By CRISTINA JANNEY
Hays Post
Democratic candidate for Kansas governor Joshua Svaty made his last stop in a 105-county tour of the state Monday with stops in Ellis County.
Among his meetings with voters was a question-and-answer session at the Fort Hays State University Union.
At 37, Svaty has had a substantial career in politics and government. He spent seven years as a state representative for the Ellsworth area. He then served two years as Kansas Secretary of Agriculture under the Parkinson administration. He worked for Environmental Protection Agency for two years. He also runs a farm in Ellsworth County and most recently has been on the staff of The Land Institute.
During his time in Topeka, he championed the use of wind energy in the state, he supported in-state tuition for children of undocumented Kansans and fought against an amendment to the Kansas Constitution that would have made marriage between a man and a woman.
Svaty described why he decided to run for governor.
“I began being worried about our state around four years ago, thinking that it was heading in the wrong direction. Over the last few years especially, I felt our state was reaching a point where our state was at a fork in the road, and it could really go either direction. I said enough is enough.”
Svaty said he wants to get the state back on track and adequately fund state agencies that have been drained of resources and qualified employees.
“The state is in a little trouble right now, and it is affecting basically every level of state government. No. 1 is reinstating this concept of civility that we have lost in the last six and a half years, which affects everything. …” he said.
College students are not entering the teaching profession, which they worry will not be a long-term profession, he said. Businesses will not locate in the state if they are worried about the long-term revenue health of the state. They don’t want to be in a state that is swinging wildly up and down, Svaty said
Svaty said he thought the rolling back of tax breaks implemented under Gov. Brownback during the last session was a step in the right direction, but it will take time to stabilize the Kansas economy.
He said he felt confident the oil and gas and ag industries in the state would bounce back, but that could take a couple of years.
He said he supported the reduction or elimination of the sales tax on food, which he said he thought was regressive.
Because of the deep cuts in funding for state agencies and unsure funding for KPERS, the state has lost some of its best and brightest from state agency staffs.
“Government is only as good as the people we have engaged in those agencies. These are people who sometimes have their master’s and PhD’s running or being a part of state agencies. In the last seven years, I have seen in some cases a trickle and in some cases it has been a waterfall of these people moving out of state government.”
Svaty said the public has seen these staff problems directly in state corrections with issues at Norton and El Dorado state prisons.
“Much of that can be boiled down to if you are paying someone $13.50 an hour to do what is a very hard job, which is a corrections employees, then they are probably not going to stay in that job very long,” he said
One student asked Svaty about what he would do about higher education funding if he were to become governor.
Svaty said when the state does not have money to fund higher education, it pushes the burden of finance on the universities, and they have little alternative than to increase tuition. The state needs to get its financial house in order so it can fund higher education.
Svaty said he worries about funding his own children’s education. His wife is pregnant and due with their fourth child.
“I think we are pushing at the boundary of what an affordable higher education would look and feel like,” he said. “As a parent who has three kids almost four, I’m being told I need to save $150,000 to send each kid to college. That’s insanity. There is no way we can possibly get to that.”
Yet research indicates a college education is the best way to be upwardly mobile, he said.
Svaty said there was a time between 2012 to 2015 when a priority was not placed on higher education. In fact members of the Legislature were doing things that were harmful to higher education.
He said colleges are not only important to students, but they are economic engines to communities where they are located and an important generator of federal research dollars.
In terms of public education, Svaty said anyone who looks at the numbers would recognize the state is still behind in funding K-12 education. The Kansas Supreme Court is reviewing a funding formula that was passed by the Legislature during the 2017 session.
Although he can’t speak for the Supreme Court, he thought the court might come back and request another $100 million to $200 million in school funding. However, he hoped the court would allow the state to increase that funding over a couple of years.
Svaty, who is a dry-land farmer, also talked about the need to manage water usage in Kansas, especially western Kansas.
“I also think efficiencies can be found,” he said, “and moving everyone in that direction not only helps preserve the aquifer, it also makes our farming systems more efficient. It should save money too, which everybody wants to do.”