Happy
New Year, Kansans! A new legislative
session begins soon, and troubled state finances once again top the
agenda. Kansas staggers forward in a
perpetual budget crisis that our lawmakers have been unable—or unwilling—to
solve.
The
basic problem is simple. Kansas does not
have enough income to meet expenses.
The
cause of the problem stems directly from the Brownback income tax cuts. Those tax policy changes indisputably led to
a sharp decline in the state’s revenue stream.
As a result, in the last three years, Kansas has consistently spent more
than it takes in, a practice that makes the state poorer and poorer.
At
first, lawmakers made up the difference between declining income and growing
expenses by drawing down cash reserves.
A $709 million bank balance went to zero in less than two years.
With
the bank account empty, lawmakers began drawing hundreds of millions from other
state government accounts. The highway
fund has been the prime target, but many other funds, including those set aside
for early childhood programs and economic development, were also sacrificed in
the attempt to keep the general fund solvent.
Of
course, lawmakers also tried hard to cut expenses. Funding for public schools, a prime
responsibility of the state, has been pulled down far below where it should
be. State hospitals and prisons remain
understaffed. The current budget slashes
planned maintenance on roads and bridges.
Yet, even these efforts have not lowered expenses nearly enough to make
them fit within the dramatically diminished revenue stream.
The
budget imbalance became so acute last year that even conservative lawmakers
voted to raise the sales tax rate, a move that further shifted the state’s tax
burden to low- and middle-income Kansans.
The sales tax increase improved the overall revenue stream, but it did
not come close to solving the problem.
The
Brownback tax cuts brought the revenue stream down so significantly that truly
damaging expense cuts coupled with a sales tax increase have not repaired the
budgetary mess.
The
financial problem and its cause are easy to identify, and so is the
solution. Revisit the income tax cuts,
which were far too deep.
Don’t
expect that, though.
Gov.
Brownback has announced that he does not want to deal with any tax changes this
session. Nor do the conservative legislators
who voted to raise the sales tax. 2016
is an election year for all members of the Legislature, so many would prefer
that Kansans forget what happened in the last legislative session. It’s also unlikely that expenses will go
down. In their latest gambit to lower
spending, lawmakers voted to pay a consulting firm $2.6 million to find
“efficiencies” for them. The results are
not all in, but the early recommendations from the contractor suggest selling
KDOT woodchippers and paying bills late—a very inauspicious start.
When
baseball great Yogi Berra died in September, the media replayed many of his famous
witticisms. A favorite, “It’s like déjà
vu all over again,” was reportedly first uttered by Yogi when Mickey Mantle and
Roger Maris repeatedly hit back-to-back home runs in the 1961 season. Yogi didn’t know it then, but his phrase
applies to the Kansas budget now.
— This column originally ran in a variety of Kansas newspapers last weekend.
