committee. And there, a small handful of legislators from both chambers can negotiate a compromise that gets sent to both chambers for an up or down vote — again, no opportunity for amendments.

That process, once considered unusual, and even extreme, has now become the norm in the Kansas Legislature, and it is being used on some of the most significant legislation of the year.

In fact, Rep. Jim Ward, a Wichita Democrat who has been keeping track of the gut-and-go bills this year, said it’s been used on the majority of bills going through the House, where House members are only asked to accept or reject the Senate’s position on a bill.

“I’d say 55-60 percent of them,” Ward said.

Possibly the most significant of those bills is the state budget. The House has actually never voted on a budget bill. But the Senate voted on one and put it into a House bill, and that bill is now pending in a conference committee.

Another gut-and-go bill repealed the school finance formula and replaced it with a series of block grants.

Ward said he thinks the reasons are clear: “To avoid amendments; to avoid debate; to avoid the process working.”

‘Gotcha’ votes

Republican leaders don’t deny that they want to avoid amendments. But they do deny that it is unfair, or that it stifles full and open debate.

“Specifically when it comes to tax policy, it really isn’t the sort of discussion you should have out on the floor, putting all the pieces together, especially with this kind of money that needs to be done,” said House Taxation Committee Chairman Rep. Marvin Kleeb, R-Overland Park.

Kleeb said during a Republican caucus meeting Thursday that he specifically wanted to avoid what he called “gotcha votes” — that is, votes on amendments that have no chance of passing, but become fodder for an opponent’s campaign postcards in the next election.

In the House, many Democrats actually supported the procedural move last week to put an empty shell bill into conference committee, even though most will probably vote against the final bill that comes out.

House Minority Leader Rep. Tom Burroughs of Kansas City said he believed it was important to move the process along to end the session.

But not all Democrats went along with the plan, including Rep. Boog Highberger of Lawrence.

“I was really disappointed with what happened with the tax bill,” he said. “We voted to have essentially four people in the House and Senate make the decision on the tax bill that the rest of us can vote up or down. I think that’s really bad process.”

Back and forth

On Thursday, enough conservative Republicans voted against the plan that it failed on the first attempt. But GOP House leaders met with conservatives later that night and convinced enough of them to change their minds by Friday morning.

On the Senate side, however, Democrats were in no mood to cooperate. And at first, neither were the conservatives.

“I’ve never seen this circumvention of the process done as much as it has been done this year,” said Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka. “Or you could call it short-circuiting the process, however you want to call it.”

Hensley tried to short-circuit the maneuver by offering a substitute motion. Instead of sending the shell of a bill into conference, he asked to concur in the House amendment and send the bill to Gov. Sam Brownback.

The bill did have a few minor tax measures in it, including Brownback’s plan to offer limited amnesty for people with past-due balances to pay their back taxes without interest or penalty. It also included authority for Douglas County to put a half-cent sales tax issue on a ballot to fund expansion of the county jail.

Varying agendas

Conservative Republicans have opposed the process, too, in part because many of them do not want any tax increases, while others don’t want to consider any increases in income or business taxes. And at first, it looked as though enough conservative senators were willing to support Hensley’s motion that the “gut-and-go” process on the tax bill would fall apart.

But after a brief recess — and a tumultuous caucus meeting among Senate Republicans — conservatives came back and agreed to send the shell bill to conference committee.

Meanwhile, moments after the Senate agreed to use the gut-and-go process, Brownback — who had previously said he was not proposing any tax plan of his own, but was conferring with legislative leaders — said that he would soon announce his own tax proposal. He unveiled his plan, which calls for a sales tax increase and fewer income tax deductions, on Saturday morning.