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TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) -- Influential Kansas business groups have strong misgivings about Republican proposals aimed at financially protecting workers refusing COVID-19 inoculations while vocal anti-mandate activists don't think the measures go far enough.
A joint legislative committee had hearings Friday on a proposal to make it easier for workers to claim religious exemptions to COVID-19 vaccine mandates and another to provide unemployment benefits to workers who are fired for refusing to get vaccinated. Both are a response to vaccine mandates from President Joe Biden applying to more than 100 million workers.
Republican lawmakers have forced a Thanksgiving-week special session of the GOP-controlled Legislature to consider ways for Kansas to resist the mandates. Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has expressed opposition to the Democratic president's mandates but has not embraced specific proposals. Lawmakers plan to convene Nov. 22.
The proposals drew criticism from the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and the state chapter of the National Federation of Independent Business. They fear that the unemployment measure will prove costly, raising the state taxes on businesses that help finance the benefits. They said the other measure could force business owners to choose between facing federal fines for granting exemptions too easily or facing lawsuits from aggrieved employees who don't get them.
"We didn't ask to be here," said chamber lobbyist Eric Stafford. "We ask that you not punish us."
Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, drafted the proposals after the committee heard two days of testimony from dozens of people, almost all of them strongly opposed to the mandates.
But the strongest vaccine-mandate critics were not pleased with Masterson's proposals, viewing them as too weak.
Some want to also allow exemptions for people who have non-religious objections to COVID-19 vaccines, while others want to prohibit private employers from imposing mandates.
"The draft bills we are being asked to comment on today, while a step in the right direction, don't go far enough to end the madness," said Gary Morgan, a resident of the Kansas City suburb of Shawnee.