Posted on Sun, Nov. 01, 2009

e-mail	print	RSS	reprint
AIM	Digg it	del.icio.us	Facebook

State budget problems taking toll

Even though Sedgwick County "may be crawling out of recession," as an Eagle headline put it last week, the funding cuts already made to the state budget are straining services statewide.

The impressive good will with which much of the budget-cutting was met earlier this year is straining, too.

"We can't afford more cuts," said Fort Hays State University president Edward Hammond, suggesting the state university system was in a "monumental" funding crisis (it's been cut 12 percent this year, yet enrollment is up over last fall).

"We're really starting to feel some pain," Kansas State Board of Education chairwoman Janet Waugh also said last week, urging lawmakers not to cut K-12 funding further (per-pupil state aid was cut 4.8 percent this year).

Schools for Fair Funding, which is considering litigation against the state, now has 30 member districts representing nearly 122,000 students. "If they don't go in and do something, we're going to have a huge, huge problem," said Linda Owen, president of the South Hutchinson-Nickerson board of education, which joined the Schools for Fair Funding group last week.

The same sentiments have been heard regarding corrections, services for Kansans with disabilities and more.

One can only shudder at the thought of how much worse the hurt might have been if not for the federal stimulus funds to Kansas, which amounted to $505 million through September.

Asked last week on his travels around the state what Kansans should do if revenue continues to fall short, Fort Hays' Hammond advised: "pray."

That was before Friday's revenue numbers, which showed that taxes are about $80 million short of expectations for the fiscal year that began July 1. Preliminary revenue numbers for October were $15 million under projections. When state economic forecasters meet this week, they'll issue a new estimate of the size of the budget hole — putting pressure on Gov. Mark Parkinson to find more places to cut for this fiscal year and to balance the 2011 budget blueprint he'll present to lawmakers in January.

To his credit, the governor doesn't expect to leave it to legislators to cut current-year spending once again. He said last week: "When the Legislature comes back, this budget will be in balance.... I'm going to take all the heat."

But his cuts will leave the Legislature fewer options for future budgets. That's why last week saw Parkinson join those starting to talk about tax increases as one possible answer. "We're getting very close to that point," Parkinson said Friday.

Hand it to Hammond to get the conversation going regarding ways to "rebalance" not only higher-education funding but the state's tax structure. He's advocating that all sales-tax exemptions be eliminated, that the state sales tax be cut by as much as half, and that corporate income taxes be eliminated. He argues that the new local sales-tax windfall currently lost to $4 billion in exemptions in turn could enable local governments to reduce property-tax rates — steps that would help recruit new taxpaying businesses to Kansas.

Such reform wouldn't be easy, Hammond acknowledged, suggesting the sales-tax exemption repeal could be called the "Lobbyist Employment Guarantee Act."

But "in a crisis," he said, "you're not going to solve it by doing easy things."

He's right about that. In the coming months, other Kansas leaders will need to be similarly creative in their thinking about how to usher the state through this budgetary bind.

— For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

     Showing: Oldest first Newest first Most-recommended first Least-recommended first

@Nyx.AuthorDisplayName@ wrote on @Nyx.PostedAtTime@:

@Nyx.CommentBody@

@Nyx.Recommender@ @Nyx.AbuseReporter@