Opinion: Explaining the Kansas budget mess and other topics

Window on the West

by Mary Rupert

Picture Kansas’ revenues as a three-legged stool, with the legs representing the sales tax, income tax and property tax.

Those are the three main supports for the state’s finances. Now imagine Kansas represented by a pig sitting on this three-legged stool.

The governor, in his experiment, came along one year and sawed the right leg, the income tax, in half. The three-legged stool began to tilt. State lawmakers took the pig out on an exercise program and diet, cutting lots of fat. But still, the three-legged stool tilts. There was a $400 million deficit at budget time this year.

Legislators have gone into overtime, spending more than $750,000 extra to sit around and figure out extra cuts to the budget and raising various fees and other taxes. Most of the fighting has been between those conservative legislators who wanted to cut more from the budget vs. those conservatives who wanted to raise some other taxes and fees. It is a prime example of people who are so attached to their political philosophies that they have been unable to compromise and make necessary changes within the 90 days given to them to make these decisions. The legislators are scheduled to vote on another tax plan today.

Instead of declaring this experiment a failure and implementing a restored income tax for the three-legged stool, this year the governor and legislators have brought in about 20 or so butterflies, which are raises in the state’s sales tax, an increase in the cigarette tax, a repeal of most itemized deductions, and a lot of other little fees and cuts. It is possible, according to some observers, that the public schools could take another cut under this last-minute frantic budget-cutting.

Disney-like, the legislators have attached these 20 butterflies to the right arm of the pig in order to hold him up and prevent a fall. Will it work? Maybe, when pigs fly.

The proposed cuts to income tax deductions, and the other increases in various taxes and fees, are outlined in this bill: http://www.kslegislature.org/li/b2015_16/measures/documents/ccrb_hb2109_02_revised0607151pm.pdf

My summer reading program

It’s summer reading time, and to honor that, last week I read the very entertaining 10th U.S. Circuit Court of Appeals Petrella decision on whether Shawnee Mission School District parents could be allowed to raise their school district’s property taxes. After all, if they have the money and want to raise the taxes, why shouldn’t they?

The court’s opinion very correctly starts with the Brown vs. Board of Education case. The “separate but equal” philosophy, allowing school segregation and allowing white school districts to be better funded than school districts with large percentages of minorities, was done away with in 1954 in Kansas, but apparently, the philosophy still lives on in Johnson County.

The entertaining part of the court’s decision concerns a syllogism proposed by the Shawnee Mission District parent plaintiffs.

It reminded me of this logic class example: “All oranges are fruits. Some fruits are red. Therefore, some oranges are red.”

The 10th Circuit Court of Appeals said the Shawnee Mission parents’ syllogism was: “Education is speech. The local option budget (a way of increasing property taxes) cap burdens education. Therefore, the LOB cap burdens speech.”

The court did not agree that the parents’ thwarted effort to increase school taxes was a violation of their freedom of speech and their other rights. “Each of these premises is seriously flawed, and they do not support the conclusion that plaintiffs ask us to draw,” the court’s opinion stated.

While the court is on the right track where equity in public education is concerned, and efforts should be made to provide each child in the state with an equal opportunity for an education, we should also realize that in real life, there is no such thing as equality.

Regardless of all the court decisions that have been made in the past or will be made in the future, the education and upbringing of children in wealthier suburban areas will always be different than that in the poorer urban areas. Some parents in those wealthier areas will be able to send their children to private schools. Some parents can always fund supplemental activities, enrichment programs and tutoring for their children. They will be able to fund more expensive clothing and supplies. Some parents in the wealthier districts can donate to their districts’ educational foundations that will fund some of these activities.

It’s a rather challenging, but interesting and worthwhile effort to try to help those children who do not have the same advantages at home that some of the other children in the state may have.

It’s not all about money, though. Some kids from poorer backgrounds may have the good fortune to have caring parents, grandparents and teachers that help them more than what money can buy.

The Petrella decision is online at https://www.ca10.uscourts.gov/opinions/13/13-3334.pdf.

To contact Mary Rupert, editor, email [email protected].