Kansas Legislation
By: Jeremiah Cook
Updated: November 8, 2012
KANSAS--- For Republican Mike Houser, the next few weeks of life are sure to offer some surprises. Houser won the District 1 Kansas House of Representatives seat in Tuesday's election, and says the first thing he plans on doing is learning the ropes.
"It's exciting. this is a new chapter in my life. I've never done anything like it," states Houser.
On the other hand, Democrat Julie Menghini is no stranger to the state house, having served 3 terms prior to being defeated at the polls two years ago. She says she's ready to hit the ground running.
"I feel like i'm going to be walking into a pretty good situation, i'm pretty comfortable with how the system works after three terms there," states Menghini.
Both Houser and Menghini say they know what their first orders of business will be, another round of elections.
"That means we're going to vote for new leadership in the house, speaker pro tem, majority leader, all of those kinds of positions," states Houser.
"So there is yet another campaign, basically, for a number of folks. About 6 or so on the Democrat side, and a little bit more on the Republican side, as they're in control," states Menghini.
As for the issues they spoke to voters about over the last several months.
"We need to see more businesses opening up in the area, we see Missouri residents coming to Kansas to buy goods, instead of Kansas residents going to Missouri. Sorry about that, but that's what we've got to do," states Houser.
"The first thing we're going to have to do is get our fiscal house in order. We're going to have to adjust our revenue stream and how to make it more stable and how to make it more fair for the average tax payer," states Menghini.
The next legislative session begins in January. The legislature will hold an orientation session for new representatives around the first week of December.
