Kansas Legislature – Page 9 – Welcome to Wyandotte Daily!

Analysis: The stories behind the fights brewing in the Kansas Legislature

by Jim McLean, Kansas News Service

Three weeks into the 2019 legislative session, the battle lines are becoming clear.

Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is keeping a relatively low profile (for a new governor) and sticking to her plan of triaging state needs and responding to the most urgent among them.

Toward that end, she’s told her cabinet members to make a deep-dive assessment of their agencies.

On the surface, it’s clear the budget crisis that crippled the state in the last several years of former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration did real damage.

But beyond the obvious need for more social workers in the state’s troubled foster care system and more snowplow operators at the Kansas Department of Transportation, Kelly needs to know more precisely where the lack of personnel and expertise is the most consequential.

What the data reveal will dictate her priorities for the next three years.

On the legislative front, Kelly is steeling herself for an early confrontation with Republican leaders on the tax-relief bill they’re rushing to her desk.

The measure that Senate President Susan Wagle is personally shepherding through the process would reduce revenues in the budget year that starts July 1 by about $191 million a year.

That is a very rough estimate. Lawmakers really don’t know how much it would cost.

Whatever its price tag, the bill — aimed mostly at reducing the tax burden on large multinational corporations — alarms Kelly. It also concerns many lawmakers, including some who will, for political reasons, probably vote for it.

They’re concerned the bill and the recession many believe is in the offing could plunge the state back into a budget crisis like the one triggered by Brownback’s tax-cutting experiment. He promised those cuts would jolt the Kansas economy into hyperdrive. Instead, they tanked state revenues.

From a political standpoint, Wagle and the Republicans have a strong hand. They’ve got backing from the powerful Kansas Chamber and some its most influential members.

A top executive from Spirit AeroSystems — a big employer in the state’s Wichita-centered aviation industry — recently told lawmakers they need to “clearly define” how the state will account for recent changes in the federal tax code and do it quickly.

Also, because the bill would “return” money collected from state payers only because of those federal changes, GOP leaders could charge Kelly with breaking a campaign promise in the event she refuses to sign the bill. A promise not to raise taxes.

Still, based on her specific request that lawmakers refrain from making any major tax changes, most expect Kelly will veto the bill.

As one moderate Republican lawmaker put it: “This is purely a test. She needs to show some spine.”

That means Kelly shouldn’t expect moderates who will likely join Democrats in supporting her on Medicaid expansion and public school funding to have her back on this issue. Not this early in the session.

They understand that voting against tax relief would likely guarantee an immediate postcard campaign to soften the ground for well-funded conservative challengers in the 2020 Republican legislative primaries.

In her veto message, Kelly will probably say that the state might be able to afford some modest tax relief down the road. But not this much, this soon.

It’s also becoming clear that GOP leaders have no intention of dropping their long-standing opposition to Medicaid expansion. One indication of that occurred very much behind the scenes this week.

Republican leaders wanted the governor’s expansion bill introduced in the House health committee for a couple of reasons. One, they had it stacked with expansion opponents. Two, it’s a non-exempt committee, meaning bills it hasn’t worked by the mid-point of the session are effectively dead.

So to ensure that the expansion bill remains a viable bargaining chip until the end of the session, supporters introduced it in the House Appropriations Committee. Because it’s responsible for hammering out the budget, that committee is exempt from the so-called turnaround deadline.

That’s just one example of how the maneuvering on contentious issues often occurs below the surface and out of public view.

Jim McLean is the senior correspondent for the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks.
Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link to ksnewsservice.org.
See more at https://www.kcur.org/post/jim-mclean-stories-behind-fights-brewing-kansas-legislature

Backers of Kansas Medicaid expansion pack hearing, but can they change policy?

by Jim McLean, Kansas News Service

When it comes to packing Statehouse hearings, few groups fill a room more reliably than those pushing for Medicaid expansion.

What they’re less good at, at least so far, is convincing lawmakers and a governor to expand Medicaid eligibility to another 150,000 low-income Kansans.

They came close last year. Lawmakers passed an expansion bill, but came a few votes short of overriding then-Gov. Sam Brownback’s veto.

