February 2001

Feb. 22, 2001
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 19, 2001)

How to finance education?

There are two relatively strong personalities at work in the Legislature's consideration of a series of three less-than-memorable sales tax increases to finance school funding for the coming school year.

One, Senate President Dave Kerr, R-Hutchinson, proposes that the Senate spend some more time considering whether the .2 cents times 3 program proposed by a handful of Senators is the best way to raise money for elementary and secondary schools (that plan is a .2 percent sales tax increase for the next three fiscal years).

Another, House Speaker Kent Glasscock, R-Manhattan, proposes that his chamber doesn't want to raise taxes at all, and that for all he or anyone else knows there is plenty of money already being spent on public education.
Hmmm.... It doesn't sound logical to Railsters that both can be right.

The Glasscock proposal sounds more interesting from the get-go. He's on a kick to improve early childhood education from birth to 3rd Grade. We call it B-3 in the Statehouse, that effort to provide more opportunities for children to catch on to school and basic skills by the time they are ready to enter Grade 4.

Glasscock's concept is that by rearranging existing spending, Kansas might have brand-spanking new 4th graders who have basic skills at reading, writing and mathematics that would put pupils on a winning track by the time they are ready for higher grades. The concept is that we concentrate spending of whatever the state spends on B-3, and, well, if it means that the high school marching band wears distinctive T-shirts instead of uniforms that are reminiscent of officers on the HMS Pinafore, well, so be it.

What if there's plenty of money being spent on elementary education and we're just spending it in the wrong places? That's possible.

Kerr isn't an out-of-the-box thinker, most of us have detected by this time, and barring some epiphany, he's going to settle on a way to tweak the existing school finance formula a dab, find a little money somewhere for a one-year solution, and not sign on for a three-year program of tax increases each July 1.

It would be nice if right about now someone, somewhere in Kansas, knew whether Glasscock's ideas are dead-on accurate, or whether he's wandering around like a goose in the moonlight.

Similarly, while few doubt that Kerr can probably find the money for a one-year boost in state aid to education, it would be comforting to know that about this time next year there is going to be a new "best thing" coming along that would make his measured approach the smartest idea going.

If you remember your closest friend who bought an 8-track tape player just before cassettes took off, you'll remember why sometimes it is best to watch and wait a year.

So now we have a House that is being gently tugged in the direction of concentrating what money the state has to spend on education on B-3, and a Senate which is being advised to measure twice and proceed slowly.

That's why Kerr has handed the Senate Education Committee more time to ruminate about K-12 education and what its funding needs are and where to get the money...and mostly whether it wants to set the state on a three-year tax increase program.

The only thing Railsters know for sure is that if there is a tax increase, it's going to be a sales tax increase. These are Republicans, for gosh sakes. They're not going to reach into the bag of taxes and reauthorize the intangibles tax (on interest and dividend earnings) and they're not going to add another bracket to the income tax so that the wealthiest of Kansans can pay a bit more for public education.

If it's a tax increase, and that's not a done deal by a long shot, it's going to be sales tax.

Count on that.

Feb. 15, 2001
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 12, 2001)

Eyeing hidden money

It is starting to look a lot like "empty your pockets" time at the Kansas Statehouse.

The situation: A shortfall of revenues, nobody very willing to start talking about raising taxes, and pesky bills piling up.

So quietly for now, legislators and even the soft voices from Gov. Bill Graves' office are starting to mention that Kansas has more than $100 million, probably closer to $120 million, tied up in trust funds or diversions from the state general fund that might be tapped to finance state employee raises, welfare caseloads and good old insatiable school finance.

You can call them "feel good" funds--funds that in good times are just sitting idly by earning interest at the best rates the state's pension program can generate.

The two top feel good funds? One is the Children's Trust Fund, into which all federal tobacco settlement monies flow. It receives about $70 million a year, and it is earmarked to do good things for children. Oh, and don't forget the Senior Pharmacy Act Trust Fund, expected to collect about $70 million this year, too, though it's not really turning out the money that is expected of it yet.

Why did we wind up with these special sink-holes for money that in other times would make the usual swing into and out of the state general fund?

The simple reason is that both represented giant wads of cash that Graves knew--correctly--would create flurries of spending.

