American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019 - 101

ConventionSection: Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association

Kansas Legislators Weigh
Group Insurance Bill
By Dan Holder
TOPEKA, KS.-The legislative priority
for Kansas' 2019 session is playing
defense and making sure that any bills
that may impact oil and gas operations
negatively will be shelved, assesses Edward Cross, president of the Kansas Independent Oil & Gas Association.
KIOGA is following 19 bills in the
statehouse. Most of them deal with fiscal
issues, including tax cut proposals, changes
to the state's school financing system,
and a revamped Kansas Public Employees
Retirement System, Cross describes.
"Those bills affect everybody in the
state and are not necessarily only KIOGA
issues," he notes. "For KIOGA, specifically, I have been working on bills relating
to association health plans. There are
several other bills, including SB 29,
pushed by the Kansas Farm Bureau, that
KIOGA supports.
Cross says SB 29, sponsored by the
Senate Financial Institutions and Insurance
Committee, removes a requirement that
an association must have at least 25 members to offer group accident and health
insurance.
According to KIOGA Chairman Kenneth White, SB 29 and its companion
House bill would require Kansas to adopt
federal group health insurance rules that
went into effect in 2017.
"The legislature has to vote to adopt
those federal rules. This would be great
for the associations such as KIOGA by
allowing them to offer their members true
group health insurance plans. When the
new rules came about 2017, it seemed
like an easy thing to have the states adopt
the federal rules, but it has become more
complicated," indicates White, president
of White Exploration Inc., in Wichita, Ks.
KIOGA testified before both the
House and Senate committees considering
SB 29 to make sure that 501(c)6 groups
such as the association could participate
in fully insured group health plans, and
that single-member small businesses
would not be left out of the opportunity
to participate in an association's group
health plan, Cross reports. "KIOGA has

KIOGA Midyear Meeting
Mulvane, Ks.
Wednesday, April 17
Noon Vendors Move In, Kansas Star Casino
5 p.m. Cocktail Party, 9801 S. Meridian,
Peck
Transportation Will Be Provided

Thursday, April 18
8 a.m. Registration, Kansas Star Casino
9 a.m.-4 p.m. Trade Show
10-11 a.m. Advancing Your Data Analysis
With Microsoft Excel, Dawn Monroe,
Monroe Services
11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Lunch, Ballroom
2-3:30 pm. 2019 Kansas Oil & Gas Outlook
Panelists: Ken White, White Exploration;
Will Darrah, Darrah Oil; Dick Schremmer, Bear Petroleum; Moderator Edward
Cross, KIOGA,
4-5:30 p.m. Board and General Membership Meeting
6-7 p.m. Cocktail Party, Fire Club Room
7-10 p.m. Dinner, Ballroom
Speaker: Representative Roger Marshall,
R-Ks.

Friday, April 19
8 a.m. Golf Tournament, Derby Golf &
Country Club, Derby
Registration at 8 a.m.
Shotgun Start at 9 a.m.
Breakfast and Lunch Included
9 a.m. Sporting Clays, Shady Creek Sporting Clays, Belle Plaine
Breakfast and Lunch Included

a lot of small companies among its members, and they should not be required to
have 25 or more employees to participate," he asserts.
Kansas legislators continue to listen
to industry's concerns, White says, noting
that "occasionally you run into a legislator
who does not want to hear your side of
the story, but I think they have been very
willing to listen this year."
Derailed Legislation
Cross says KIOGA testified on the
Uniform Partition of Heirs Property Act,
SB 55, which was sponsored by the
Senate Judiciary Committee. The bill,
which would make it practically impossible

to partition many real estate parcels in
Kansas, did not make it out of committee,
he adds.
"You look at the title of that bill and
you wonder what it has to do with oil
and gas," Cross says. "The problem for
the oil and gas industry is that partition
often is the best option, and sometimes
the only option, to fix title problems that
otherwise render land unable to develop
for oil and gas. Ken White and Joe
Schremmer, chairman of KIOGA's Legislative Affairs Committee, both testified
in opposition to that bill."
Two pieces of legislation involving
disposal wells that KIOGA worked on
before the legislative session began in
January failed to advance out of the
House Committee on Energy, Utilities
and Telecommunications, Cross reports.
He says the bills:
· HB 2224, introduced by Representative Jason Probst, D-Hutchinson, would
have required the KCC to assess a onetime $100 fee on operators of Class II
disposal wells, with the revenues to go
into a Kansas Geologic Survey monitoring
fund to drill monitoring wells in the Arbuckle formation to measure formation
pressures.
· HB 2240, authored by Representative Ponka-We Victors, D-Wichita, would
direct the KCC to prohibit Class II disposal
wells from being drilled above a known
fault and require a professional geologist
to certify the well did not pose a direct
risk of seismic activity.
Those two bills emerged in the last
week that legislators could introduce new
bills, Cross says, which he describes as
part of a political strategy.
"Some lawmakers try to introduce a
number of bills near the end of the session
that they know will not pass, because the
committees don't have time to hold hearings on them," he says. "Then they say
they introduced the bills but the committee
chairs simply wouldn't hold hearings on
them, when really there is no time."
Neither of the legislators sponsoring
those disposal well bills believed they
would advance, Cross surmises. KIOGA
was able to stop those bills, he adds, and
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American Oil and Gas Reporter - April 2019

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