Again this year, they face opposition from conservatives — notably Gov. Jeff Colyer — who still object to the Obama-era Affordable Care Act. Those forces worry about bloated government services and asking taxpayers to foot health care costs for a larger group of people.

Expansion supporters launched their 2018 effort Wednesday, flooding the Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee with testimony from 140 individuals and organizations.

It came from doctors, hospital administrators, business leaders and every-day Kansans like Amy Houston, who thought it appropriate the hearing was on Valentine’s Day.

“I have the compassion, hope and love that I’m going to give you this message and you’re going to accept it and not turn me away,” Houston said.

A small business owner from Mulvane, Houston talked about struggling to maintain health insurance during her nine-year battle with cancer.

Randy Peterson, CEO of Stormont Vail Health in Topeka, warned of hospital closings without the additional federal money that expansion would bring.

“These dollars could be the very margin for these hospitals to remain open,” Peterson said.

Sheldon Weisgrau, the director of a pro-expansion coalition funded by several Kansas health philanthropies, touted studies that document the economic benefits of expansion.

“In Colorado, the gross domestic product has increased by more than 1 percent as a result of expansion,” Weisgrau said. “That doesn’t sound like a lot, but an equivalent increase in Kansas could be $2 billion of additional economic growth.”

Though outnumbered, expansion opponents — most representing conservative groups with ties to the Koch brothers — pushed back. They argued that expansion was little more than an expensive new entitlement for people who may not deserve taxpayer-funded health coverage.

“These adults don’t have disabilities,” said Gregg Phister, government affairs director for the Florida-based Foundation for Government Accountability. “Most of them are without children and don’t work a full-time, year-round job.”

Phister said expansion has “been a disaster” in many of the 32 states that have adopted it due to enrollment that has swamped projections and driven up costs.

Asked by Sen. Ed Berger, a Hutchinson Republican, whether any expansion state had reversed course, Phister said none had but some were discussing it.

Jeff Andersen, acting secretary of the Kansas Department of Health and Environment, the state’s lead Medicaid agency, detailed the Colyer administration’s opposition to expansion.

Among other things, Andersen said continued efforts by the Trump administration and Republican leaders in Congress to repeal Obamacare should give Kansas lawmakers pause.

Most immediately concerning, he said, are questions about whether the federal government will continue to pay 90 percent of expansion costs.

“Yet this month, our governor has meetings scheduled with leaders in Washington … to get a better handle and guidance on where the feds are going,” Andersen said.

Weisgrau said GOP efforts to repeal Obamacare will continue to be thwarted by Republican governors in expansion states “lobbying to keep it.”

“Don’t listen to those people who continually say ‘no’ and offer no alternatives,” he told members of the committee, who are expected to vote on the bill Monday.

Currently, KanCare eligibility is limited to children, pregnant women, people with disabilities and seniors in need of long-term care who have exhausted their financial resources. Parents are eligible only if they earn less than a third of the federal poverty level, less than $10,000 for a four-person family.

Single adults without children currently are not eligible no matter their income. Expansion would extend eligibility to all Kansans who earn up to 138 percent of the poverty level, or about $17,000 annually for an individual and approximately $34,000 for a family of four.

Jim McLean is managing director of the Kansas News Service, a collaboration of KCUR, Kansas Public Radio, KMUW and High Plains Public Radio covering health, education and politics. You can reach him on Twitter @jmcleanks. Kansas News Service stories and photos may be republished at no cost with proper attribution and a link back to the original post.

See more at http://kcur.org/post/backers-kansas-medicaid-expansion-pack-hearing-can-they-change-policy.

KCK schools take neutral position on new school finance plan; still support old formula, official says

David Smith, chief of staff of the Kansas City, Kan., Public Schools, said that the school district has taken a neutral position on the new school finance proposal announced today. (Staff photo by Mary Rupert)

Audience hears KCK schools, UG positions on legislation

by Mary Rupert

The Kansas City, Kan., Public School district has taken a neutral position on a new school finance bill that was proposed today in the Kansas Senate, according to a district official.

The district still supports the old school finance formula that is not being funded in the proposed budget, said David Smith, chief of staff for the school district, at a MainStream Coalition-sponsored forum tonight at the West Wyandotte Library in Kansas City, Kan.