Best tactic is to take those big wads of cash and quickly sweep them off the table so that the Legislature couldn't get to them easily. As a budgeting and crowd control maneuver, creating these special funds was a good tactic.

But now, if the state is going to do even a dab of good for K-12 public education, it's time to pull those funds back onto the table. But it has to be done quickly.

The tobacco money, understand, is already controversial. Anti-tobacco forces badly want that money spent on programs to teach kids how not to smoke. Or, maybe more correctly, why not to smoke. The tobacco fund is the loosest change in the Statehouse because it is understood that the money is merely laundered through the Children's Cabinet and once dipped, can be spent about anywhere that the Legislature wants it to be spent. It's available for use, though it will cause lots of caterwauling.

The Senior Trust Fund is the money that really has a short fuse. Created last year as a place to hide up to $70 million from the Intergovernmental Transfer program that the Department on Aging found described in federal law apparently written in Arabic, that money is supposed to be banked, and the interest from it used to pay for prescription drugs for senior citizens. All it takes is a redesignation of that trust fund and the money is available to be spent.

Why the need for speed? Because senior Kansans really don't know that the money is there yet, and really haven't adopted it as "their" money. It's easier to steal money that people don't know is theirs, and if legislators decide to dip into the Senior Trust Fund, they need to do it before seniors know about it.

Older Kansans--take the example of last year's attempted pension fund diversion--tend to be possessive of money they believe is theirs.

What happens if the Legislature empties out those two funds? Quite simply, the whole revenue shortfall situation that legislators and the governor are shouting about just disappear.

Can it be done? Can peace be restored to the valley? Probably.

Will it be done? Not until the April 4 consensus revenue estimating group gets together and gives us what will be the final answer on the state of the state's economy as lawmakers wrap up spending for the current fiscal year which ends June 30 and the last forecast of revenues for the next fiscal year which starts July 1.

It's going to be an interesting couple months while the state watchesfeel-good funds with one eye and state revenue collections with the other.

 

Feb. 8, 2001
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Feb. 5, 2001)

What's a coffee mug worth?

Well, we Railsters, who understand the culture of the Statehouse, generally weren't surprised that the first-round of significant lobbying expenditures reported under the new "holier than thou" lobbyist gift rules didn't make any of the newspapers in the state.

The rule for the reporting, remember, was to make sure that every legislator who got anything from a lobbyist would have his or her name reported publicly by the lobbyists, and that the recipient legislator would be severely judged on whether or not said legislator had been bought lock, stock and barrel by any lobbyists.

This was supposed to create an atmosphere of high-minded legislators and ensure that no legislator ignored his or her constituents in favor of a free lunch or reception or calendar or coffee mug or cleverly wrapped assortment of knickknacks.

It was supposed to require that every single gift, no matter how inexpensive or even foolish, that might color a legislator's voting behavior would not be missed by the public.

Railsters weren't impressed with the law, and remain unimpressed.

But, the first tip-of-the-session lobbyist reports are in, and are you curious who the two top lobbyist-spenders are? Who has the inside track on whipsawing the Legislature based on expenditures from September through Dec. 31?

Well, No. 1 is Bernie Koch, of the Wichita Chamber of Commerce, who invited his area's legislators to a reception and paid $625.78 for their meals. No. 2 is Keith Landis, of the notorious influence-peddling Christian Science Committee on Publication for Kansas, who spent $611.49 in the four-month period. He gave three-month subscriptions to the Christian Science Monitor worth $35.97 apiece to 17 legislators.

Talk around the Rail at the Statehouse is that Kansas' political morality probably isn't too bad when the No. 2 spender among lobbyists is a Christian Scientist whose primary aim in lobbying is to make sure that no state law prohibits Kansans from turning to prayer for its healing effect.

Now, the time period for the reports isn't the heat-of-battle months when the Legislature is in session, but it includes the time during summer interim committee meetings when the Statehouse is nearly empty except for small groups of legislators and lobbyists. And, it does include the month during which legislative leaders are elected and committee chairmen are appointed and most lobbyists know who is going to be guiding the fate of their legislation for the year.

Looking for the spending list on the Internet so you can track who got what from whom? Maybe later this month it will be posted.

