Property Tax Relief
For many Kansas families, especially retirees and long-time homeowners, rising property taxes represent one of the most immediate and painful financial pressures they face. Richard Paz believes the state has a responsibility to ensure that Kansans who have built their lives in their communities are not forced out by runaway assessments and escalating tax bills.
Paz supports reforming the state's funding distribution model to reduce local governments' reliance on property taxes. When state aid to schools, roads, and emergency services is adequate, local governments have less need to raise revenue through property tax levies. He also backs direct relief measures including assessment caps for existing homeowners and expanded homestead exemptions for senior citizens and veterans.
Beyond homeowners, Paz recognizes that high property taxes affect small businesses and farms — vital parts of the District 38 economy. His approach looks at the full picture: structural reform combined with targeted relief, ensuring that tax policy in Kansas reflects the actual economic realities of working families rather than the preferences of large landowners and corporate interests.
Richard's Commitment
“No Kansas family should lose their home because the state failed to fund schools and services fairly. Property tax relief starts with fixing how we distribute state revenue.”
Healthcare Access & Medicaid Expansion
Richard Paz has spent decades at the intersection of healthcare policy and public service. As a U.S. Army Medical Service Colonel, he led healthcare reform efforts affecting hundreds of thousands of soldiers and their families. He brings that same depth of experience to the challenge of improving healthcare access for all Kansans.
Kansas remains one of the last states in the nation that has not expanded Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act. Expansion would extend coverage to an estimated 150,000 Kansans who currently fall into a coverage gap — earning too much to qualify for traditional Medicaid but too little to afford marketplace insurance. These are working adults: home health aides, retail workers, agricultural laborers, service industry employees.
The economic case for expansion is compelling. Research from states that have expanded shows lower uncompensated care costs for hospitals, reduced emergency room usage for non-emergency conditions, and economic multiplier effects from the federal matching funds that accompany expansion. For rural and community hospitals in District 38 — many of which operate on thin margins — expansion could be the difference between staying open and closing.
Paz also prioritizes mental and behavioral health access. He played a direct role in developing Army behavioral health programs after the 2009 Fort Hood shooting, and he understands that mental health is not a peripheral issue — it is central to community health, workforce productivity, and family stability. He supports increased state investment in community mental health centers and telehealth infrastructure that can reach rural residents.
Public Education & Libraries
A strong public education system is the foundation of a healthy democracy and a competitive economy. Richard Paz is an unambiguous champion of Kansas public schools — and an equally unambiguous opponent of efforts to defund them through voucher programs and diversion schemes.
Voucher programs — which give families state funding to pay for private school tuition — sound appealing on the surface, but Paz argues that they undermine the public schools that serve the overwhelming majority of Kansas students. Every dollar diverted to a private school is a dollar not invested in teacher salaries, updated textbooks, school counselors, or safe buildings. He believes the answer to struggling schools is more investment and better support, not abandonment.
Paz supports competitive teacher compensation that can attract and retain talented educators in Kansas classrooms. He backs full funding for special education services, early childhood programs, and extracurricular activities that make schools vibrant, well-rounded learning communities. He also champions public libraries as essential community institutions that provide free access to information, job training resources, and community gathering spaces for residents of all ages.
Childcare Affordability
The childcare crisis in Kansas is both an economic problem and a family wellbeing problem. Across District 38, families face long waitlists at licensed childcare facilities, monthly costs that can rival a mortgage payment, and childcare deserts where no licensed providers exist within a reasonable distance. The result is that many parents — and research shows this burden falls disproportionately on mothers — are forced to leave the workforce or reduce their hours, depressing household income and limiting career advancement.
Paz supports expanding the state's childcare subsidy program to reach more working families and ensuring the reimbursement rates paid to childcare providers are high enough to sustain quality operations. He backs tax incentives and startup grants for new childcare businesses in underserved communities and workforce development funding to improve wages and training for childcare workers — a sector chronically underpaid relative to the critical work it performs.
Solving the childcare crisis is not just a social good. When parents can reliably access childcare, they work more hours, earn more income, and pay more in taxes — creating a fiscal return on the state's investment that economists have documented in states that have made childcare a policy priority.
LGBTQ Rights & Reproductive Health
Richard Paz believes that every Kansan deserves to live with dignity, free from discrimination and government interference in deeply personal decisions. He is committed to protecting the civil rights of LGBTQ Kansans and ensuring that women have full access to reproductive healthcare, including contraception, prenatal care, and abortion services.
On LGBTQ rights, Paz opposes legislation that targets transgender youth in schools or restricts the healthcare options available to LGBTQ individuals and their families. He supports updating Kansas anti-discrimination law to explicitly include sexual orientation and gender identity as protected categories in employment, housing, and public accommodations. Kansas should be a state where everyone can work, rent a home, and access services without fear of discrimination.
On reproductive health, Paz believes that decisions about pregnancy and reproductive care belong to individual women in consultation with their doctors — not to politicians. He opposes restrictions that limit women's access to the full spectrum of reproductive healthcare and supports ensuring that Kansans have access to comprehensive family planning services through community health centers and public programs.
Economic Security & Community Growth
Paz's economic vision is grounded in the belief that broadly shared prosperity is both more just and more durable than growth that concentrates gains at the top. For District 38 — which includes working-class communities in Wyandotte County and agricultural and suburban areas in Leavenworth County — that means policies that support small businesses, protect workers, and ensure that local communities receive a fair share of state resources.
He supports stronger state-local revenue-sharing arrangements so that communities like Bonner Springs, Basehor, and Linwood have the fiscal capacity to fund roads, parks, emergency services, and community development without resorting to regressive local taxes. He also backs raising the state minimum wage and strengthening workers' right to organize, recognizing that union membership has historically been one of the most effective tools for raising middle-class wages.
Paz believes economic development must be driven by citizen input, not handed down by state bureaucrats or negotiated in private with large corporations. He supports transparent economic development processes, strong labor standards tied to any state incentives, and investment in the infrastructure — broadband, transportation, utilities — that enables communities across District 38 to attract and retain quality employers.
Veterans & Military Families
As a 30-year Army veteran, Richard Paz has a personal and professional commitment to the wellbeing of military families. District 38 includes communities near Fort Leavenworth — one of the most historic and active military installations in the United States — and serves a significant population of active-duty military personnel, veterans, and their families.
Paz supports full funding for state veterans' benefit programs, including property tax exemptions, educational assistance, and access to mental health services tailored to the specific challenges faced by veterans. He believes Kansas must be a state that honors its commitment to those who have served — not just with words, but with concrete resources and services.
He also understands the unique economic challenges facing military families: frequent relocations, gaps in employment history, the difficulty of translating military experience into civilian credentials, and the high rates of mental health challenges associated with deployment and service. His healthcare and education priorities explicitly account for the needs of this community, and he is committed to making Kansas a military-friendly state in the truest sense of the term.