In his budget message, Gov. Sam Brownback instructed legislators to formulate a revenue plan by the end of January to deal with the spending document’s $342 million shortfall.
The request apparently fell on deaf ears; Tuesday is the last day of the month. “We’re still in an exploratory mode,” Rep. Kent Thompson told the Register Sunday afternoon. “I’m not seeing any clear path forward.” Because he is a member of the House Taxation Committee, Thompson would be among the first to know if a path to solvency was on track. Thompson, rural LaHarpe, represents Allen and Neosho counties.
“Steven Johnson (R-Assaria) is chairman of the committee and he’s bringing everyone in who has any ideas … and there are a lot of them.”
But no proposals, to do with mechanics or policy, have yet to find traction in the Republican-dominated Legislature. When one or more does — necessitated by Kansas’ cash-basis law — passage may depend on more than just those wearing GOP badges. For the first time in six years, the House has a more moderate bent thanks to the November election that ousted several ultra-conservative Republicans.
Among suggestions that has surfaced are one for an across-the-board spending cut of 6.95 percent and two in the Senate to cut school funding by $90 million or $120 million. None has advanced to bill form.
Thompson scoffs at their sincerity. “I think it’s more shock-and-awe,” with those making proposals that border on the ridiculous.
This year’s legislative exercise in state finance is only a preclude to 2018, Thompson said, when a shortfall is forecast at $500 million, and on the same track into fiscal 2019 that starts on July 1, 2018. Among his thoughts are some realignment of the income tax exemptions for 330,000 business and farm owners that were featured in the 2012-13 cuts.
“We have to look at it, absolutely,” Thompson said.
In his budget address Brownback spoke softly of that segment of the tax-paying public, in his conviction that putting money back in the hands of “job creators” would be a “shot of adrenalin for the economy.”
The concept, variously known as trickle-down or supply-side economics doesn’t have a track record of success, and in its nearly five years in Kansas.
Brownback also included on the revenue side of his budget increasing taxes on cigarettes and liquor, selling proceeds of the 1990s tobacco settlement earmarked for children’s learning programs and scaling back state contributions to KPERS.
Thompson views those quick fixes with distaste, particularly selling off the future of the tobacco settlement.
“We’re going to do something,” he said. “We have to. I just don’t know yet what it will be.”
KS lawmakers grapple for solution to shortfall
