October 2005
Oct. 27, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 24, 2005)A shadow TABOR
Joe wants to cut your taxes.
Does that sound like something you’d be interested in when you go to the polls next August or November?
Do you think you’d be inclined in 2006 to vote for a member of the Kansas House of Representatives who promises to cut your taxes and votes for a bill that would cut your taxes? Do you think you’d be inclined to not vote for a candidate who doesn’t make the same pledge, or doesn’t vote for a bill that would cut your taxes?
Enough of the questions. Of course, given the opportunity, everyone would like to pay lower taxes to the state. Yes, there are those who talk about the duty to support the good things that government does, like provide roads, education, security, help for the needy and health care for those who can’t afford it themselves.
But we’d all like the state to do those good things with less of our money. That’s just natural, and if you don’t think you’re paying enough taxes, you can just send in a check to the Kansas General Fund, it’ll be cashed, and you will have joined a handful of people who actually do send in extra money to the state.
Now, the most talked-about way to cut taxes is by the House and Senate passing with 2/3 majorities in each chamber the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, or TABOR. That is a proposed constitutional amendment that would limit state spending, and after filling up a bucket of dollars for a fiscal dry spell, would result in taxes being frozen, or likely reduced, because if the state can’t spend any more money and has filled the revenue drought bucket, there is no where for taxes to go but down.
If you like the idea, and if the resolution could pass the Legislature, you’d vote on whether you wanted it put in the Kansas Constitution. It would eventually cut your taxes.
Except that’s not going to happen. There aren’t enough votes in the House or the Senate to pass the TABOR resolution and put it on your election ballot.
But there’s something similar cooking in the Statehouse that insiders are talking about that sounds like TABOR, but is aimed not so much at cutting taxes, but at weeding out of the Statehouse legislators who don’t like TABOR.
There are legitimate reasons not to like TABOR, because many of the good things that government does would be unaffordable if TABOR passed, and the state’s economy weakens. It’s when the economy is in the tank, people are out of work, folks can’t afford medical care, contractors can’t build highways, that the state needs to spend more money than TABOR would allow.
A shadow-TABOR, put in law, not written into the Kansas Constitution, is being discussed–not so much for its effect on curbing state spending and taxing, but for producing in the 2006 election cycle a new crop of legislators who will vote for a constitutional TABOR. A shadow-TABOR is just law the Legislature can change every year if it wants; a constitutional TABOR is pretty much carved in stone.
What’s the political difference?
In the Kansas House, which is up for election next year (the Senate won’t face voters until 2008), the shadow-TABOR is likely to be in play. Not so much for the chance it will cap state spending and lead to lower taxes, but for the chance that it will produce a string of votes that conservatives can use on their campaign brochures to defeat legislators who don’t vote for a shadow-TABOR.
Interesting little deal, isn’t it? TABOR doesn’t have a chance, and probably shadow-TABOR doesn’t have a chance either, but it becomes a powerful election-year campaign tool.
Will there be true believers voting for TABOR or shadow-TABOR, or just legislators who know it isn’t going to become law and figure that it’s a pretty cheap re-election vote?
For some voters who like TABOR, they’re going to have to figure out who’s voting for what and why. For those who don’t like TABOR, the decision is going to be easier... unless a vote for shadow-TABOR gets a TABOR opponent re-elected.
This is going to get more interesting. It might mean that you have to gaze into the eyes of candidates and see what you can see..
Oct. 20, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 17, 2005)
Interschool competitions...
So far, amid all the groaning and auditing and just hallway talk about the cost of public elementary and secondary schools, one institution hasn’t been heard from, or about.
Maybe that’s a good thing, and maybe it isn’t.
That institution is the Kansas State High School Activities Association. It plays a vital role in supervising and regulating high school extracurricular activities ranging from football and basketball and swimming and diving to debate and piano competitions.
State statute defines it as the state’s only sanctioning body for interschool competitions, setting it up as a monopoly to create and enforce the rules that define interschool activities. It determines which non-school-sponsored clubs and teams pupils can play on or for and sets the calendars for competitions.
The KSHSAA operates from a $2 million-plus new headquarters in a tony west Topeka office park, and its power–regulating competition between schools–is absolute.
It is the unseen, and largely unfamiliar, court of last resort for nearly any inter-school competition.
Up to now, legislators have avoided talking about it because, well, it is the tiger whose tail nobody wants to pull.
The issue that at some point is going to be raised is whether the state of Kansas through its appropriation to school districts, or whether school districts themselves through locally raised tax dollars or even contributions or ticket sales, has determined that interschool competitions are actually education or whether they’re, well, something else...
