The FY 2017 Budget Won’t Work

By Duane Goossen

The FY 2016 budget did not work, and it’s already clear that FY 2017 will not work either. Mid-fiscal year budget cuts are quite likely ahead.

It’s the same problem that has existed since unaffordable income tax cuts were implemented. Kansas does not have nearly enough revenue to pay even a constrained set of bills. We’re broke.

Look at the “official” or approved version of the FY 2017 budget (from FY 2017 Comparison Report, page 12). Note the large imbalance between recurring revenue and expenditures. And that’s after the governor cut expenditures from the total that lawmakers approved last May. Medicaid providers—doctors, hospitals, nursing homes—have had their payments chopped by 4 percent to save about $57 million, and higher education funding was hit for $31 million. With those cuts incorporated, the official version shows an ending balance of $96 million, a positive number at least, but far below the statutorily required 7.5 percent of expenditures. (7.5 percent of expenditures in this budget equals $470 million.)

But the official version will not hold! The imbalance between revenue and expense will grow, and the ending balance will go negative without more budget cuts or other remedial action.

First of all, the official version assumes a beginning balance of $40 million. That did not happen. Rather, the state had to stop paying bills at the end of FY 2016 in order to keep the general fund balance just above zero.

Second and most important, the estimate of recurring revenue in the official version comes from the April Consensus Revenue Estimate (CRE). We now know that the April CRE overestimated FY 2016 tax revenue by $106 million, which means the FY 2017 estimate will almost certainly be revised downward when the forecasting group meets in November. Revenue was already short by $15 million in the first month of FY 2017. If the FY 2017 revenue assumption is lowered by $106 million to match what happened in FY 2016, the general fund will immediately be insolvent, triggering more expenditure cuts.

Third, the official version counts on one-time income of $48 million from the privatization or sale of the Kansas Bioscience Authority (KBA). Quite likely that figure is overly optimistic.

On top of all that, the state pushed payment of $75 million of school finance bills from FY 2016 into FY 2017 in order to get out of FY 2016. That expenditure shift does not show up in the official version, but if it did, the expenditure total would be $75 million higher. How will that $75 million be dealt with? We don’t know, maybe through more cuts, or maybe $75 million in FY 2017 bills will be pushed to FY 2018. Remember, the state also deferred $96 million in KPERS payments to get out of FY 2016 and promised to pay those bills in FY 2018 with interest.

Kansas lives on the financial edge, unable to move confidently into the future. Income tax cuts caused this. When lawmakers convene in January, they must build a budget for FY 2018, but without changes in tax policy, it too is destined to fail.


—This post originally appeared on the Kansas Center for Economic Growth website.

R.I.P. FY 2016 — Another Year of the Downward Spiral

By Duane Goossen

Fiscal year 2016—another year in the downward spiral of Kansas finances after unaffordable tax cuts. Financially, Kansas lived day-to-day, and in the end only managed to cross over to the next fiscal year by not paying bills. And all that trouble earned Kansas another credit rating downgrade.

Let’s briefly review the extraordinary budget actions of FY 2016, actions allowed by state law during times when the budget is in crisis:

• July 30, 2015—The governor uses allotment authority to order $38 million in budget cuts and $63 million more of one-time transfers.  This action comes less than one month into the fiscal year and right on the heels of the longest legislative session in Kansas history.
• November 10, 2015—To keep the general fund solvent the governor uses allotment authority again, this time to make $124 million in expenditure cuts and one-time transfers.
• March 10, 2016—The governor uses allotment authority to hit universities for $17 million in immediate cuts.
• May 18, 2016—Once again the governor’s allotment authority is used, this time to cut the approaching FY 2017 budget by $97 million, mostly through reductions to universities and Medicaid providers.
• May 27, 2016—The budget director announces that the 4th quarter payment to KPERS will be delayed until FY 2018, reducing expenses in FY 2016 by almost $100 million, but adding that expense plus 8 percent interest to what must be paid in FY 2018.
• June 22, 2016—The budget director announces at a State Finance Council meeting that the state will need to delay the last school payment of the year in order to close FY 2016 above zero, and then recommends that Kansas borrow $900 million on July 1, so that the state will have cash to operate in the new fiscal year.

