Gov. Sam Brownback signs the first bill of the 2017 session, cleaning up statutes governing special elections to fill vacant U.S. House seats. With him are the chairs of the House and Senate elections committees, Rep. Keith Esau, R-Olathe, and Sen. Elaine Bowers, R-Concordia.

Topeka ? In a hastily-called ceremony, Gov. Sam Brownback signed the first bill to pass out of the 2017 Legislature on Wednesday, dealing with special elections to fill vacancies in U.S. House seats from Kansas.

The bill arrived on Brownback’s desk on just the sixth business day of the session, and less than 24 hours after the Senate gave it final passage Tuesday night.

It cleans up existing statutes that would be in conflict with federal law. Kansas has not had a vacancy in a U.S. House seat since 1950, but this year’s bill was rushed through both chambers of the Legislature in anticipation that 4th District Rep. Mike Pompeo of Wichita will resign once he is confirmed as CIA director in President-elect Donald Trump’s new administration.

Trump will be sworn into office at 11 a.m. Friday, Jan. 20, and Pompeo is expected to be confirmed almost immediately.

“He’s just an outstanding individual,” Brownback said of Pompeo. “He’s brilliant. He’s tough, and at a time when we are highly dependent on intelligence information for conducting the war on terrorism and the efforts that we have, this is the right guy to do it.”

With Brownback during the signing ceremony were Rep. Keith Esau, R-Olathe, and Sen. Elaine Bowers, R-Concordia, who chair the House and Senate elections committees that handled the bill.

The bill cleans up language about when a special election will be called and how much time political parties have to nominate candidates, all to make sure there is enough time to mail out ballots to military and other federal service employees overseas at least 45 days before the election.

It also reduces the threshold for petition signatures that independent candidates must gather from registered voters in the district in order to have their names listed on the ballot.

Vacancies in U.S. House seats must be filled by special election because Article 1 of the U.S. Constitution says the House “shall be composed of members chosen every second year by the people of the several States.”