State budget is a train wreck
Denial-based budgeting has had its chance. Kansas sorely needs leaders at the Statehouse willing to make tax and other fiscal policy sustainable and fair again.
That fact was confirmed by news of another month of disappointing tax collections, and of the measures being taken to cover a $76.2 million shortfall and end the fiscal year with a technically balanced budget.
No matter how pessimistic the official expectations, they continue to be too lofty.
In April the state’s economic gurus lowered their estimates of tax revenues for fiscal year 2016 by $177 million, after having done so by $160 million in November. Yet collections missed the latest projections by $74.5 million in May and by $34.5 million in June.
So the Brownback administration disclosed Friday that $260 million was being withheld from school districts’ June payment for a few days ($75 million more than the accounting gimmick usually involves). Other millions were found by sweeping funds for highways (again), corrections and children’s programs.
The administration’s latest maneuvers follow recent decisions to take out a record $900 million certificate of indebtedness to allow internal borrowing through the new fiscal year, and to make 4 percent cuts in reimbursement rates to Medicaid providers and to funding for state universities and most state agencies.
The pattern of paying bills by diverting dollars, adding debt and delaying payments persists even though the 2015 Legislature resorted to the largest tax hike in state history. It erased income tax deductions, raised tobacco taxes and pushed the sales tax on food and everything else to a shameful 6.5 percent statewide (and to 8, 9 or 10 percent with local rates added).
Instead of shifting the tax burden to those who can least afford it, lawmakers should have bucked Gov. Sam Brownback and rolled back the part of his 2012 income tax cuts that fully exempted pass-through income for 330,000 businesses. That tax break isn’t the entire problem, but it has favored many more people than planned without producing the promised job and other economic gains.
Some of Brownback’s remaining allies argue that his leadership, as well as that of the GOP-controlled Legislature, is best measured not by the soundness of the state budget but by Kansans’ tax savings. But that savings has not been fairly shared. Nor is it prudent when the state is in a chronic state of shortfall and on watch for further credit agency downgrades.
Good legislative candidates are out there – Kansans who care more about adequately funded public schools, affordable higher education, and reliable social and other state services than they do about party lines.
Identifying and electing them should be the highest priority for voters in the Aug. 2 GOP primary and on Nov. 8.
This story was originally published July 3, 2016 at 12:07 AM with the headline "State budget is a train wreck."