By Gene Meyer
December 8, 2009

TOPEKA, Kan. (KansasReporter) - Recession is drilling deeper into Kansas’ state budget. And the pain is a long way from over, state executives say.

Legislative researchers and the state’s budget office in November formally projected a $235 million drop in state revenues, money lost because of lower incomes and less spending by taxpayers coping with the downturn.

Soon after, Gov. Mark Parkinson announced a fifth round of cuts to the fiscal 2010 state budget, totaling $259 million and bringing the state, in his words, “to the point of making potentially crippling cuts to state services.”

Some $50 million of previously planned highway construction and maintenance bit the dust. Kansas Department of Transportation is returning the money to the state general fund. Education funding was cut $36 million for kindergarten through high school students and $2 million from state universities, putting both back to 2006 levels. More than $2 million in unspent funds left over from previous years will be returned to the general fund by state agencies, the governor’s office and the legislature. And one perhaps still-stunned recent Powerball winner in Kansas will chip in $3.1 million in taxes.

“These are huge reductions,” state budget director Duane Goossen told members of the Kansas House Appropriations Committee. “We are beyond looking for efficiencies, we are simply cutting."

The latest cuts for the fiscal year ending June 30 presumably will be the last ones, the budget director said as he urged lawmakers to approve the changes quickly when the next session begins in January. It will now be up to legislators to decide whether to heed his advice, potentially leading to a huge budget battle.

“This bill will be the supplemental appropriations the governor will submit. There will not be another one," Goossen said.

Parkinson, Goossen and other state executives trace many of the state’s financial troubles to the national recession that has caused Kansas tax revenues to fall below year-earlier levels four years in a row. The consecutive declines are unprecedented in Kansas history; no previous such decline occurred even two years in a row before.

Other states are feeling similar pain, said Mike McCabe, director of the Midwest office of the Council of State Governments. Total state revenues across the nation in the first two quarters of calendar 2009 are down 11.7 percent and 16.6 percent respectively from year-earlier levels. Total state spending dropped for two consecutive years in fiscal 2009 and 2010 for the first time on record and 42 states, like Kansas, are cutting spending for 2010.

Separately, about the same time that Kansas announced its latest budget cuts, the Pew Center on the States, in Washington, D.C., released a study naming California and nine other states as the 10 most fiscally fragile in the nation. The others are Arizona, Florida, Illinois, Michigan, Nevada, New Jersey, Oregon, Rhode Island and Wisconsin.