February 2010
Feb. 25, 2010
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 22, 2010)A little something…
That conservative think tank that most of the public education industry discounted for its assertion that school districts had hundreds of millions of dollars squirreled away in obscure special accounts won a small, quiet victory last week in the Legislature.
It was the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy—it recently changed its name to the Kansas Policy Institute—that posited that there are millions hidden in special accounts and that the Legislature could reduce its expenditure on K-12 education without damaging the enterprise of educating Kansas children.
Well, last week the House passed a bill that will allow school districts that have shifted some of their money into specialized capital outlay funds to bring that money back out into the daylight of their contingency reserve funds from which the money can be spent for, well, contingencies of running a school district.
The estimated amount that is moveable under the House-passed bill is maybe $40 million, an amount worth mentioning.
Here’s how it works. When districts last year saw tough economic times coming, some moved money from their general funds into the capital outlay fund, where it wasn’t useable for general operating purposes, just capital improvement projects. Some districts moved money into capital outlay which didn’t have real projects queued up or any special plans to spend the money on bricks and mortar or even to paint or repair buildings.The presumption underlying the House bill is that if districts have available money in those capital outlay accounts, they can move it back out for general operation of the schools. If a district has bonds or contractors to pay off, the money can’t be moved. But if it’s just idling there, well, it can be put back into the general budget and maybe those districts won’t have to raise mill levies or lean on the Legislature for more money.
Now, not all districts have extra money in their capital improvement funds, and districts can’t transfer money that has been voter-approved for capital projects. The presumption is that smaller districts with no building projects under way or planned may have squirreled away that money and now are free to bring it out of the specialized fund.
Is this a big deal?In the intense politics of financing public education, $40 million is relatively small change. The school industry isn’t making a big deal out of it. And, surprisingly, the folks who raised a fuss about the “hidden” funds aren’t, either…yet.
School districts have a handful of special accounts into which they can assign money that puts it out of reach for general educational use. Some of those are just common sense. You want to be sure that districts have enough money to buy food for lunches or fuel buses or pay utilities. The Kansas Policy Institute probably lost political ground railing at money transferred into those common-sense specialized accounts.
But the House bill is likely to increase—by some yet-unknown amount—the credibility of that group for discovering some money sequestered in capital outlay.
The 2010 legislative session is just half over. We’ll see where this goes…
Feb. 18, 2010
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 15, 2010)The other tax…
While most of the hall chatter at the Statehouse this session has been about a sales tax and/or cigarette tax increase, there’s another $200 million-plus tax increase that is ordained to occur without much discussion.
That tax increase is for employers who pay unemployment insurance taxes into a now-broke Kansas Unemployment Trust Fund from which tens of thousands of Kansans receive weekly benefits when they are laid off from their jobs.
It’s not something that shows up on your paycheck and for almost a decade the tax rate has been low for most employers—one of those little costs of doing business that wasn’t a big deal until the trust fund ran dry during the recession.
When the Kansas economy was cooking, employers who didn’t lay off employees—they call them “positive balance employers”—paid a fraction of a percent of their payroll into the trust fund. And, as long as the economy was cooking, the payments were negligible. Negative balance employers—those who actually laid off workers—paid a tax of 4 percent for most industries and 6 percent for the construction trade into the trust fund from which jobless benefit checks are paid.
With the recession, the 2009 payments which were scheduled to be $304 million were reduced to just $198 million needed to top off the trust fund. That’s because the 2009 rates were set in 2008, when unemployment was low. Those taxes calculated on job losses which showed up in 2009 will soar to $407 million for 2010. Even employers who haven’t laid off workers will see their taxes increase dramatically. Some will pay 10 times what they paid last year, and that’s a problem for them, as you might expect.
What’s happening to them? Well, lawmakers in the House and Senate are trying to figure out a way to soften the impact of those higher taxes—not eliminate them, just soften the impact somehow—for those employers so, presumably, they don’t have to lay off workers to save the money to pay unemployment premiums to pay benefits to unemployed workers.
Some of the suggestions so far are to break up the quarterly tax payments employers make into the unemployment trust fund. Because Kansas employers pay those taxes on the first $8,000 of wages paid workers, about 60 percent of most employers’ annual tax payments come in the first quarter of the calendar year. That’s causing sticker shock for employers.
They know they’re on the hook for the taxes, but legislators are obviously not keen on employers having to lay off workers to save enough money to pay unemployment taxes. That’s a little backwards, of course.
The solution? It’s still in the works, but it looks like it could be spreading that first calendar-quarter payment over more time, maybe giving employers another month or two to make that first payment. Too long, and interest penalties accrue, too short and the fix doesn’t really accomplish anything.
That’s the other tax that is headed up this year, one that applies just to employers, the tax that nobody’s talking about.
Now…the question is whether businesses will be clever enough, with general taxes in the air, to start talking about their $200 million tax increase and tell legislators that they’ve already paid…at the office…
Feb. 11, 2010
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 8, 2010)What’s made in Kansas…
If you thought that we’ve been needing a Kansas corollary to the late Charlton Hesston’s famous National Rifle Association speech in which he declared that the government can have his gun “when they can pry it from my cold, dead hand,” well, we’ve got one now.
