While all the noise is about the coming election, Statehouse insiders are looking at spreadsheets on revenues and wondering what’s going to happen once all are elected, have their new business cards printed up and have to figure how to run things.
The best guesses so far are that for the remaining nine months of this fiscal year (which started on July 1), there’s going to be enough money to keep the lights on, the school district payments made, most of the business of the state … well, in business.
So, figure that the state is going to stay in business at least while the new legislators are getting acquainted with lobbyists and sorting out the local after-hours restaurants.
But when either a new or re-elected governor takes over, he is going to have four, maybe five months to either raise revenues for the coming fiscal year or find ways to cut spending that won’t badly inconvenience the voters who elected him.
And, insiders are already looking at a fascinating legislative session coming up.
So far, Democratic candidate Paul Davis, who has more than a decade of Statehouse legislative experience, isn’t talking much about new plans or new programs. He’s talking about suspending a scheduled income tax reduction schedule that is already in state law.
Republican Gov. Sam Brownback so far is talking about how everyone is having a good time as taxes are reduced, and released a Road Map 2.0 brochure that is mostly nice things—think vanilla—that don’t cost much money.
But it’s going to be the Legislature that is going to have to do the heavy lifting of either reducing state spending or raising taxes from that “other guy,” not you.
Now, what don’t you want the state to do anymore? Inspect crops? Manage programs for the poor? Build or repair highways? Finance schools?
This is where it is going to be interesting. Because the state constitution prevents the state from running a budget deficit—a pretty good idea from a century ago, when we presume people paid cash for their houses and horse-drawn wagons—the budget for the upcoming fiscal year becomes ground zero for legislative debate.
Does it split Republicans from Democrats? Probably not. Don’t look for Republicans to want to raise or even delay cuts in taxes. Don’t look for Democrats to want to reduce spending on the poor, the school kids, the roads, or even state employees who haven’t seen a raise in several years.
Those stances are pretty well defined, and at this point, there aren’t enough Democrats and middle-of-the-road Republicans to pass tax increases or even delay tax cuts unless there is a major change of landscape in the House and even then, the Senate is rock-solid/hard-core keep the tax cuts coming and find spending to cut.
So, what’s the best “insiders” guess?
Look for a budget of haircuts and under-under-the-table shifting of money.
Remember that $130 million that the Kansas Supreme Court last year ordered the Legislature to appropriate to school districts to equalize the state aid to those districts? Well, with shifting within the education budget, closing programs, combining programs and such, the final pricetag game in at less than $80 million. It wasn’t pretty, but with some shifting and shuffling of money that most Kansans who aren’t school finance technicians didn’t have a clue about…it got done.
Look for that sort of thing next session. Lots of shuffling of funds that most of us don’t know about, lots of borrowing inside agencies.
And, probably some “looks like a tax, but we’ll call it a user-fee” business, too.
So, enjoy the election and then, maybe, try not to pay too much attention to what happens next…
Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver’s Capitol Report. To learn more about this nonpartisan statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.