But, because of a mini-furor among legislators, the real silliness of the law and its interpretation will be lost on most Kansans. See, the Ethics Commission decided that gifts with a value of less than $10 won't be listed on the Internet where most Kansans are likely to find them, if they really care.

What does the $10 or less gift blackout do? Well, it cuts down sharply the amount of space, or whatever it is that the Internet has that equates to space or paper or information, that will be used. And that means legislators who accept the little stuff--the pens and coffee cups and toothbrushes (handed out by the Powerful Kansas Dental Association)--won't be listed individually.
But it also means that legislators who routinely accept absolutely nothing won't be able to prove their virtue, if it's virtue, either.

Have legislators taken their biggest step toward provable ethical behavior of the last century? Probably not.

But we'll be certain later this month, when the Jan. 1-Jan. 31 lobbyist spending reports are turned in and analyzed.

And while there has been a story or two about the cumbersome process of listing which lobbyists spent how much on whom, look for the newest report to trigger some common-sense amendment of the lobbyist reporting law.

It'll happen.

 

Feb. 1, 2001
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Jan. 29, 2001)

Modern-day Robin Hoods?

We Railsters sure wish there was some way to provide natural gas utility bill relief to poor Kansans without extorting money from businesses and industries.

And we suspect, in fact, know, there is a way to help poor people pay their gas bills. There's a better way than playing Robin Hood and hoping that legislators get their pictures in the local newspapers grinning about helping the poor by stealing, or extorting, from the rich.

Republicans in the Legislature held a press conference to announce they plan to hijack refunds that are to be paid through local natural gas utilities to customers who more than 15 years ago paid more for natural gas than they should have.

It was a complicated time, and what basically happened is that Kansas producers and pipelines got to pass through to consumers some costs that were OK then, but aren't OK now.

That overpayment is being settled out for dimes on the dollar...but so far, about $12 million has been received by Kansas distribution utilities, and distributed under direction of the Kansas Corporation Commission through the American Red Cross to poor people. Legislators close to the secret, high-dollar negotiations for settlements say $30 million might be available to help poor Kansans pay their gas bills.

But the key to this whole refund issue is that people who paid too much for natural gas years ago ought to get that overpayment back. Ideally, the exact same people who burned that natural gas decades ago ought to get the refunds. But utilities maintain it's way too complicated to find those customers. Some may have moved, some surely have died and probably no residential consumer has any receipts from the 1970s.

But you know what? Chances are that while lots of individual residential customers probably can't be found, Railsters bet that outfits like Goodyear and Boeing and Vulcan Industries and the big boys of the natural gas-burning universe know about how much gas they burned and when they burned it and know how much they're owed.

Businesses are like that...businesslike.

So, some of those businesses were probably a little surprised last week when they saw a line of Republicans, more than 20 of them, propose to seize the businesses rebates for natural gas, and hand them to residential natural gas consumers who are hard-hit by skyrocketing prices.

Know what? This doesn't feel right. Somewhere in the pit of most people's stomachs, there's a little metallic feeling that signals when something isn't right.

This is simply handing someone else's money to constituents and claiming credit for it. Sure, poor people need help paying their natural gas bills. And the state has a responsibility to make sure that Kansans have heat this winter, no matter what happens to natural gas prices. But extorting money from businesses to hand to the poor, or at least relatively poor, isn't right.

No press conferences. No photographs. No TV news accounts of magnanimous corporations helping their customers and employees. Just pictures of legislators--and in this case, just Republican legislators--grinning about helping poor people with money they essentially stole from businesses. Now, that's a pretty Republican principle...steal from the rich and give to the poor. Railsters figure we'll see that on campaign literature in a couple years...

The businesses essentially were told by Republican legislators: If you don't go along with this extortion, you can sue us and we'll make you look selfish and greedy. We may even find someone frozen to death that we can blame on you, so just try to get your money back.

Is that right? No. If the Legislature wants to help people with natural gas bills, the way to do it is the old fashioned way. The Legislature can appropriate money. If the state doesn't have the money laying around, well, it has taxing authority to tax someone or something to get the money.

If legislators are serious about helping people with their utility bills, they need to do it, not whine about not having money, not steal it from businesses, not see how clever they can be. You just do it.