No wonder it seems that Kansas has been precariously on the edge. We were. We still are.

Spending in the FY 2016 budget was constrained from the start, repeatedly cut during the fiscal year, and lowered further by delaying the fourth quarter KPERS payment, but in the end, expenses were still $506 million above recurring revenue, and that’s recurring revenue which included a big sales tax increase.

To bridge the structural gap, $277 million was transferred from the highway fund and $99 million from a series of other funds, and the small beginning bank balance was depleted. (The highway fund is also being used to directly pay expenses for things like school transportation.) Without all of those transfers the general fund would have been deeply in the red, but even with them, the general fund did not balance. To finish, the state pushed FY 2016 school finance bills into FY 2017 and then paid them with borrowed money in order to keep FY 2016 in the black on paper.

The $506 million structural gap, the lack of any cash reserves, the extraordinary use of one-time transfers, the delay of bill payments, and no plan in place to fix any of it caused Standard and Poor’s to again downgrade Kansas’ credit rating—our financial report card.

Unaffordable income tax cuts produced all this!

Next up for trouble: FY 2017.


—This post originally appeared on the Kansas Center for Economic Growth website.

Which Way, Kansas?

By Duane Goossen

Kansas has come to a “T” in the road and must decide whether to turn one way or the other. A more apt way to say it: Kansas has come to a “T” in the road, overshot the intersection, gone down in the ditch on the other side, and must struggle up out of the ditch and go one way or the other.

It’s a ditch of serious financial trouble. Kansas simply does not have enough revenue to pay bills. For more than 3 years running, expenses have outpaced tax revenue by hundreds of millions a year. How has Kansas survived financially? By blowing through every dollar held in reserve, borrowing, and moving money from kids’ programs and the highway fund. The state only escaped the last fiscal year by leaving approximately $175 million in bills unpaid, promising to make payment sometime in the future.

Kansas cannot do that anymore. All those use-up-the-savings, pay-later maneuvers made the state poorer and poorer, garnered yet another credit downgrade, and took us into the ditch. We are left with a stark directional choice: impose more spending cuts, or raise revenue. Deciding how to respond constitutes the most critical job lawmakers will have when they arrive at the 2017 legislative session in January.

Many current lawmakers acknowledge the financial ditch, but say it’s a spending problem. “Clearly we’re here because we haven’t cut expenses enough,” Senate President Wagle said in June.

Certainly there have been cuts—to road projects, universities, hospitals, classrooms—just not “enough.” Yet supporters of the cut-more direction often speak abstractly, rarely specifying what “more” means. In July Gov. Brownback signaled his willingness to make even deeper budget cuts, but would not name them, saying he wants the Legislature to lead the way.

In theory at least, cuts could go a lot deeper. Cut school funding in half! Withdraw all state support from universities! Put fewer highway patrol officers on the road! Dramatic, service-ending cuts can resolve the financial imbalance, and may be what some lawmakers have intended all along. Easy reductions were implemented long ago. Even a $3 million “efficiency study” commissioned by the Legislature yielded little to alter the current dynamic.

The other route open to Kansas adds revenue back. The 2012 income tax cuts—lowered rates and “business income” exemption—caused a huge swath of receipts to disappear. Income tax collections dropped $700 million the first year and cumulatively the revenue loss now exceeds $2 billion.

Lawmakers did raise sales and cigarette tax rates in 2015 to compensate, but the new revenue only dented the amount needed to make up the income tax revenue loss. So far, lawmakers have not been willing to revisit the income tax cuts that caused the state’s financial problems in the first place.

The business income exemption has elicited the most criticism. It’s unfair. People who receive paychecks, pay taxes. People who receive self-employment income, rental income, LLC income, or farm income, don’t pay. No other state sets up its tax system in such manner, so rescinding the exemption seems an obvious first step to financial health for Kansas, although that alone will not fix everything.

Which way? That’s the question at the heart of this year’s election cycle. A choice between deeper cuts to services or raising revenue has become unavoidable. Primary election voters expressed dissatisfaction with the current state of affairs by voting out many incumbent legislators. General election voters may well choose to fire some more. Election outcomes cannot remove the unpleasant choice ahead, but what happens in November will determine the path that Kansas takes.


—This post originally appeared in a variety of Kansas newspapers.