By CELIA LLOPIS-JEPSEN
Kansas News Service

Fellow Republicans on Wednesday characterized Gov. Sam Brownback’s spending plan — more than $6.6 billion a year — as a beeline return to deficits and an abdication of responsibility in a budding crisis.

The governor, poised to leave for a spot in the Trump administration, unveiled a five-year, $600 million increase in school funding Tuesday evening. When lawmakers dug into that proposal Wednesday, they griped about key details.

For one, they found irony in Brownback relying on a two-year $1.2 billion tax hike passed last year. After all, the governor vetoed it and forced his own party’s leaders to muster an override.

For another, even that money isn’t enough. It’ll only edge up toward Brownback’s school funding goal in the first two years. By the summer of 2019, the state would stare down another deficit. The governor’s plan doesn’t explain where Kansas would find even more school dollars in years three, four and five.

“This is not balanced,” said Republican Rep. Troy Waymaster, head of the House budget committee. “We’re going to have to find a way to balance the budget.”

Sen. Laura Kelly, a Democrat on the Senate budget committee who is running for governor, called it “mean-spirited” to make lawmakers clean up the mess.

“We’re going to have to be the bad guys,” she said.

Salina conservative J.R. Claeys, one of the Republican representatives who stood by Brownback’s 2012 signature tax cuts when others united to undo them last summer, tweeted that Brownback had “waved the white flag of surrender from the dome, and tossed every ally he had left under the bus.”

Brownback long touted the principles of small government and economic growth through tax cuts, but is now promising schools a growing piece of a pie made bigger through tax hikes.

The governor proposed to spend a combined $325 million more across the state budget between now and mid-2019.

His budget director, Shawn Sullivan, credited the “Trump economy” for the expectation of rising state revenues.

“That is in stark comparison to what we’ve had the last couple years,” he said. “So Hopefully that continues and picks up even more with (recently passed federal) tax cuts.”

He also acknowledged that last year’s tax hike made a difference.

Brownback’s $600 million school funding proposal — meant to end a long-running school finance lawsuit  — is closer to a $500 million increase, lawmakers learned, because it includes money they already promised to schools.

The money-for-schools problem dwarfs all other friction points politicians will war over in the months ahead, but the state budget has other far-reaching ramifications. Among the moves Brownback proposed for the two-year spending plan:

• Increasing Medicaid reimbursements to hospitals and nursing homes by $40 million. That would broaden access to health care without expanding Medicaid to cover more low-income adults, an effort that Brownback vetoed last year.
• Paying Kansas teachers, by 2023, better than what their counterparts earn in all four neighboring states. Average pay is $47,775, about $200 behind Missouri, and $3,500 behind Nebraska, Kansas is already well ahead of Colorado and Oklahoma.

Teacher pay in Kansas  rose an estimated 4 percent this year because of court-ordered funds, but districts say the real key to hiking salaries beyond that would depend on the state sending them more money year after year.

• Letting students take 15 college-level credits for free while still in high school, and offering them the ACT college entrance exam or a similar work-skills test for free. If 80 percent of students take the state up on its offer, it would cost a little more than $25 million.

The college credit idea is similar to a 2012 Brownback initiative that let high-schoolers into technical colleges for free. The program grew rapidly and is now underfunded, so the governor wants to fix that with an infusion of $15 million.

• Graduating 95 percent of high-schoolers by 2023 in exchange for the school funding boost — and doubling the number who pursue post-secondary studies.
• Promising $1.5 million in raises to the more than 1,300 state employees who fell through the cracks last year when the legislature increased pay. State workers fought for raises for years, and many had received none since 2008. Another $8 million would go toward prison worker pay after prison riots last year revealed crisis-level understaffing.

• Putting $3 million toward the state’s first school of dentistry housed at the University of Kansas in Kansas City, Kan.
• Adding $2 million for combating crimes against children and new staff at the Attorney General’s Office and Kansas Bureau of Investigation.
• Using $16 million to hire more child welfare staff and tackle a laundry-list of problems with the state’s foster care system, including a skyrocketing caseload and children going missing 
• Giving another $8 million to the National Institute for Aviation Research and National Center for Aviation Training to bolster the skilled workforce there. Sullivan said the goal is to support Spirit Aerosystems’ plan to invest $1 billion and add 1,000 jobs in Wichita over the next five years .

Celia Llopis-Jepsen is a reporter for the Kansas News Service. You can reach her on Twitter @Celia_LJ.

WICHITA, Kan. (AP) — Several dogs and cats died in a Wichita house fire but two residents managed to escape with minor injuries.

Firefighter responded Wednesday afternoon to the fire, which caused several small explosions in a garage.

Medics treated two residents for minor injuries, but firefighters weren’t able to save two dogs and several cats. Neighbors say firefighters put an oxygen mask on at least one cat that escaped the house.

About 10 pets lived in the home.

Wichita Fire Department Battalion Chief Lane Pearman says the fire probably started in the garage, where there were small explosions as items stored in that area caught fire.

The fire destroyed the house.

TOPEKA – A Kansas man pleaded guilty Wednesday to five bank robberies in four states, according to U.S. Attorney Tom Beall.

Dakota Shareef Walker, 21, Topeka, pleaded guilty to the following robberies:

U.S. Bank, 5730 Southwest 21st, Topeka, Nov. 28, 2016.
U.S. Bank, 221 West Gregory Blvd, Kansas City Missouri, Nov. 23, 2016.
U.S. Bank, 748 Main Street, Evanston, Wyo, Dec. 6, 2016.
U.S. Bank, 25 East 50 South, Malad City, Idaho, Dec. 14, 2016.
Wells Fargo Bank, 5 North State Street, Preston, Idaho, Jan. 9, 2017.

In each case, Walker gave tellers a note warning not them not to activate any alarms or to make any sudden moves.

SEDGWICK COUNTY — A Kansas church is celebrating after a baby Jesus statue  stolen from an outdoor nativity scene was returned Wednesday.

The Church of the Blessed Sacrament wrote on social media “Hallelujah! The Baby Jesus is back! It was found in a yard in College Hill and brought to the parish office.”

Authorities believed the baby Jesus was taken the night of Jan. 3, or early morning on Jan. 4. The manger also was destroyed because Baby Jesus had been chained to it. The theft came just a few days before the Epiphany, which is the day Christians observe the visit the Three Kings made to the baby Jesus.

A sign staked outside the nativity read: “Baby Jesus was STOLEN! Please pray for his return.” The church said it “can’t have nice things” in smaller letters. Over the years, other statues have gone missing, including a camel.

KANSAS CITY, Mo. (AP) – A Kansas City man has been charged with fatally shooting the mother of his 2-year-old son after her body was found partly unclothed and bound with duct tape near the apparently unharmed child.

Prosecutors announced Tuesday that 23-three-year-old Joseph Gonsalez is charged with first-degree murder, armed criminal action and child endangerment in the death of 19-year-old Elizabeth Richards.

Richards had dropped off the boy Saturday with Gonsalez, who lived with his parents. They found her body after returning home.

Police say Gonsalez was found about 3 miles away with a gunshot wound in his abdomen and wearing no pants or shoes. He’ll be transferred to jail when he’s released from the hospital. A prosecutor’s spokesman didn’t immediately return an email message about whether Gonsalez has an attorney.