Legislature creates crisis

The other shoe will drop early next year. That is when we will know the size - it is expected to be immense - of the budget deficit in Kansas. Wait a minute. Do not dismiss this as only a crisis for the politicians in the Kansas Legislature, a challenge far removed from your daily life.

This is about whether your children are shortchanged in getting the education they need in a fast-changing global economy.

This is about whether children in low-income families are denied proper medical treatment.

This is about whether the developmentally disabled and other people in need are deprived of adequate care.

This is about whether state agencies that touch all Kansans, including the courts and prisons, are unable to meet essential needs.

The troubling situation that confronts our state is the handiwork of the Kansas Legislature.

Every year legislators in Topeka decide how much tax revenue to raise and, consequently, how much money will be available for education and other programs.

In this year's financial dilemma there were howls in the legislative halls about having less revenue to work with because of the recession. The downturn was a large factor, but the funding problem is much more complicated than that.

Kansas is suffering from the Legislature's mishandling of taxing and spending. Legislators, or more specifically the ultraconservative Republicans who hold wide influence in both chambers, have decimated Kansas' relatively stable financial condition over the last decade or so.

A mindless, no-tax crowd ignores reality, including the ever-increasing costs of programs such as federal-state Medicaid.

The financial crunch that awaits next year's Legislature has been awhile coming. Some insight into the deepening budget chasm was provided last week by Kansas Action for Children or KAC, an advocacy organization based in Topeka.

Kansans who are concerned about the budget gap would do well to read the KAC report at www.kac.org.

As KAC analyzes it, the budget shortfall has been brought on by both long-term and short-range policies. The tax structure was built originally on the property tax in the mid-1800s. Later, in the 1930s, sales and income taxes were added.

The Kansas economy has changed markedly since then; farming and manufacturing, once major factors, have declined. The service industry has grown.

For the short run, the Legislature has reduced taxes, leading to erosion of the tax system.

"In the past five years alone," the report stated, "tax cuts have been created that represent more than $1.1 billion in lost revenue through fiscal year 2013. Prior to the 2009 legislative session, 81 sales tax exemptions had been enacted by lawmakers. Even in the extremely difficult budget climate of the 2009 session, lawmakers passed four additional sales tax exemptions."

The report cited information from the Kansas Department of Revenue that showed sales tax exemptions cost the state more than $4 billion in the 2008 fiscal year.

"To put that in perspective," the report said, "if these exemptions were eliminated the state general fund would increase by almost two-thirds, from $6.6 billion to $10.6 billion."

Clearly, the sales tax exemptions need attention, as does the entire tax system.

The Legislature's failure to fund education adequately led to a state Supreme Court decision that forced legislators to increase funding for K-12 schools by hundreds of millions of dollars.

Rather than raise taxes to keep the budget on an even keel, the Legislature cut them.

Little wonder the state is in pain.

Contact Bob Sigman at 385-6034 or e-mail This e-mail address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it .

Trackback(0)

TrackBack URI for this entry

Comments (0)

Write comment