It’s going to be a week before we find out whether Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly is actually going to get her wish of putting the state back in a fiscally sound posture.
And that wait will come when the House votes sometime around noon May 29 on the governor’s veto of a whittled-down income tax bill that Kelly says the state can’t afford now and might or might not be able to afford next year when the entire Legislature stands for reelection.
She, or rather, she and the calendar, won her first veto battle over a giant income tax-cut (some say tax relief) bill passed in the regular session of the Legislature. That earlier tax bill, which would have cost the state coffers more than $500 million over the next three years, was a Kelly/calendar victory because the Legislature was on spring break when it got her veto message and couldn’t vote on overriding that action.
This new tax bill, which legislators received in time for a veto consideration during its final adjournment day on May 29, is the real test of the governor and count on it…there will be a vote on override.
The three-year, $238 million reduction in taxes—call it a tax cut or a tax maintenance bill because it pays down some of the increase that the December 2017 federal income tax bill triggered for mostly corporations doing international business which saw more of their income subject to state taxes—is the issue.
It’s the biggest test for a new Kelly era because a majority of Republicans in the House and Senate want to pare taxes for Kansans, both the corporations which make millions of dollars of campaign contributions to Republicans and to upper-income candidates who are also heavy donors to GOP campaigns.
Win the veto battle? That means Kelly has the chance to maintain revenues that her administration will spend on social services, education, management of the state and infrastructure which means largely smoother roads.
Lose the battle? That means less money for those projects.
Oh, and it also means that members of the House and Senate next year will likely not be able to offer up that election-year candy, brand new and voter-targeted income tax cuts that would be at the top of their campaign literature, a demonstration that they—not some challenger who doesn’t have a track record—should be sent back to Topeka for the winter.
Kelly plans to assemble a tax advisory committee this summer that will outline just what sort of tax cuts she believes the state can afford in terms of lost revenue and that Kansas voters will actually enjoy. Oh, and one that will undoubtedly include some genuine reduction in sales tax on food, likely to be returned to grocery buyers in a manner that will improve their living standards, not just a dime or a quarter every time they go to the store.
Can she see her veto sustained?
That’s the tough one. That tax bill that was sent to her during the veto session passed the House—where the first vote on overriding the veto will be taken—on a vote of 83-41, with a likely pro-tax cut representative not present. That’s one vote shy of the 84 needed to override the veto in that chamber and send it to the Senate where it was approved in the veto session on a 27-13 vote. Key there is that 27 votes are needed for an override, which means if nobody changes their mind, the veto will be overridden.
That’s when we find out who the political winner is. Because, frankly, who in November 2020 is going to still be euphoric over a smaller tax bill they paid in April 2020?
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