April 2011
April 28, 2011
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers April 25, 2011)Under the microscope
Talk to the old-timers, the insiders, the folks who have watched government in Kansas for decades, and they are most anxious about the last-confirmed Cabinet secretary, the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services’ Rob Siedlecki.
He’s Gov. Sam Brownback’s choice to run the massive social service agency, he’s from Florida, he talks about “faith-based” contractors for social services, and…just maybe…the possibility of churches or church-affiliated groups becoming key players in the state’s efforts to assist the poor, the sick, the disadvantaged.
And, though he’s pleasant and energetic, he’s also probably the most closely watched of Brownback’s team to manage a major state department. Rarely have Democrats, moderate Republicans, and the dozens of lobbyists for social services been so anxious about an SRS secretary.
Remember, at one point, the Senate Ways and Means Committee was so wary of Siedlecki it added a provision to an appropriations bill that would have prevented him from making even routine shuffling of money among line items in his agency budget.
Essentially, had the proviso not been defeated on the Senate floor, a smart high school kid could have managed SRS. No flexibility, no ability to respond to emergencies, no real management authority, just checking in and opening the mail.
But he was confirmed, and the handcuffs removed, and he’s bought a house in Topeka.
What’s the concern? Faith-based business. It can’t be done with direct payments to religious groups…but that can be sidestepped if SRS clients are given vouchers for services and use them with faith-based outfits. Those vouchers are still being studied by SRS, but practically, as long as a client has convenient access to a non-faith-based provider of services—a choice—there probably isn’t a legal problem.
Yet, it has social service agencies and their lobbyists a little spooked.
Oh, and then there was the presentation to the House Appropriations Committee, where the agency outlined some potential options for budget reductions within SRS. Nothing definite, just the possibilities for budget cuts if SRS appropriations are below the governor’s suggestion.
The list? It includes reducing contracts with social services providers by 10 percent, reducing SRS and state hospital staff by 5 percent, eliminating Early Head Start, closing Rainbow Mental Health facility, and other possibilities. There are also internal agency cuts that the public won’t really notice—delay new computer purchases, for example—but nobody knows for sure.
The social services industry in Kansas isn’t one that likes to be dragged into new concepts, especially those which “weren’t invented here.”
SRS is a daunting enough agency to manage, and the spotlight on Siedlecki won’t make the job easier. You gotta hope everything works, of course. But it’s going to be a tough job.
Now that he’s confirmed, the spotlight has dimmed a bit, maybe to be replaced by a microscope.
April 21, 2011
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers April 18, 2011)Fun with numbers…
Well, we got the best estimate last week from the state’s fiscal/economic gurus that Kansas is likely to take in $31.7 million less in revenues than the same group predicted in November.
That’s the Consensus Revenue Estimating Group, and the CREG estimates are the bedrock on which all state budgets are based. That figure is what the Legislature is going to use to figure out how to put together a budget for the remaining two months of this fiscal year and the new fiscal year that starts July 1.
The real news? It’s not as bad as some had feared. Now, $31 million and change isn’t…well, change, but it’s manageable. The recession’s impact isn’t ending quite as quickly as we might have hoped, but it isn’t getting much worse, percentage-wise, for the state budget.Nobody, of course, wanted the predicted downturn…but if there’s a bright side to the estimate, it probably is something almost unrelated to short-term fiscal policy.
Yes, hidden in the mounds of data there’s an estimate based on recent information and, well, on who knows what economists roll into their view of the state and its finances, that fewer Kansans are going to spend the next year smoking.
What?
Yes, from Fiscal Year 2010, which ended June 30, 2010, to the end of Fiscal Year 2012, which will end June 30, 2012, the economic/fiscal gurus figure that Kansans will be paying nearly $8 million less in taxes on cigarettes.
Last year, cigarette tax receipts fell 5.8%, and the estimators figure that there’s going to be another $2 million in lost revenue from cigarette taxes by the time everyone is warming up for the 4th of July next year.
Cigarette taxes don’t sound like a big deal when you’re considering tax revenues for the state, but last fiscal year, Kansans paid $99.8 million in smoke taxes. That’s, let’s see, that’s about 125 million packs of cigarettes. The latest estimate for smokers, starting July 1, is just 116 million packs of smokes.
Fewer smokers? The same smokers cutting down because they have to go outside to smoke? More rain, more snow, more ice that makes you put on your coat at the bar to venture out? Who knows?Now, there’s probably a long-range effect on the reduced smoking that the revenue estimators predict. Maybe less people in hospitals, maybe fewer sofa cushions reupholstered or house fires. Who knows?
But…while Kansans aren’t outside smoking and generating revenues for the state, the schools, the poor and the bureaucrats, the estimators predict that there’s going to be more drinking; about $4.5 million worth, according to the taxes levied on liquor and the stores and bars where it’s sold.
