Opinion column
Views
by Murrel Bland
Kathy Damron first thought the 2016 Kansas Legislative session might be shorter than usual. That was before The Kansas Supreme Court handed down its ruling on school finance Thursday, Feb. 11.
Damron, the lobbyist for the Kansas City, Kan., Area Chamber of Commerce, reported to the Chamber’s Legislative Committee last Friday, Feb. 12.
“The legislative landscape changed dramatically with the court ordering the legislature to fix the finance formula to address the ‘equity’ requirement in our state constitution,” Damron said. She said although the court did not tell the legislators how much money would be needed to comply, it did give lawmakers a June 30 deadline to fix it.
However, John Robb, the lawyer who filed the action for the school districts, estimated the cost could be $54 million for the fiscal year 2015 and another $73 million for the year ending June 30. Failure to fix this problem could mean that public schools could be shut down.
The Kansas City, Kan., School District was one of four plaintiffs filing the court action. The other three school districts were Dodge City, Wichita and Hutchinson.
Damron said the state doesn’t have any revenue to satisfy the court order. Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposed budget of more than $16 billion (a record amount of spending) has proposed delaying payments to the state retirement fund and raiding money from the Kansas Department of Transportation that should go toward road repair.
This is an election year when all 40 Senate and 125 House seats will be up for grabs; that usually means elected officials don’t favor a tax increase. Damron said about the only alternative in raising money to remedy the court order would be to make further cuts in an already very tight state budget.
All of this comes at a time when the governor, an ultra-conservative Republican, boasts state’s economy is in good shape, claiming that his quest to eliminate state income tax will ultimately help the state’s economy. His critics argue that in the past, Kansas has had a stable economy by relying on a healthy balance among property, income and sales tax; they argue that the massive shift that eliminated income tax on many small businesses has caused the current fiscal crisis.
Unified Government officials, including Mayor Mark Holland, are concerned about the property tax lid that the Legislature passed last year. The Chamber of Commerce and the Unified Government Commission want this law repealed. Privately, they realize there is little chance of that happening; however, opponents hope it could be modified. The law would require a vote of the people starting in 2018 if a city or county would increase spending more than the Consumer Price Index rate.
Murrel Bland is the former editor of The Wyandotte West and The Piper Press. He is the executive director of Business West.