Category: Kansas Legislature

House panel votes to clip state’s 6.5% sales tax to 3.5% on food, 6.3% on other purchases

Committee rejects proposed amendments speeding cuts to food tax

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The Kansas House tax committee Tuesday approved legislation that would shrink the overall statewide sales tax on general purchases to 6.3% and nearly slice in half the state sales tax on groceries to 3.5% in a move that would promptly lower annual revenue by $336 million.

The bill recommended by the House Taxation Committee deviated from Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly’s proposal to concentrate a portion of the state’s budget surplus on repeal of the state sales tax on food purchases. Instead, the Republican-led committee broadened the effort by chipping away at the overall 6.5% state sales tax in place since 2015.

The general sales tax rate under the House bill would be cut 0.2% and the sales tax on food and food ingredients would fall by 3%. If the state’s budget stabilization fund had a balance of more than $100 million on July 1, the bill would allow the state food sales tax to fall 1.2% the following Jan. 1.

The legislation wouldn’t alter local city or county sales tax rates, but House Bill 2711 would create a refundable food sales tax credit for benefit of low-income Kansans. The bill would hold harmless the state’s highway trust fund.

The committee rejected a Democratic member’s amendment that would have pushed the food sales tax down to 2% as well as a Republican lawmaker’s amendment that would have eliminated the sales tax on groceries and food sold at restaurants.

Rep. Adam Smith, a Weskan Republican and chairman of the House tax panel, said a measured approach to diminishing sales taxes in Kansas was wise given Kansas’ recent history on tax policy. In 2012, then-Gov. Sam Brownback signed a bill aggressively reducing income tax rates. That led to extreme revenue shortfalls, the 2015 surge in the statewide sales tax and repeal of Brownback’s income tax experiment in 2017.

Smith said earlier attempts to lower sales tax rates were sidestepped because of the budget impact. The prudent path is to gradually lower rates to avoid a budget collapse several years down the road, he said.

“Reducing the sales tax on food has been an issue every year I’ve been down here and long before that,” Smith said. “It’s a very expensive undertaking. I would not disagree that we have the money to pay for going all the way to zero.”

The Kansas Department of Revenue estimated the House bill’s hit on the treasury would climb over a four-year period from $336 million in fiscal year 2023, to $431 million in fiscal 2024, to $517 million in fiscal 2025 and to $605 million in fiscal 2026.

Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Wichita, said he was concerned with the rush by some lawmakers to spend an anticipated budget surplus of about $3 billion. The governor, for example, proposed Tuesday the expenditure of $50 million on low-income housing. He said the House and Senate budget committees were working on their own spending strategies that could defy “rationality.”

“If you don’t take it for tax reductions, it’s going to be spent,” Helgerson said.

The House committee rejected an amendment by Rep. Jim Gardner, D-Topeka, that would have tabled the 0.2% overall reduction in the sales tax and chopped the sales tax on groceries to 2%. He said the idea was to work toward elimination of the state’s food sales tax in two years, he said.

Gardner said the 3.5% food sales tax didn’t make Kansas grocery stores competitive with neighboring states of Nebraska and Colorado, which don’t collect sales tax on grocery purchases.

Rep. Ken Corbet, R-Topeka, fell short with an amendment that would end the state’s sales tax on groceries and drop the overall state sales tax rate to 6.3% in July. His amendment also would have applied the lower state sales tax rate to prepared food sold at restaurants.

“We don’t do hardly anything here to promote business,” Corbet said. “I’ll put a little bit of money in everybody’s pocket. It makes your constituents very happy.”

The House and Senate as well as the governor are expected to wrestle through the process of moderating the state sales tax during the current legislative session. Kelly and all 125 members of the House are up for re-election in November.

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/2022/03/15/house-panel-votes-to-clip-states-6-5-sales-tax-to-3-5-on-food-6-3-on-other-purchases/.

AG-backed bill prohibiting ‘sanctuary cities’ brings heavy opposition to Kansas Statehouse

by Noah Taborda, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — Lawmakers are wrangling with legislation backed by Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt to prohibit municipal governments from adopting rules that block cooperation with federal authorities investigating illegal immigrants.

Schmidt initiated the push for a ban on “sanctuary cities” in response to action by the Unified Government of Kansas City, Kansas – Wyandotte County to authorize the issuance of photo identification cards to undocumented people to improve access to public services. The Safe and Welcoming City Act was structured so the ID information wouldn’t be shared with U.S. Immigration and Customs Enforcement.

Opponents of the legislation outnumbered supporters 64-7 during a hearing Tuesday in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee.

Alejandro Rangel-Lopez, lead coordinator for the New Frontiers Project, a group in southwest Kansas working to empower people of color, described his family history with immigration and the importance of having communities where immigrants can feel safe.

Rangel-Lopez said that while proponents may claim the bill does not target legal immigrants, many with mixed-status families would suffer.

“It should be clear to you now that this is not a game. The choices you make as a legislator have very real impacts on the lives of people like me and my family,” Rangel-Lopez said. “Listen to us when we tell you this will have insidious effects on crime reporting in immigrant communities. Listen to us when we tell you that your decisions don’t exist in a vacuum.”

Under House Bill 2717, local units of government would be unable to adopt any “ordinance, resolution, rule or policy” that would interfere with law enforcement cooperation in immigration enforcement actions. In Wyandotte County, law enforcement officials said they hadn’t joined ICE agents on immigration raids for years.

As of 2021, 12 states have enacted state-level laws prohibiting or restricting sanctuary jurisdictions. The Kansas Legislature has considered legislation to prohibit sanctuary cities across the state on several occasions, but none has passed.

Schmidt, a Republican candidate for governor, said Kansas required such a law to ensure the entire state can be safe and welcoming to immigrants.

