State getting an early start on budget fix

Though an early start won’t guarantee an easy finish, the GOP-led Legislature gets credit for already having crafted budget-repair bills in committees and advanced them to floor debates, beginning with the House on Wednesday.

The governor’s proposals have been met not with a rubber stamp, either, but with welcome scrutiny and revisions.

The budget panels in both the House and Senate wisely nixed the Brownback administration’s plan to divert $50.6 million in Children’s Initiatives Fund money to the state general fund, an unneeded move also inexplicably tied to shifting early childhood programs to the State Department of Education. Both chambers have targeted more money for the crises at the state mental hospitals, though not enough to counter the Osawatomie hospital’s recent loss of federal Medicare certification and accompanying potential hit of $1 million a month. Approaches in each chamber’s bills vary on worthy goals such as raises for corrections officers.

Regrettably, there’s probably no avoiding another dive into the highway fund.

Where lawmakers still risk going wrong is in using the budget to punish the University of Kansas for a mishandled out-of-state bonding maneuver.

Then there is the bad idea to enable the governor to delay state payments to the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System and make them later, perhaps with 8 percent interest. The state should not be deferring its obligations to KPERS, especially after having required state employees in recent years to contribute more to help sustain KPERS long term.

Nor should legislators follow through on the governor’s proposal to save $13.4 million by ending the KanCare health homes program, which would harm mental health providers and patients.

It’s unclear whether these bills would fully resolve the state’s projected budget deficit. A lot depends on whether monthly tax collections continue to lag estimates, and how the state’s economists respond in their April revenue projections.

That’s why legislators should make time in what they hope will be a comparatively brief session to give careful consideration to the recommendations of the consultants’ efficiency study.

It’s important to remember that the shameless sweeping of designated funds, the suspect bonding deals and mounting debt, the unhappiness inside and outside the Statehouse about such shortsighted financing measures – all stem from the unaffordable 2012 income tax cuts.

Because the governor and his allies view that reform as here to stay, though, the state also should expect the budget problems to keep going and going.

This story was originally published February 9, 2016 at 6:07 PM with the headline "State getting an early start on budget fix."