By Gene Meyer
March 18, 2010
(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas House Appropriations committee members unveiled a new plan Thursday for balancing next year's state budget without raising taxes.
The plan that committee members are sending to the House floor includes an array of spending cuts, hiring freezes and early-Friday closures of many state offices, all designed to help both plug an estimated gap of more than $400 million in the fiscal 2011 budget Kansas Gov. Mark Parkinson proposed in January and to create a $302 million year-end cushion for 2012.
"Kansans all across the state are struggling to live within their means, and Kansas government must learn to do that too," said state Rep. Kevin Yoder, Appropriations committee chairman and an Overland Park Republican.
The committee's plan achieves its biggest savings by cutting $172 million in school funding that Parkinson, a Democrat, proposed using to replace federal stimulus plan education funds that run out next year, and transferring some $50 million of sales tax revenue, originally headed to the state highway fund, to the general fund instead.
Funding for Kansas elementary and secondary schools without that $172 million would be maintained at current levels next year. School districts locally could replace that lost revenue by raising local taxes, subject to voter approval, Yoder said.
Parkinson, who last January recommended sales, alcohol and tobacco tax increases to raise more revenue, called Thursday's proposed tax cuts "in a word, irresponsible."
House leaders backing the plan "are proposing that we cut schools, cut services for the vulnerable and cut programs which directly impact public safety," the governor said. "It is the wrong plan for Kansas."
Not so, countered House Majority Leader Ray Merrick, a Stillwell Republican and Appropriations committee member who voted to bring up the proposal for debate.
"Adding to the budget when revenues are down and not sufficient to support current spending levels is irresponsible," Merrick said.
Comparing the new House proposal to efforts in the Kansas Senate where revenue raising proposals nearer the governor's are being considered, House Speaker Mike O'Neal, a Hutchinson Republican, said he believed more lawmakers will find the House versions more palatable.
"In talking to our caucus, the vast majority of them - virtually all of them - are looking for a budget that they can support without raising taxes," O'Neal said.
"The Senate's inclination to fill three fourths of the budget hole with taxes is flawed," he said.
The House proposal also calls for diverse groups of specific spending cuts across parts of the budget not related to education. Those include 5 percent pay cuts for virtually all state employees and elected officials, including judges, legislators and the executive branch, and closing most state offices at 3 p.m. Fridays. Highway Patrol troopers, correctional officers, selected hospital workers and other critical worker would not be included in the cutbacks.
The plan also calls for a hiring freeze in all executive branch agencies, freezing the state's contribution to the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System at current levels and cutting general fund spending - except for education, corrections and human services caseloads - another one percent across the board.
In addition to diverting $50 million in sales tax receipts from the highway fund, the proposed budget also calls for a tax amnesty, projected to bring in $22 million from taxpayers seeking a penalty free settlement of back obligations, and $2.5 million saved by diverting Racing and Gaming Commission loan payments to the general fund.
One potential soft spot in the proposed budget may be $131 million that the plan counts on presuming the U.S. Congress extends a soon-to-expire higher Medicaid matching funds plan that also is part of federal stimulus plans.
"Balancing a budget on money that does not exist is not practice," Yoder said. "But presuming it does come in, we want be able to use it."