As many as 25,000 state employees whose jobs were guaranteed through June 26 now face the possibility of furloughs as a result of working for a state that is nearly broke — Kansas.
Yes, those workers, due to some fairly complicated budget dancing around the effective date of the new, tight budget and when payroll periods start and such, were rescued on June 7. They were officially declared “essential” to the operation of the state, and because they wore that mantle, they couldn’t be furloughed without pay.
Well, that safety net dissolves at the legislative sine die adjournment on June 26.
They go back into the now clearly defined pool of state employees who the state presumably can do its business without…and with the governor now charged with cutting some $50 million — and probably more — from the state budget for the year that starts July 1, they could become one of the quickest ways to balance the budget.
Not a very comfortable place for those state employees to be.
And, there are few easier ways for Director of the Budget Shawn Sullivan to make that $50 million in cuts than to start canceling appropriations for the agencies they work for.
Oh, yes, it’s the budget director who makes those cuts in spending, not the governor. It’s not hard to draw the line between the director of the budget and Gov. Sam Brownback, who Sullivan works for, but it will be the budget director who makes those decisions on what to cut and where to cut and who sees his/her job dissolve.
Insiders, of course, are waiting to see whether Sullivan uses his own letterhead to announce budget cuts that will result in layoffs or whether it will be the governor’s letterhead on that press release, but the result will be the same.
The $50 million in cuts to the $6.3 billion budget is of course a small percentage. Less than, say, a nuisance one-half percent income tax on those LLCs, subchapter S corporations and sole proprietorships that Brownback fiercely protected from any fiscal unpleasantness related to learning again how they do that Kansas income tax thing.
Or, that $50 million is just a dab over a .10 percent increase in the sales tax, going from a 6.5 percent rate (up from 6.15 percent) to a 6.6 percent sales tax rate that would have come very close to covering the shortfall that lawmakers told the governor to come up with money for. And, probably nobody would have noticed except accountants. After all, 0.10 is a dime in additional sales tax on a $100 purchase.
But that $50 million cut that will have Brownback’s fingerprints on it—or the fingerprint of his employee Sullivan—is probably the most politically visible action that the governor will take this year to support his theory that by not taxing businesses, they prosper, hire workers, buy lathes or such, and spend that tax-free non-wage income on, well, nearly anything.
Hard to tell whether at some point this don’t-tax-business strategy will work. It hasn’t worked yet. Apparently won’t work in the upcoming fiscal year and its chance of working probably isn’t improved by laying off state employees who aren’t going to have a bunch of money in their pockets for the “consumption” that is the key to a tax policy change that Brownback touts.
Can Brownback maintain that hands-off strategy for business taxes? It’s been relatively easy for the past three years, but we’re wondering whether it is good for yet another year, when the Legislature meets in January of an election year for members of both the House and Senate.
Oh, and members of the House and Senate are wondering, too, whether the narrow but successful no-business tax strategy which has worked in GOP primary elections will stretch to the general election next year.
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 the website at www.hawvernews.com.
