Hello from Topeka! Things continue to work at a quick pace in the 2017 Kansas legislative session.

One of the most urgent issues facing the legislature is the consideration and passage of a rescission bill (amended budget) for the remaining months of fiscal year 2017, which ends June 30. Governor Brownback’s proposed rescission budget is contained in HB 2052, and primarily depends on the use of PMIB funds as a source of one-time money to fill the $342 million deficit the state currently faces.

The Pooled Money Investment Board (PMIB) invests money available from the State General Fund as well as hundreds of other state funds deposited with the State Treasurer. The funds are used for a variety of purposes, including the general operations for many state agencies. Many of these funds are used only at certain times, so those funds which are temporarily idle are invested by the PMIB. Currently they are invested in high-grade short-term investments to provide liquidity.

In 2000 the Legislature authorized the State Treasurer to invest a portion of the Pooled Money Investment Portfolio (PMIP) in equities and longer-term bonds to help finance the renovation of the State Capitol. This portion is invested in equities and longer-term bonds to achieve a higher rate of return. It is managed by KPERS and the amount invested each year is based on the net difference between the unclaimed property received by the State Treasurer and the claims that have been paid.

$317.2 million has been transferred to the portfolio since 2000, and its earnings have provided $114 million in revenue to the State General Fund (SGF). If liquidated today, $46.5 million of accumulated interest and capital gains could be transferred to the SGF and the remaining $317.2 million principal could be returned to the PMIP and used as a short-term loan to the SGF. The Governor has proposed a seven-year repayment with the first payment beginning in FY 2018.

This is just one idea on trying to fill-in the budget gap. As I have said earlier, there are going to be some tough decisions to be made. We must get this issue solved before we set a more stable plan for long term revenue and spending plan.

There are several points need to be stressed if this option is chosen as the best path forward to solve the short-term fiscal shortfall in the current year:
1) The money transferred from the PMIP to the account in KPERS is NOT unclaimed property, and borrowing or liquidating the fund would not extinguish the claims of Kansans who have assets in the unclaimed property fund and can prove their ownership.
2) The PMIP fund is not a part of the KPERS retirement system. It is merely invested for the state by the financial gurus at KPERS to achieve a higher rate of return. Use of these funds would have virtually no effect on the stability of KPERS.
3) Liquidation or borrowing from this fund would mean that future earnings from the fund would no longer be available to help with repayment of the bonded costs of the Statehouse renovation.
4) Some have characterized the use of this fund as being akin to cashing in a retirement account to meet current expenses. While there is some truth to that charge, it reflects the stark and unappealing choices currently before the legislature. As an alternative, the Kansas Senate is considering another round of budget cuts, including a cut to K-12 education funding.

As a member of the Taxation Committee we have been hearing testimony on the possible repeal of the pass-through income, known as the “LLC Loophole.” We will also be looking at other ways to work towards a fairer tax system in Kansas.

There is much more going on but I am trying to keep this column a reasonable length.

If you come to Topeka during the session, my office is in Room: 352-S. My phone number has changed to: (785) 296- 7463 and email is: [email protected] and my cell number is (785) 302-8416. You can also follow along with what is going on through social media: kenforkansas on Facebook, @kenrahjes on twitter or my website: kenforkansas.com.
Wishing Kansas a Happy Birthday on Sunday. It is my honor to be your representative.

Ken Rahjes, (R-Agra) is the 110th Dist. State Representative.

By this story’s publication, either Kansans will be cleaning up after the ice storm of the decade or forecasters will be the butt of jokes at local coffee shops. While technology helps Great Plains residents survive catastrophic storms, it also creates worry over weather that doesn’t manage to star in an advertised performance. I wonder what our ancestors who settled this landscape would think about meteorological prognostication that involves science more than folk wisdom.

Those who love me know I’m a weather channel junkie. In fact, a daughter teased that I’m one reason bread and milk supplies run low before storms hit. Yes, I prepare for whatever heads my way, whether it’s blizzard, ice, wind, or flood. I’ve failed to pay attention enough that I’m gun shy and stock up at first warning.

I’ve awakened to rising waters soaking into my tent and sleeping bag during a spring campout. This event occurred before cellphone alerts, and I was so excited about the adventure I didn’t watch the news. Who knew a moisture-laden front would arrive the same day we did? I’ll never forget wearing drenched clothes to breakfast and watching people laugh at waterfalls pouring from a trunk stuffed with a sopping tent, pillows, and bags.

