(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers May 16, 2016)
By midweek, we’ll know just what Gov. Sam Brownback intends to do in the way of a budget to get Kansas through this fiscal year and at least make it appear on paper that the Legislature has appropriated enough money for the state to do its business next year.
Some legislators are fearful that the governor will line-item veto the most politically important provision in the budget bill that he has until mid-week to sign.
It’s a provision that says simply that the governor can’t reduce the amount of general state aid to school districts this fiscal year or next. Those reductions in appropriated funds—they call them “allotments” in the Statehouse—would make it relatively simple to give most state agencies a financial haircut and wind up this and next fiscal year with a balance in the budget, the constitutional bright yellow line in a legal budget.
Now, that provision in the budget bill is probably the best part of it for the lawmakers who passed the bill to the governor on a vote of 63-59 in the House and, after about an hour’s discreet lobbying, the Senate 22-18.
That provision that prevents the governor from dipping into K-12 funds is the one part of the bill that makes cuts to agency budgets that allows legislators seeking re-election to maintain that they protected the basic state appropriation to the state’s 278 public school districts.
That protection of school funds—if the governor allows it to become law by not line-item vetoing it—makes schools about the only state business that isn’t trimmed and clipped by the budget. On the campaign trail, for the vast majority of lawmakers this session, that “prevent the governor from cutting K-12 money” proviso will be the equivalent of telling constituents that they pulled a child out of the burning barn.
Now, the reason for the funds shortage isn’t hard to remember, those 2012 income tax cuts that slashed revenues to the state’s coffers and required last year’s record tax increase measure, the one that raised the sales tax, slashed income tax deductions (like home mortgage interest and property taxes) and even sent smokers out onto the porch with cigarettes that cost 2.5 cents more per smoke due to a 50-cent a pack tax hike.
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Oh, and while some lawmakers believe that schools should share funds cuts like every other state adventure, the Kansas Supreme Court warned lawmakers in general—though we suspect it was aimed at Brownback—that while lawmakers attempted to make two aspects of school finance dealing with Local Option Budgets and capital outlay funds equitable, the other two branches of government shouldn’t cut into that base state aid that the proviso deals with.
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So, it’s this week that legislators are awaiting action on that final budget bill, and what if anything the governor intends to do with it, and just what, if the governor leaves that proviso in place, he intends to cut in virtually other state agency to protect that school aid.
And, recall, the Supreme Court hasn’t determined just how much money the state ought to spend to provide an adequate education for all schoolchildren in Kansas. That amount—“adequacy” is a different topic than “equity”—is also based on 20-year-old study that defined what a private consulting company believed then was necessary to adequately and equitably finance public education.
See why there is some tension in the halls of the Statehouse? And, are you wondering whether the Legislature will allow the governor to veto the proviso, or wonder just what else gets cut if there is a veto and lawmakers override it?
That’s what this week is all about, and whatever happens probably will tell us whether lawmakers adjourn the 2016 session in an hour or two on June 1, or whether they hang around for another week…or so…