The Kansas Legislature has adjourned after the longest session in its history. While high fives and fist bumps characterized the final acts among legislators Friday, in truth they went home with tails between their legs.
The 2015 Kansas legislative session was a disaster on par with the movie “San Andreas.” Only Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson wasn’t there to save the day.
By now the story is well-known. A massive deficit caused by significant income tax cuts had to be addressed by some kind of revenue increase just to keep schools operating. Cuts, as popular as they are with donor groups and voters, don’t play well in the reality of public policy. To avoid the session plunging beyond disaster into anarchy, new revenue streams had to be developed. The Governor announced he would veto any substantive reduction of his corporate and income tax cuts, so other sources had to be found. Governor Brownback’s own proposal, mostly predicated on alcohol and tobacco taxes, was dead on arrival.
What were the alternatives, though? None. Despite a cadre of new and supposedly creative lawmakers in the chamber, no alternative plans emerged throughout the session. Most legislators seemed to want to wait for the Governor or Speaker Merrick’s office to produce a plan. Eventually they got one – seven days after scheduled adjournment. Once they got it, they didn’t like it, and chaos ensued.
Legislators spent extended final weeks of the session (and a million dollars in overtime pay) scrambling for options, and a half-dozen competing plans emerged from burgeoning factions within the legislature. Some of the plans were so absurd as to raise taxes on Girl Scout cookie sales. In a remarkably ironic plot twist, taxes on all Kansans increased – the exact opposite of Governor Brownback’s initial plan despite his insistence to the contrary.
Democrats, failing to learn lessons from 2014, simply watched the GOP implosion in vain hope their collapse would allow a Democrat to back into Cedar Crest just as they expected Paul Davis to do a year ago. And Republicans have done their best to give the Democrats enough ammo to go to war on their failure alone.
While much blame will go to Governor Brownback, as it should, the real question of leadership and the biggest failure of the year should be directed towards the Speaker’s office. Where has Ray Merrick been, and what has he done, other than transform the legislature from a subject of derision into a subject of mockery? The Speaker apparently never coordinated with the Governor on a revenue plan, nor did he vet initial drafts with influential rank-and-file members or the House Tax Committee.
Keeping legislators in the dark about the most important bill of the session is on par with Nancy Pelosi’s infamous bromide about Obamacare that Congress had to pass it to know what was in it. Pelosi at least had the votes to pass her bill. Kansas legislators didn’t take the bait and pass the first thing presented, but at a cost of their own reputations with constituents and the exposure of competing coalitions within the legislature’s polar alliance Republicans that could be exploited by center-right primary challengers and some Democrats if either group can recruit, fundraise, and organize against them. The legislature, in a complete leadership vacuum, has served up a heaping plate of opposition research to 2016 challengers.
Like “San Andreas” or “The Towering Inferno,” the relief at the end of the 2015 Kansas legislative session is that it is over. The damage has been done, and perhaps minimized. Nonetheless, we have been witnesses to a disaster of historic proportions.
Chapman Rackaway is a Professor of Political Science at Fort Hays State University.