Capitol Beats: 'He backpedaled'
Check this spot on Sundays for a few quick hits about what’s driving the debate in the Legislature.
Say what?
“He backpedaled. He said one thing and then he’s doing something different.”
— Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, D-Wichita, on Gov. Sam Brownback’s decision to reduce K-12 education spending by $28 million midway through the school year. Brownback had previously promised to safeguard education funding.
“When I hear the governor talk about Kansas, I hear it’s the people of Kansas. The state of Kansas is good. Unemployment is down. Taxes are down. Then when I hear the rebuttal, Kansas is the government of Kansas. We got a deficit. We got a shortfall. We got problems. We got issues. So I guess the answer is, who is Kansas? That money didn’t leave the state. It’s, whose pocket is it in?”
— Sen. Ty Masterson, R-Andover, defending income tax cuts, which many have blamed for the state’s budget problems, during a Senate debate
$4,776,592
That’s the total amount that will be lost by Sedgwick County school districts under the governor’s plan to reduce school funding by 1.5 percent starting March 7.
Trending
Gov. Sam Brownback was the center of attention again last week at the Statehouse. During debates in the House and Senate over a bill meant to fill the state’s budget hole through June, moderate Republicans and Democrats decried the tax cuts that lawmakers passed and Brownback ushered into law in 2012. Rep. Stephanie Clayton, R-Overland Park, compared voting for the bill to giving a bottle of vodka to an alcoholic and told her colleagues it’s time to go to tax rehab.
The bill passed both chambers easily but came short of filling the budget gap by about $800,000. On Thursday the governor’s office announced additional budget cuts would be made to two areas he had originally left off the table, public education and the state’s universities.
News ahead
A House committee will hold two days of hearings on marriage this week. Gov. Sam Brownback called “the crisis of the family” the most pressing issue facing the state in his inaugural address last month. Rep. Steve Brunk, R-Wichita, chair of the Committee on Federal and State Affairs, plans to hold hearings that look at what he calls a “cultural breakdown” and the causes of divorce.
“Once there’s divorce, a lot of time people end up in poverty,” Brunk said. He said the hearings will feature presentations from the Department for Children and Families, and lawmakers will discuss whether the state can help people maintain their marriages. “Does the state have an interest in this? And the presumptive answer is yes.” Last year, a bill that would have made it more difficult to obtain a divorce failed to gain traction.
Bryan Lowry
For more legislative news, go to www.kansas.com/politics and follow @BryanLowry3 on Twitter.
This story was originally published February 7, 2015 at 6:10 PM with the headline "Capitol Beats: 'He backpedaled'."