Hesston’s speech was about gun registration and gun control, and a few Kansas legislators have come up with their own version.
It’s a bill that would flatly say that guns made in Kansas—as long as they stay in Kansas—are none of the federal government’s business.
“A personal firearm…that is manufactured commercially or privately in Kansas that remains within the borders of Kansas is not subject to federal law or federal regulation, including registration, under the authority of Congress to regulate interstate commerce,” says House Bill 2620.
The bill is another of those “10th Amendment”—reserving to the state all rights not specifically granted to the federal government by the Constitution and the Bill of Rights—measures. But there’s an interesting little twist to this legislation.
It’s a 9th Amendment tie-in. Amendment No. 9, recall (or look it up), protects rights not specifically enumerated in the Bill of Rights. And the House Kansas-made guns bill links the 2nd (right to bear arms) with the 10th and the 9th by stating that Kansas lawmakers are going with the Bill of Rights and Constitution as it existed when Kansas entered the union in 1861—before there was federal registration of firearms or much in the way of federal supervision of interstate commerce. That leaves regulation of commerce just within the borders of Kansas pretty much up to Kansas, depending on your reading of the Constitution.
Now, it’s hard to figure out whether the bill is really about gun rights or gun manufacturing rights or just a constitutional-sounding argument that will play well among the new crop of activists which sprung up on parking lots last summer, but it’s an interesting little wrinkle for a piece of Kansas legislation.
What’s in the bill?
Well, if you make a gun that can be carried by one person, has a bore diameter of less than 1 ½ inches (probably eliminating cannons that could shoot across state borders), or that fires shells that don’t explode when they hit, or machine guns, just stamp ‘em “Made in Kansas” and no nosy feds have to know about it.
This plays out a bunch of ways, doesn’t it? Kansas-made guns that stay in Kansas are essentially invisible to the federal—and state—government. Is it a way for a Kansas militia to arm itself against, well, we guess appraisers or illegal aliens or building inspectors or animal control officers? Who knows?
But it’s an interesting little piece of proposed legislation. Makes you wonder whether Kansas-made pharmaceuticals might be similarly exempted from federal regulation, or whether meat raised, butchered and eaten in Kansas ought also be exempt from federal inspection.
Makes the mind spin, doesn’t it? Maybe it could be a weekend drinking game: Think up what the federal government regulates that could be made, labeled as “made in Kansas” and consumed within Kansas’ borders that we’d just keep between us Kansans.
Feb. 4, 2010
(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 1, 2010)Respectful or pandering?
If there is a solid truism in the Kansas Legislature, it’s that you never go wrong by doing something nice for soldiers, even if it is a dab trivial and borders on pandering.
They’re soldiers. They actively sought out that job that puts them in harm’s way for the good of the nation, to protect us all. There is ample reason to respect soldiers for the job they do—especially since they volunteer for the job, they aren’t drafted anymore. They risk their lives because they feel the patriotic duty.
Passing legislation to provide them free hunting and fishing licenses, special license plates for their cars and trucks, that sort of thing is pretty standard, nobody minds it and presumably soldiers or veterans are happy that their service to the country has been noted officially. That’s nice.
But there is a chance that this session trying to think up something nice to do for soldiers in an election year has taken the wrong, and a vaguely insulting, turn.
One bill would increase penalties for scam artists who violate consumer protection laws in trying to make a buck from soldiers and their families. We already have provisions in Kansas law that offer up similar stiff penalties for scammers who prey on the elderly on the presumption that the elderly are generally infirm, slow-of-wit and more easily confused and tricked than, well, virtually everyone else. That’s a relatively ugly and condescending presumption for most older Kansans.
Do soldiers need the same provisions? Do soldiers want the same after-the-fact protection? Or, is it just a dab insulting for the sake of a bullet point on a campaign palm card? We haven’t seen similar bills to enhance penalties for scamming, say, schoolteachers or osteopaths or legislators, have we?
Another bill is even more questionable. It would specifically allow a judge to reduce the sentence of a veteran who has been convicted of a crime if the veteran can prove that he/she suffers post traumatic stress syndrome, or served in a war zone. Is this something most veterans are interested in?
If the brutal psychological stress of serving in increasingly dangerous war zones triggers a later criminal act as a civilian, such as robbing a liquor store or engaging in a bar fight, isn’t that something that should be considered before a trial—whether the accused is competent to stand trial?
You have to wonder whether veterans want that stigma, that the criminals among them get special treatment from the judiciary that stressed firemen or police or family preservation case workers don’t get.
Practically, where the politics of this goes, we don’t know. It’s one thing to vote for free hunting licenses or distinctive auto license plates. But the inferences about veterans from the anti-scam bill and the special sentencing options for some veterans who commit crimes? It comes close to creating a new protected class of Kansans that we’re not sure veterans and active-duty soldiers—and the rest of Kansans—feel good about if they even know that such legislation is being considered.
But we’re not sure anyone checked with them…