Spokeswoman for Kansas department that oversees programs for disabled: ‘Do we want these slow learners voting?’

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Angela de Rocha, the spokeswoman for the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services, is always good for a jaw-dropping public statement.

Back in 2013, The Pitch profiled a Prairie Village man who suffered from a form of muscular dystrophy that caused him to need round-the-clock care, even as Kansas had cut his assistance. The state was at the time transferring care of nearly 400,000 Medicaid recipients to private companies under a widely criticized plan called KanCare.

I asked de Rocha then about the issues facing KanCare. Her response was startling.

In that story, I quoted her this way:

In an earlier interview, de Rocha offered an analogy for Medicaid recipients upset by KanCare’s reduction in services. She says it’s as if she had been giving someone a new car every year and then suddenly stopped.

“Your natural response to that is going to be, ‘Why is she being so mean to me?'” de Rocha tells The Pitch. “That’s just human nature. It’s very difficult to take away something once you get it. People get used to it. They think that’s what you need.”

It seemed like a callous interpretation of why Medicaid recipients were unhappy with KanCare — as though 400,000 people whose lives were often a daily struggle were receiving some luxury that they didn’t want to give up.
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De Rocha is at it again this week.

The Wichita Eagle captured one of her Facebook musings, in which she ridicules a League of Women Voters’ idea for a college course to help younger Kansans navigate new voter registration laws. Nearly half of Kansans whose voting rights have been suspended with the application of more stringent registration laws, which include proof of citizenship, are at or near college age. The idea prompted this response from de Rocha, underneath a post about the course from Associated Press reporter John Hanna’s Facebook page:

“So it takes an entire semester to learn how to register to vote. Really? Do we want these slow learners voting? Or is this a stealth course paid for by taxpayers to train left-wing ‘community organizers’ like the League of Women Voters on how to agitate?”

The post seems to reflect two pervasive attitudes that inflict some pockets of Kansas government. One is an aversion to anyone participating in Kansas democracy who doesn’t share the current administration’s views. The other is that some people whom the state entrusts with serving them are easily dismissed by decision makers; see de Rocha’s use of the phrase “slow learners” as a clear pejorative for people with intellectual disabilities.

It’s not clear which bad attitude is worse — or why the voice of the Kansas Department for Aging and Disability Services is so openly contemptuous of her own agency’s constituents.