“That worthy goal cannot be properly accomplished through a patchwork process of local jurisdictions deciding to prohibit their local law enforcement agencies from cooperating or even communicating with federal authorities, nor can that be accomplished by issuing to non-citizens new local-government identification cards that lack basic anti-fraud and anti-abuse safeguards built into state law,” Schmidt said.

The measure also would forbid municipal governments from issuing ID cards to people not lawfully residing in the United States that were designed to satisfy identification requirements set in state law. Any of these cards would read “Not valid for state ID.”

Violating the proposed statute would be considered ID fraud under state criminal law.

While the Kansas Secretary of State’s Office supported the bill, a representative of the office urged legislators to address a potential conflict between state laws on the use of ID cards that could result in voter confusion and litigation.

“It is the firm position of the Kansas Secretary of State that only United States citizens may vote in an election,” said Clay Barker, deputy assistant secretary of state. “Requiring voter identification to cast a ballot ensures the protection of voters’ rights and the integrity of the electoral process.”

Opponents of the bill said it was late in session to be passing such significant legislation.

Aileen Berquist, a lobbyist for the American Civil Liberties Union of Kansas, said proponents were narrow sighted in their approach as the bill would not only instill fear but undermine local authority to make the best decisions for their communities. She said it would also force an unfunded mandate on municipal governments by forcing them to engage in potentially unconstitutional immigration enforcement activities.

Immigration and Customs Enforcement detainers are not arrest warrants, Berquist said, but instead are notifications to local law enforcement that ICE intends to assume custody of an individual.

“Courts have repeatedly found that ICE detainers deny due process and do not comply with the fundamental protections required by the Fourth Amendment to the U.S. Constitution,” Berquist said. “Multiple courts have held that the Fourth Amendment does not permit state or local officers — who generally lack civil immigration enforcement authority — to imprison people based on ICE detainers alone. But that is precisely what (the bill) demands that cities and counties do.”

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/2022/03/15/ag-backed-bill-prohibiting-sanctuary-cities-brings-heavy-opposition-to-kansas-statehouse/.

Republicans introduce proposed redistricting map for Kansas House, Democrats on hold

Rural-to-urban shift requires House, Senate power shift to Johnson County

by Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector

Topeka — The redistricting showdown between majority Republicans and minority Democrats shifted Monday to the House with introduction of the GOP’s map accommodating a decade’s worth of rural-to-urban population shift and adhering to the quest for partisan political advantage.

The House GOP map of 125 districts introduced in the House Federal and State Affairs Committee during a 50-second exchange followed last week’s production of proposed Republican and Democratic maps for aligning 40 districts of the Kansas Senate.

Under the Kansas Constitution, state legislators must redraw House, Senate, U.S. House and state Board of Education districts every 10 years to make them roughly equal in population. The Legislature’s controversial map changing the state’s four U.S. House districts is tied up on lawsuits.

Rep. Chris Croft, the Overland Park Republican chairman of the House Redistricting Committee, convened the panel but didn’t dive into details of the proposed House map. It is expected to be posted by 5 p.m. Monday to the Kansas Legislative Research Department’s webpage devoted to redistricting.

“We’re not going to talk about the map right now because there are some discussions that are still ongoing,” Croft said.

He anticipated the committee’s public hearing on the GOP map or alternatives would occur Wednesday followed by committee votes Thursday or Friday. During the committee’s 12-minute meeting Monday, members discussed the potential of renumbering the 125 House districts to restore the traditional sequential assignment of district numbers from low in eastern Kansas to high in western Kansas.

Kansas City, Kansas, Rep. Tom Burroughs, D-33rd Dist., the ranking Democrat on the House committee, said he anticipated Democrats or others would introduce alternative maps for adjustment of House district boundaries.

The incarnation proposed Croft would cannibalize the district served by Rep. Steven Johnson, who is not seeking re-election but campaigning for the GOP nomination as state treasurer.

Johnson’s constituents would be scattered among several other central Kansas districts held by Republicans that lost significant population based on the latest U.S. Census court. This change would allow for a new district in Johnson County, the state’s population magnet.

“I regret that being a byproduct of me running for treasurer,” Johnson said. “Somebody has to go, The fact that I was already gone made that an easier choice.

Rep. Stephanie Clayton, D-Overland Park, said the final House map should adhere to the principle that areas of Kansas losing population should have less representation.

“Areas that gain population should gain representation,” said Clayton, a member of the redistricting committee. “People vote, not empty space.”

On Friday, three strategies for redrawing district boundaries for the Kansas Senate were introduced by Senate Republicans, Senate Democrats and the Kansas League of Women Voters. The Senate is expected to have a committee hearing Tuesday on redistricting and move it to the full Senate for a vote.

Under the map endorsed by Senate President Ty Masterson, Sen. Michael Fagg, R-El Dorado, would have to run against Sen. Rick Wilborn, R-McPherson. Wilborn, chair of the Senate Redistricting Committee, may not seek re-election in 2024, which would clear a path for Fagg.

The Senate GOP map would put Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, in the same district with Sen. Beverly Gossage, R-Eudora. In addition, a new district would be added in Johnson County and a fourth district would be created in Shawnee County.

Sen. Dinah Sykes, the Lenexa Democrat leader in the Senate, introduced an “Eisenhower” map that would preserve core Senate districts in place since 2012.

“The map we adopt this year will determine the political dynamics of the Kansas Senate for the next decade,” she said. “The Eisenhower map is the product of a fair, collaborative process faithful to the guidelines established by the Legislature. It keeps our districts, and those partisan dynamics, largely the same.”

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/2022/03/14/republicans-introduce-proposed-redistricting-map-for-kansas-house-democrats-on-hold/.