STATERS meet in their departments to begin planning for a productive week ahead. Image Credit Julian Kincaid[/caption]
By EASTON ANDERLIK, OMAR
BUSTILLOS-ANDRADE, AND
JOSEPH CORREDOR
The various government departments met today for the first time after being elected for their positions. There are three departments: Economy, Natural Resources, and Humanities. Although people were elected into these offices, many delegates do not know the functions of these organizations. We got the details from the heads of the various departments.
The Department of Economy’s responsibility is to allocate funds in grants for cities’ and counties’ departments and balance state budgets. Currently, their first goal is to legalize marijuana not only medically, but also recreationally, as they believe with imposed taxes, the legalization would bring in more revenue for the state. They believe their primary goal is passing it, because they believe the response at first people would disagree and complain, but that after it had been legalized, people will realize the benefits and positive economic impact it would bring to the state. For their final statement, they said that if marijuana were to be legalized, they would work on legalizing other drugs as well.
The Department of Natural Resources manages infrastructure, agriculture, and energy. At the moment, Kansas has dirt roads and unclean, insufficient energy production. This department focuses on improving these conditions for the state. Their first priority for this week is the improvement of roads and the proper distribution of food throughput the state. Their main focus is on maintaining a secure infrastructure of roads in the state as a whole. The main problem that they are facing is budget issues; they only have enough funding for a minimal amount of road work at the moment.
The Department of Humanities believes in providing equal access to opportunities and activities for all Boys State delegates as declared their mission statement. They deal with a number of social issues such as education, the arts, and safety. This department is an interesting paradox; a mix of chaos and extreme efficiency, because despite the barrage of ideas, they have made impressive headway into their agenda.The priority for the department is “basic equality” according to the department head, Ryan Neill. Neill continued to say, “without us [the] schools, libraries, hospitals, etc. don’t exist”. While their intentions might be pure, this group might have trouble in pushing their agenda due to a lack of funding.
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