That wasn’t my only experience with bad weather. During my early parenting years, blizzards and tornadoes caught me unaware and wishing I’d watched the news. That said, I don’t know that meteorologists were as knowledgeable then as they are today. I recall the Highway Patrol shutting the I-70 Hays gate behind me as I drove14 miles west in a whiteout. I prayed for two solid hours that I’d make it through snow so heavy I couldn’t tell where the road was.

Another time, a July tornado outbreak caught me on the road between McCracken and Ellis. It rained so hard I couldn’t see the pavement or nearby tornados touching down according to the radio. Such adventures give new meaning to white knuckle driving.

These experiences make me wonder about relatives who migrated to Kansas in 1872. They came from Canada in time to experience grasshopper invasions and later the killer blizzard of 1886. Unaware of the building storm, Great-Great- Grandpa sheltered with strangers when that storm caught him riding home from a preaching assignment. His poor wife worried about his safety as well as her family’s diminishing food and coal supply.

Mari Sandoz’s novella Winter Thunder offers a more recent example of nature running amok. The author based her tale on a niece’s experience guiding students to survive a 1940s Nebraska Sandhills’ whiteout. Again, no warning. The tempest caught the school and surrounding ranchers unaware. An inexperienced teacher and teenage bus driver used their wits to ensure everyone’s survival after a fiery wreck forced them to spend three days outside in the storm.

My own experiences and those of others make me appreciate multiple weather sites and forecast models. Fronts can fizzle out or head other directions, encouraging armchair quarterbacks to second-guess and tease my favorite prognosticators. As for me, I’ll freeze that extra loaf of bread and gallon of milk just in case….

Native Kansan Karen Madorin is a local writer and retired teacher who loves sharing stories about places, people, critters, plants, food, and history of the High Plains.

“I wouldn’t have a dog that doesn’t pull at the leash.”

That was dad decades ago, but the concept that a dog is curious, eager to reach out, to pull against restraints, well, that shows the dog has heart.

And, just days into the 2017 Kansas legislative session, there’s at least one dog that is willing pull against the budget leash held by Gov. Sam Brownback.

That pup? The newly created House Committee on K-12 Education Budget.

Last week, the panel decided that it doesn’t want the governor to pull $85 million from the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System that is owed by the state on behalf of schoolteachers and other school workers. Actually, it includes the governor’s non-payment proposal for other state employees, but the teachers and general government workers are in the same pension pool, so the panel voted to preserve all the pension cuts.

That’s pulling against the leash. It’s nearly a quarter of the savings needed to balance the state budget in the current fiscal year, and because at some point those employees are going to retire, the state is going to have to come up with their pension money anyway.

The K-12 Education panel’s decision is a long way from enactment, but it was the first real, printed out on paper objection to the governor’s budget plan. It is unlikely that the KPERS provision will sail through the next level of consideration, the House Appropriations Committee, but it is a clear message to the governor that at least one panel of legislators isn’t interested in his plan to just delay and eliminate payments to finish his term without having to raise taxes.

That action is probably going to make this week interesting, because that KPERS plan of the governor is so technical that most Kansans would never know that it happened…which is exactly what Brownback wants to happen.

The governor’s plan, recall, doesn’t raise anyone’s taxes, doesn’t really inconvenience anyone, but takes spare cash out of state agency funds, delays or cancels payments to agencies and cashes out long-term revenue streams to get to July 1, 2017, with at least a little cash in the bank.

So where do things go from here?

Most likely budget cuts, actual reductions in state spending through June 30, which won’t be pretty but which won’t have out-year consequences that future legislatures are going to have to wrangle with.

And, of course, the biggest appropriation that the state makes is to K-12 education, so a single-digit cut there would solve most of this fiscal year’s projected deficit, but at a major political cost to many legislators…unless they can clearly make it a one-time, never again deal and convince Kansans that they are serious.

Oh, that cut might also mean that school districts across the state would have to pull money out of their dozens of narrow purpose funds, money they are hanging onto just in case something like an across-the-board state aid reduction actually happens. That spare money in school district budgets is referred to by some conservatives as hoarding.

Plainly, there is no simple solution to the budget deficit, and until it is fixed, there’s little pressing reason to start hashing out the biennial budget that covers the next two fiscal years which are the last two years of the Brownback administration.

The budget issue comes down to one key: Whether Kansas voters will realize the depth of the deficit and take a break from blaming previous Brownback-dominated sessions when taxes were sharply cut or eliminated and allow their senators and representatives to fix the short-term problem before they attack the long-term problem.

Pulling against the leash, well, that’s a start…

Syndicated by Hawver News Company LLC 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.