With a $900 million budget deficit, an anticipated Kansas Supreme Court decision on school finance and the temporary public education block grant program set to expire, it’s not hard to guess what the top issues are going to be when the 2017 Legislature is called into session next week.
With a $900 million budget deficit, an anticipated Kansas Supreme Court decision on school finance and the temporary public education block grant program set to expire, it’s not hard to guess what the top issues are going to be when the 2017 Legislature is called into session next week.
“Yeah, that will pretty much suck the oxygen out of the room,” Rep. Russ Jennings, R-Lakin, said about the two issues a budget/taxes and school finance a that are likely to dominate the session.
The state is facing a projected $350 million deficit in the current fiscal year, and according to some reports up to a $930 million shortfall over 18 months.
Looming in the background is an anticipated Kansas Supreme Court ruling expected sometime this year about whether adequate money is being spent on public schools to provide a suitable education for every child. Sam Brownback hasn’t been forthcoming about his recommendations for dealing with the budget, some of the budget fixes that have been speculated about in the media have included selling off future tobacco settlement payments, cashing out a long-term investment fund managed under the state pension system, rolling back the state income tax exemption for businesses, increasing income taxes on the wealthiest in the state and introducing a flat 5 percent income tax rate.
Jennings believes everything has to be on the table for consideration.
“It’s too daunting of a task to say at the front end of the conversation that there’s some particular area that we’re not going to be able to discuss for any reason,” he said. He anticipates a tax increase will be heavily debated, though he’s skeptical further education cuts could be on the table considering the looming state Supreme Court ruling that by some accounts could require hundreds of millions of dollars in additional funding.
“Maybe we’ll have another showdown with the court, and usually you don’t win those,” Doll said.
To Doll, one thing that definitely needs to be discussed is the entire 2012 tax law that eliminated the top tax bracket as part of the governor’s “march to zero” state income tax push.
The law also eliminated state income tax on owners of more than 300,000 businesses formed as limited liability companies, S corporations or sole proprietorships. I don’t see any other way around it,” Doll said.
Doll is not enthusiastic about one proposal he’s seen that would increase the state gas tax by 11 cents, something he believes would harm the western Kansas economy that tends to be heavily dependent on traveling long distances.
Impact on services
One of the budget fix proposals, diverting the state’s share of the tobacco settlement, would be difficult to swallow for one local agency.
Deanna Berry, Russell Child Development Center executive director, said RCDC already implemented cuts for this fiscal year and fears there could be more made by June.
“When you’re trying to plan and manage and not overspend, but then not be sitting on funds at the end of the year, it’s just difficult to make decisions,” she said.
RCDC receives some of its funding passed through the Kansas Children’s Cabinet. The Children’s Cabinet uses money from the 1998 tobacco settlement to provide grants through the Children’s Initiatives Fund for programs for children and families like those provided by RCDC.
Last year, the state cut $3.3 million funding for the Children’s Cabinet as part of a package of $97 million in cuts to state agencies.
That cut trickled down to RCDC in the form of about a $312,000 cut for the current fiscal year, and led RCDC to make cuts in both personnel and programs.
Berry said that right now, RCDC is in the process of writing early childhood block grant applications that would provide funding for the 2017-18 fiscal year that begins July 1.
However, Berry said the RCDC is trying to remain optimistic that funding will be there and that the agency will be able to continue doing good work.
“When you look at the investment that’s been made in the training, infrastructure and services that we have, how shortsighted it would be to pull the plug on that. It doesn’t make sense to take from early childhood and expect to get better results,” Berry said.
School finance
In addition to an expected court ruling, lawmakers also will debate and write a new school finance formula.
In 2015, the Legislature repealed the old school finance formula and replaced it with block grants. Lawmakers indicated then the block grant program would be in place for two years while a new school finance formula was created, but so far there has been little, if any, progress on that front.
Doll and Wheeler both indicated the old school finance formula ought to be the model for a new formula, and acknowledged there could be some modifications made.
“I personally have a hard time thinking we have to find broad new horizons,” Wheeler said. “We had a formula for school funding that was consistently held constitutional, and I think we ought to be looking back on that, and there are areas that could be tweaked.”
Wheeler said he will listen very carefully to school superintendents in western Kansas, particularly Garden City’s. He said projections on how much money it would take to provide an adequate education for all students ranges between $500 to $800.
“Obviously, it’s going to be a big challenge to find a way to fund it,” Karlin said, adding that he wouldn’t be surprised if any new funding order had to be phased in over a period of time.