While the proposed school finance formula would mean more money to the Kansas City, Kan., school district, the district took a neutral position because “we believe in the current formula,” Smith said.

“We need a formula that works for everyone,” Smith said. The district would not support a formula that benefits it at the expense of other school districts, he added.

He said the district believes the current school finance formula, which the Legislature is doing away with, is a good one because it connects the cost to serve kids with the funding.

The Legislature went ahead recently with block grant funding for two years while it works on a new school finance formula. The block grant funding bill, pushed through the Legislature in only 10 days, will give the districts essentially the same amount of money that they received last year. That will put the KCK school district in a position to lose $3 million this year, Smith said, because there are 400 new students.

While state legislators have said the block grant funding allows districts to have more flexibility in how they spend the money, Smith said, “Telling us we have flexibility is saying we have the ability to tell which kids we’re going to hurt.” There are many websites which can give you money check advice, that can help you with your personal finances.

The state’s $600 million deficit, according to Mike Taylor, UG lobbyist, is due to the state income tax cuts that eliminated revenue without replacing it in the budget.

“Taxes are not the top thing on the list for businesses coming here,” Taylor said. “It’s schools, it’s roads, it’s quality of life.”

Taylor said taxes were being shifted from income taxes to raising other sorts of taxes, including consumption taxes, sales taxes and property taxes that will hurt the middle class.

The state has taken some funding from the transportation department, for highways and bridges, to pay other expenses, but that is unsustainable, Smith said.

“Duane Goossen, former budget director for the state, talks about the fact that so far the solutions that have been proposed to fill the budget gap are not sustainable,” Smith said. “They are one-time transfers of money that don’t address the long-term issues, which quite honestly, is a revenue issue. They’ve cut taxes to unsustainable levels and until they address that, they are not really addressing the issues, and they’re doing it in the ways that hurt education, schools, local governments.”

Until they deal with the issues, which is revenues and cuts to unsustainable levels, they’re not going to fix this, Smith said.

State Rep. Val Winn, D-34th Dist., who is on the House Education Committee, said after the forum it is likely that the new school finance bill will not come to the House Education Committee, but will probably go through the Appropriations Committee for hearings. Rep. Winn said she currently can’t understand how the new school finance formula would work if only six pilot schools were involved in it, not all school districts.

A big player in the school finance issue is the court, according to Smith, who provided a timeline. Currently, Kansas courts have ruled for the school districts, and the case is being appealed. After the court ruling, the Legislature gave the districts more money last session. Last December, courts made a decision that the Legislature was not providing adequate funding, and that ruling was appealed. Then the governor and Legislature began to change the school finance formula.

Smith said the courts have issued notice that they still have jurisdiction over school finance. Where it will all end, he said he did not know.

Taylor described a series of broken promises from the Legislature as concerns funding for local governments.

Taylor said among the several spending cuts from the Legislature for the local governments have been a $500,000 loss from the elimination of the mortgage registration fee last year; a $10 million loss in revenue a year because of the elimination of the machinery and equipment tax in 2006; and $36 million lost since 2003 because of elimination of the ad valorem tax reduction funds. The last was a program designed to replace revenues that were denied cities in the 1970s, but in 2003, the funding was done away with, Taylor said. He called it a broken contract.

He said a bill by the conservative controlled Legislature to move local elections to the fall was essentially a way to force the currently nonpartisan elections to become more partisan and to be controlled by Republican conservatives. They have already taken over the governor’s seat and Legislature, are trying to take over the judiciary and the local governments are next, he said.

Taylor said if America had an 80 percent to 100 percent voter turnout, it would not have the Congress, state legislature or governor it has today.

Smith also mentioned some bills in the Legislature that were aimed at limiting teachers’ unions, and said that these efforts were not needed, that the districts already have enough tools to deal with any issues with teachers.

The MainStream Coalition forum was live-streamed. The hour-and-a-half forum, with several other issues mentioned, is posted on YouTube and can be viewed at https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TDoA10TbKjE.

Send your news and comments to Wyandotte Daily at [email protected].

Mike Taylor, Unified Government lobbyist, talked about broken promises from the Legislature through the years when it comes to funding. (Staff photo by Mary Rupert)