House Speaker Ron Ryckman (R-Olathe), Majority Leader Dan Hawkins (R-Wichita), and Speaker Pro Tem Blaine Finch (R-Ottawa) issued the following joint statement Thursday night:
Tonight leaves Kansans with more questions than answers. We were hopeful the Governor would issue a statewide plan to safely re-open the Kansas economy like other Governors have done. Instead, she has passed the buck onto the counties, leaving businesses to deal with a patchwork of regulations and not holding businesses accountable to the same rules.
Under the Governor's new order, certain small businesses are blocked from re-opening regardless of the safety precautions they take. Yet, those same small businesses can't access unemployment benefits because of the Governor's broken system. And they can't access the resource website she promoted tonight - it's broken too.
Kansans deserve answers so we can work together to save lives and save jobs over the coming months. We need to know the specific metrics that must be met in order to move into the next phases. If you give a Kansan a goal, they will work to achieve it. We didn't get that tonight from Governor Kelly.
