Category: Gov. Laura Kelly

Kansas sports wagering aims to beat Jan. 1 deadline, begin operations during football season

Gov. Laura Kelly dismisses idea of luring Kansas City Chiefs across state line

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Sports wagering in Kansas is effective July 1, and the governor said Monday she is optimistic state regulators will have live betting up and running as early as football season.

The new law will allow Kansans to bet on their favorite teams through the four state-owned casinos, which may use digital or in-person avenues to engage in business. Under the control of the Kansas Lottery, alongside the Kansas Racing and Gaming Commission, casinos can establish their own sportsbooks or partner with up to three online betting operators to launch mobile platforms.

To date, major operators like Bally’s, DraftKings, FanDuel and BetMGM have announced plans to partner with the state casinos. American Indian tribes can negotiate new or updated gaming compacts to include sports wagering, a process that is already underway, said Gov. Laura Kelly.

Regulators must set up guidelines and launch operations by Jan. 1, 2023, but Kelly provided a more optimistic timeline. She said the latest goal she heard was for sports wagering to go live this fall, sometime during the collegiate or professional football season.

While projections for how much the state stands to gain from legal sports wagering vary, once up and running, Kelly touted the potential to help in critical areas.

“We’re not going to be balancing the budget on the revenues coming in from sports betting, but every little bit helps,” Kelly said. “It allows us to do things like fully fund our schools, fully fund our roads and expand broadband.”

The state Racing and Gaming Commission plans to present a set of draft rules at the July 22 meeting for how it will receive, consider and approve proposed gaming facility contracts. At that time, the commission can approve these regulations.

Under the new state law, 80% of sports wagering revenue will be deposited into a fund for attracting a professional sports team to Kansas, contributing to speculation that the state could be gunning to bring the Kansas City Chiefs across the state line. But Kelly poured cold water on the idea during a news conference Monday, saying any past remarks about the possibility were offered tongue-in-cheek.

“I have never approached the Chiefs, nor has anybody in my administration,” Gov. Kelly said. “Quite honestly, the amount of money that this bill would generate and put into that fund would not come close to being what you would need to be able to attract a major league team.”

In addition to the professional sports team fund, the law also establishes a white-collar crime fund to help with gambling addictions.

Casinos can enter into agreements with professional sports franchises and venues, like Sporting Kansas City or the Kansas Speedway, to place kiosks at their facility, allowing fans to place bets while watching the game.

The long-sought law gained approval 73 to 49 in the House, and in the waning hours of the veto session, the Senate followed with a 21 to 13 vote. The governor signed the legislation into law in May.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/06/20/kansas-sports-wagering-aims-to-beat-jan-1-deadline-begin-operations-during-football-season/

Reducing food sales tax benefits Latino communities, Kansas governor says

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Gov. Laura Kelly on Monday said the new law gradually eliminating the state sales tax on food will benefit Latino Kansans who are disproportionately affected by food insecurity.

In part because of the pandemic, a growing number of people across Kansas rely on food pantries. According to Feeding America, Food insecurity rates rose from 12.1% to 14.1% in 2020.

Adding to the issue are rising costs at grocery stores, with prices up by about 8.5% in the past year. During this time, communities of color felt a disproportionate impact of COVID-19 on their access to food.

House Bill 2106 would eliminate the 6.5% grocery sales tax — the second highest in the nation — by 2025, providing needed financial flexibility to ensure Latino Kansans have all their needs met, Kelly said during an appearance at Mi Pueblito Meat Market, a Latino-owned grocery store in Topeka.

“No Kansans should ever have to choose between paying for food and paying for gas or health care or rent,” Kelly said. “Having a high grocery tax means more Kansans are forced into making that untenable choice far too often. The truth of the matter is that food sales tax takes the most from those who have the least.”

The governor’s appearance in Topeka was the final stop in a tour across a handful of Kansas communities promoting the legislation, which was voted into law with bipartisan support. In Wichita, Kelly discussed how the tax cut would reduce food insecurity, and in Kansas City, Kansas, the Democratic governor addressed making grocery stores along state borders more competitive.

Kelly was joined at Alonso Villasenor’s grocery store by members of the local legislative delegation and Latino community stakeholders to discuss the impacts cutting the food sales tax would have. According to Kelly, elimination of the tax would save a family of four $500 per year on reduced grocery costs.

“Soon, Kansans will have more money in their pockets to afford their groceries and treat their families to Alonso’s famous tacos,” Kelly said, touting her efforts to bring Republicans and Democrats together on this action.

The spokesman for Derek Schmidt, Kelly’s presumptive Republican opponent in the governor’s race, said this was just another “carefully scripted, election-year photo op taking credit for other people’s work.”