Figure out yourself what, if the revenue estimators are correct, your next date night is going to look like… maybe you can make a drinking game out of the Consensus Revenue Estimate report.
April 14, 2011
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers April 11, 2011)A shift…
You probably didn’t read much about it, but the Kansas House made a dramatic shift in direction just before it took off for the Legislature’s spring break.
You remember all the talk about cutting state employee wages—mostly from conservatives who don’t work for the state—well, it may have just gone away.
An amendment to the embattled appropriations bill that the House considered stripped all that pay cut business out of the bill and instead ordered much of state government to cut spending by 1.193 percent for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The idea was that of State Rep. Mario Goico, R-Wichita, and it passed the House easily, though, it was dark outside and Wichita State University had just won the NIT basketball championship, so House members were excited.The money side of the deal is a wash. Cutting state salaries by a total of $23 million equals a 1.193 cut in spending. Goico exempted schools, social services and debt payments from his cut.
So why is a fiscally transparent amendment a big deal? It is, of course, the politics.
For dozens of House members last fall, cutting state pay was a campaign issue—and will be one next year when the entire House and the Senate are up for election.
Except for a group of maybe 40 or so House members, most legislators really didn’t like cutting salaries of state employees, ranging from Supreme Court justices to the governor to legislators to the middle-management-and-below state workers.
But, the issue was a hot one on the parking lots last year. Maybe a judge drove by in his Buick-or-better, or was seen picking up starched shirts from the laundry, but state pay was a big deal. State employee unions opposed it, of course, and called it “balancing the budget on the backs of workers.” Those unions contribute to campaigns.
The Goico amendment also delegates the tough work to the chief executive of the state—Gov. Sam Brownback. If the amendment sticks to the yet-to-be passed appropriations bill, Brownback will order his Cabinet secretaries and agency chiefs to cut spending. It’s not enough of a cut—1.193 percent—to make headlines. Count on Brownback getting virtually no political credit for ordering the cuts.
It’s a shift from a high-profile budget cut to a nearly invisible budget cut. The people who wanted to cut state pay to look fiscally conservative in the papers or on their campaign palm cards next year lose a bullet point. The moderates show that it’s possible to cut budgets without punishing people who just happen to work for the state.
***
The real issue for the Legislature when it returns at the end of the month to assemble a final budget? It’s whether enough lawmakers decide that Goico’s $23 million plus the pay cuts $23 million are finally real money, and try to take both.
It’ll get interesting.
April 7, 2011
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers April 4, 2011)A safe piggy bank
Something amazing happened during the 14-hour House session last week when the chamber passed its version of the rescission/Mega appropriations bill.
It was hard to detect for most newspaper readers, but it is something that motorists might want to take notice of.Not one dime—above the $200 million that Gov. Sam Brownback swiped from the budget of the Kansas Department of Transportation—was taken by House vote from the massive budget of the agency.
Brownback, like other governors of late, wasn’t bashful about taking in his budget the road-building/pothole-filling/snow-removing $200 million from KDOT. But Brownback indicated that enough is enough, and his $200 million was enough to make his budget plan work.
While House members were scratching around for a couple million here, a couple million there for mostly social service programs, they were unsuccessful in attempts to pull more money from KDOT.
That’s almost a miracle, especially in the new era of Pay-
Go in the House where floor amendments to spending bills must match new spending with an equal-to or larger cut from some other budget contained in the bill. That Pay-Go means essentially that whatever the total amount of spending the House Appropriations Committee approves will be the total amount of spending in the bill. You can shuffle money between funds, but every dime of new spending has to come from somewhere else in the budget.
With KDOT’s piggy bank safe, where did the money for support of social programs come from? Either the Kansas Bioscience Authority or the trust fund established to soften the property tax blow to southwestern Kansas counties which sit atop the rapidly emptying Hugoton natural gas fields and which are losing natural gas property taxes.
Maybe Brownback’s emphasis on jobs—and KDOT spending provides thousands and thousands of jobs working on the state’s road network—was heeded. Maybe it’s that bids for highway construction are lower than expected, and this is the time to get more bang for the state’s highway improvement buck. Or maybe it’s just that KDOT has taken enough lumps in recent years and it’s time for a break.
Or…just maybe…for all the parking lot talk about downsizing government, saving money and cutting budgets, there is some level of state taxpayer supported services that even the most fiscal conservatives won’t abide cutting. And maybe that’s the smooth ride, or at least no worse ride, on their highways.
Politically? For all the talk of cutting, Brownback and the House have found one area in which they believe that some basic level of service, of convenience, of everyday life they’ll trim but not butcher.
What do we read into the protection of KDOT, if there is anything to be read into it at all? Avoiding the tried-and-true piggy bank of KDOT means something. We just need to figure out what.