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Coalition sets goals for trip to Washington, D.C.
Published 3/4/2010 in Local News
By SHAJIA AHMAD
Several officials from the three largest southwest Kansas cities have prioritized their goals for a scheduled late March trip to the nation's capital, to speak with Kansas representatives about both transportation projects and what they feel is limited immigration resources in the southwest part of the state.
A few city representatives of the Southwest Kansas Coalition — elected city representatives and staff from Dodge City, Garden City and Liberal — agreed via teleconference Wednesday to focus on both topics for the March 22 to 23 Western Kansas Congressional reception, organized in part by the Garden City Area of Chamber of Commerce.
The annual trip involves representatives meeting with staffers and congressmen, including U.S. Sens. Sam Brownback and Pat Roberts and Rep. Jerry Moran, and will also be attended by Finney County and Holcomb delegates.
On Wednesday, the Southwest Kansas Coalition's lobbyist Robin Jennison, of Jennison Government Services, told the tri-cities officials that focusing the group's primary goal on developing and improving highway infrastructure in this part of the state and that it generate positive and social economic impact would be very difficult given tight budget situations at both state and federal levels. The Kansas legislature is estimating a $400 million budget shortfall for the next fiscal year, and a $100 million estimated shortfall for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30.
"There's no legislators talking about a transportation plan right now," Jennison said. "They're just not."
The coalition hired Jennison in 2008, and then again in 2009, to lobby for its goals and to keep an eye on legislation that affects southwest and western Kansas.
Officials from all three cities also agreed to focus their collective discussion in the nation's capital with Kansas' elected officials on securing immigration resources in southwest Kansas because they feel the area is underserved despite its large immigrant populations, according to the coalition's legislative policy, adopted early last year by all three cities.
A satellite office of the U.S. Department of Homeland Security's U.S. Citizenship and Immigration Services would remove time and distance barriers for legal residents' pursuit of citizenship, one of the coalition's outlined long-term goals.
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