“She vetoed this food tax cut before, and only this year with her own job on the line did she follow Attorney General Schmidt’s lead,” said C.J. Grover, the campaign manager for Schmidt. “Kansans will have a choice in November between Laura Kelly, who focuses on hatchet-wielding publicity stunts, or Derek Schmidt, who works with the Legislature to deliver real results for Kansas families.”

In vetoing the 2019 bill, Kelly argued it would have set the state back by predominantly providing relief to large, multinational corporations who hoped to evade paying state income taxes on overseas profits.

In 2002, as a state Senator, Schmidt voted to increase the sales tax on food from 4.9% to 5.3%.

The 6.5% state sales tax on groceries will drop to 4% on Jan. 1, 2023. Subsequent reductions would take it to 2% in 2024 and zero by Jan. 1, 2025.

The proposal will not affect local sales taxes on groceries, and the total elimination of the grocery tax will reduce annual state revenues by about $500 million.

Aude Negrete, executive director of the Kansas Hispanic and Latino American Affairs Commission, praised the governor for remaining engaged on issues of importance to the state’s Latino population.

“An extra $500 per year will go a long way to helping our families buy the food they need to keep their kids healthy and it’s an accomplishment that will impact everyone — both Latino and non-Latino,” Negrete said.

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/06/13/reducing-food-sales-tax-benefits-latino-communities-kansas-governor-says/

Final Kansas budget locks in public university tuition freeze, but fee hikes are still on table

Kelly: $37.5 million budget hike sufficient to hold line on student tuition

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Lawrence — Kansas public university students uneasy about the cost of their education dodged a tuition hike this fall, but won’t know until mid-June whether they’ll be dinged with higher campus fees.

Maneuvering by the Legislature and governor on tuition added complexity to the task of pulling together university budgets for the fiscal year starting July 1. The Kansas Board of Regents are preparing to vote on what campus fees get elevated at the system’s six universities.

The $37.5 million allocated by the Legislature to universities governed by the Board of Regents, and Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of a budget provision that would have allowed tuition increases, mean students wouldn’t pay more in tuition during the 2022-2023 school year. It would be the fourth consecutive year without a tuition rate adjustment at the University of Kansas following the 2.8% boost in 2019. The five other universities in the system have each adopted tuition increases twice in the past five years.

Cheryl Harrison-Lee, chairwoman of the Board of Regents, said affordability of higher education was a center piece on the system’s priority list. Status quo tuition rates and more need-based student financial aid will combine to improve student access to education, she said.

In January, Kelly and the Board of Regents requested a $45.7 million increase from the Legislature. The justification was a desire to restore funding cut in the past, acknowledge a projected inflation rate of 1.9% and initiate a 2% budget increase to put off higher tuition rates.

The budget adopted by the House and Senate was $8 million less than sought by the Board of Regents. To cover the gap, university administrators in Lawrence, Manhattan, Wichita, Emporia, Pittsburg and Hays drafted proposals for tuition increases ranging from 1.07% at KU to 3.07% at Fort Hays State University, which has the system’s lowest tuition. Officials at the other state universities in Kansas set their sights on tuition increases of 1% to 1.3%.

Those plans were withdrawn after Kelly line-item vetoed the budget proviso opening the door to higher tuition. Kelly said higher education in Kansas was on solid footing because the universities could expect to receive $1 billion in the new fiscal year.

“I believe that the regents institutions will be able to continue to hold tuition flat, making college more affordable for Kansans of all backgrounds. This is especially important if we, as a state, are going to provide the workforce needed to fully actualize the benefits and opportunities of our recent economic growth,” Kelly said.

KU chancellor Doug Girod said the governor’s rejection of the tuition-increase option left university officials no choice but to embrace a tuition freeze, but wouldn’t necessarily block changes to campus or academic fees.

He said Board of Regents universities were grateful for nearly securing their full budget request to the 2022 Legislature.

“It played out as well as we could have hoped,” Girod said. “We certainly are most grateful to the governor and the Legislature for the support they have passed our way.”

Ken Hush, interim president at Emporia State University, said the university had concluded after the legislative session ended that a 3% tuition increase would have been appropriate. That idea was trimmed to 1% before abandoned in response to the veto. A 1% increase in ESU tuition would equate to $221,000 in new revenue.

“We felt it was a good investment,” Hush said. “We embrace what’s happened.”

Kansas Reflector stories, www.kansasreflector.com, may be republished online or in print under Creative Commons license CC BY-NC-ND 4.0.
See more at https://kansasreflector.com/2022/06/01/final-kansas-budget-locks-in-public-university-tuition-freeze-fee-hikes-still-on-table/