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News On the first day of the 2010 Kansas congressional legislative session, Democratic Governor Mark Parkinson gave Monday his final state of the state speech that included a proposal to temporarily increase the state sales tax by 1 percent to bandage a near $400 million budget shortfall.
According to governor's budget report, the 1 percent sales tax could bring in an estimated $308 million dollars. In addition to the sales tax increase, a rise in cigarette tax to $1.34 from 79 cents could bring in an additional $70 million. After three years, the sales tax would be mostly rolled back. Liberal's Republican Sen. Tim Huelskamp last week said he expected a tax increase from the governor and did not agree with any raise in taxes. "When you're in the middle of a pretty deep recesssion and (you see) thousands of Kansans, newly laid of from work last year, it's time to tighten our belt," Huelskamp said. "Tax increases are just not an option in my book."
Senate President Stephen Morris of Hugoton said Monday night in an interview with PBS that the governor's tax increases were a surprise. "I think it was good that he said he would accept alternatives," Morris said. "If we could find another reasonable way to balance the budget, he would be open to that. I don't know whether a sales tax would fly, but in this business the only surprise that you have is that there are no surprises." Last week, Morris told The Southwest Times removing sales tax exemptions, at least temporarily over the next three-to-four years, would bring in additional revenues. Morris, however, declined to say which sales tax exemptions he was looking to eliminate. He did not want constituencies to derail anything before legislators had a chances to look at sales tax exemptions.
"The package that we're looking at could bring us in the neighborhood of $230 million in revenue," Morris said. "When we don't have any good options, you have to look at the best of the bad options. That might be one of the better options to look at." In his speech, the governor said the repercussions from his last rounds of cuts have been felt throughout the state's public services. "The last round of cuts, the cuts that I imposed in November, were brutal," Parkinson said. "School's have closed. Professors have been laid off ... We've had to reduce the supervision of prisoners out on parole. We've had to cut medicaid reimbursement." Parkinson asked for support in a new constitutional amendment to create reserve funds in good financial years in order to help prevent another budget crisis. Sens. John Vratil, a Leawood Republican, and Laura Kelly, a Topeka Democrat, will co-author the amendment to create a "rainy day fund" that would put 1 percent of the state's general funds when the state sees an increase of 3 percent in revenues. Morris said he has seen previous attempt in 2009, passed by the senate, to create similar legislation but died because the house did not pass a similar bill. "We need something in place so that we can start building a reserve so that when this happens again, we don't have quite the pressure," Morris said. "There is actually a statutory requirement to maintain a 7.5 percent ending balance but we haven't been able to honor that over the last two or three years because of budget presure. We need some kind of mechanism that will help us long term." If the Kansan house and senate approve the sales and cigarette tax, schools would get an additional $33 million, $22 million would go to restore medicaid provider rates, universities would get $10 million, and prisons would get $4.7 million. Huelskamp said the 2010 session will not see a lot of new programs. He would rather find ways to keep money in Kansan pockets. "With our budget challenges we certainly have an opportunity to restructure and reform state government and do more with less," Huelskamp said. For full story please see Wednesday's Times © Copyright 2008 Southwest Times |
