Guns, schools, taxes: How Kansas lawmakers could change your life in 2018

Kansas lawmakers get back to work on Monday and are set to tackle topics – taxes, schools, guns and others – that could directly affect you.

This is an election year, and campaigns for governor are already under way. Gov. Sam Brownback’s stalled nomination to be ambassador at large for international religious freedom means he will deliver a State of the State speech on Jan. 9, then release a spending plan the next day.

After that, the 2018 session begins in earnest. Here’s five ways the Legislature and the governor could affect you and the people in your life this year.

1. Your taxes

Lawmakers raised income taxes last spring, overriding a veto from Brownback and rolling back much of the tax cuts he championed in 2012. The increase is expected to generate about $1.2 billion in new revenue over two years.

But the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in the fall that state funding of schools is inadequate. Those who sued the state estimate that up to $600 million more may be needed for the court to find the state’s funding system constitutional; many lawmakers disagree with that assessment.

Where lawmakers would turn for any added revenue isn’t clear. Some Republican leaders have ruled out tax increases, however.

Bottom line: Your taxes could go up if lawmakers need significantly more funding for schools.

2. Your schools

The Supreme Court ruling means lawmakers must rework the school funding formula passed by the Legislature in 2017. That will inevitably mean changes in how much money each school receives.

The funding formula is complex and changes to funding levels at specific schools are hard to predict. All indications from the court are that funding cannot go down, however. Most predict funding will increase.

The Supreme Court has given an April deadline for lawmakers to tell the court how they plan to respond.

Some Republican lawmakers have said they want to pursue a constitutional amendment that could either stop the Supreme Court from closing schools or would provide more direction over how the court should interpret the constitution’s provisions on education.

Bottom line: Your child’s or grandchild’s school will probably get at least the same amount of money, and possibly more.

3. Your elderly parents and people you know with disabilities

The Brownback administration wants to overhaul the state’s Medicaid program, called KanCare. Medicaid provides health insurance coverage to disabled and low-income people. It also pays for the care of low-income elderly people who are in nursing homes.

Launching the next version of KanCare, which officials call KanCare 2.0, will not require legislative action. But lawmakers could step in and place additional oversight requirements on the program, which has sparked complaints of problematic service and application backlogs.

Officials say the next version will include a work requirement they estimate will affect a few thousand out of the more than 400,000 people in the program. Pregnant women, people with disabilities, those in long-term care and those caring for children under six would be exempt.

The Brownback administration also says it wants to use KanCare 2.0 to increase access to community-based services that allow people to stay out of institutions.

Lawmakers supportive of Medicaid expansion will likely try again to gain approval for that. Expansion passed the Legislature in 2017, but was vetoed by Brownback. An attempt to override his veto failed.

Expansion would make more people eligible to join Medicaid. The federal government would pay for 90 percent of the additional costs, but opponents argue Congress might alter that percentage or eliminate expansion entirely at some point.

Bottom line: Kansas officials say the new version of KanCare will provide better service for recipients after complaints and long waits for application processing.

4. Your guns

Two bills already filed would affect what kind of gun accessories you can have and might cause you to keep a closer eye on your firearms.

House Bill 2442 would prohibit bump stocks and similar devices. Bump stocks can turn semi-automatic weapons effectively into automatic weapons. A shooter in an October mass shooting in Las Vegas used a bump stock.

In the wake of the shooting, some members of Congress pushed to ban bump stocks. But federal efforts to advance legislation have stalled.

Another bill, House Bill 2443, would make unlawfully abandoning your firearm either a class C misdemeanor or a felony if someone is hurt or killed.

The bill comes after Rep. Willie Dove, R-Bonner Springs, left a loaded firearm in a committee room in the Statehouse last year.

Bottom line: Lawmakers could ban a gun accessory that allows weapons to fire automatically, and toughen penalties for leaving your weapon in a public place.

5. Your roads

For years, Kansas diverted millions of dollars intended for highways and other transportation projects. Since 1999, Kansas has transferred more than $2 billion from the state highway fund into the state general fund, where it can be used to pay for general government operations.

While some transfers are typical, in recent years the Brownback administration relied more heavily on transfers to help stabilize the state budget.

After lawmakers passed tax increases into law last year, the budget has stabilized. But Kansas is still drawing funds that are meant for highways. Some lawmakers want to continue to lower the amount of highway funding going toward other purposes.

Bottom line: Lawmakers want more money intended for highway projects to actually be used on highway projects.

This story was originally published January 7, 2018 at 11:20 AM with the headline "Guns, schools, taxes: How Kansas lawmakers could change your life in 2018."