At some point, someone is going to look at the millions of dollars that school districts spend on sporting events, and, yes, debate.
It’s not just the dues to the KSHSAA--they’re low. Recently, it’s $400 per high school and $125 per middle or junior high school. That’s milk machine money. But that isn’t the extra salaries for coaches, the travel, the uniforms, the stadiums, pools and tennis courts.
Don’t look for the Division of Legislative Post Audit, in its examination of what school districts receive in state money for a suitable education, to include as part of a suitable education anything to do with sports.
But don’t count interschool sports out just yet.
There’s a large number of Kansans who turn out for the high school football and basketball games, which most small-town legislators note are major social events in their towns. Those are events where candidates can subtly campaign among people who are drawn together for a common purpose, where parents and other patrons can actually see their education dollars at play and become interested in at least the periphery of public education.
Chances are excellent that those community events also are helpful in winning public support for additional property tax levies for schools, or at least bond issues to build new facilities. Creating good will toward public education is part of the duty of schools.
Somehow it doesn’t seem fair for lawmakers to ignore the diversion of funds for libraries and teacher salaries and utilities and everything else for the cost of sports programs, but it also probably doesn’t seem fair–or politically possible–to just say no to those activities.
High school football, basketball, bowling and tennis don’t appear to offer as reliable a career path as English or mathematics or welding or mechanics, which is, of course, part of the purpose of public education. Those sports may, though, provide scholarship opportunities to those who can’t afford post-high school education, and there is a relative paucity of scholarships for welding or woodworking or whatever they call home economics now.
Will the KSHSAA become part of the school finance debate?
It could go either way..
Oct. 13, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 10, 2005)Political tsunami
Above all the wailing and gnashing of teeth from Democrats and moderate Republicans, there is a political tsunami brewing with the hiring of conservative think tank impresario Bob Corkins as the state’s new Commissioner of Education.
But seeing the possible repercussions requires Kansans to put aside most of the philosophical hand-wringing and look coldly at Kansas politics and the Republican primary election next August.
The "Corkins effect" could broadly reshape Kansas government and politics and it could show up at the August 2006 primary election where the major issues will predictably be children and taxes for those who aren’t single-mindedly pro-choice or pro-life, which is a whole other relatively immovable and numerically significant segment of the voting population.
A commissioner of education, one willing to say--from his position as commissioner, not just another anti-tax lobbyist–that the state is spending too much money on education, can carry considerable clout with legislators who realize the state is spending a lot of money on K-12 education, but aren’t sure whether it is too much or are unwilling to vote against some portion of educational spending for fear that it will damage the entire effort.
Corkins becomes the person who from a position of considerable authority can encourage conservative spending on K-12 education. That makes him a new and influential leader for conservatives.
And, at some point, if the Kansas Supreme Court decides that the Legislature needs to spend hundreds of millions of dollars more on K-12 education, Corkins can with some degree of authority say no, the court is wrong. (And, maybe ought to be elected, or screened by the Senate, or maybe just required to climb a rope to ascend to the position of justice.) Whether he, or the Legislature, can actually enforce that "no" remains to be seen. But Corkins will be the first high-profile education spokesman who won’t hesitate to say that the court is wrong and who can provide political cover for those who see other programs and spending being squeezed out by the court.
Now, understand that this has nothing to do with whether the state is providing a suitable level of support for public education or whether there are programs that are over-funded or under-funded or whether the state is spending money where it doesn’t need to or not spending money where it would do a lot of good for our children.
This is the hardball politics of the state Legislature and the elections coming up next year.
The dozens of votes in the 2006 session by Republican House members will to a significant degree determine whether they wind up with a hard-right conservative primary election challenger in an election where the hard-right conservatives actually vote and moderates tend to not vote and later whine about the outcome.
For Democrats who in most districts in Kansas are outnumbered by registered Republicans, it means tougher general elections, and probably shading their campaigns to sound conservative, which Kansas Democrats tend to be anyway. But they will have to run against Republicans who most Kansans believe are more conservative to start with...
Oh, and remember all that will play out in a House of Representatives which under Kansas Supreme Court order this summer barely mustered the votes after 12 exhausting days to comply with (and partially frustrate) a decree to spend $143 million more on K-12 education.
Will Corkins be the dynamite that forces a split in the Republican Party, with a shrink-government, spend-less, tax-less (oh, and antiabortion) faction and a moderate faction that sees more in common with Democrats? He could be, but don’t count on it.
Instead, look for the state’s largest political party to just keep fighting out back. We won’t know who won until after the primary of ‘06.
Oct. 6, 2005
(Distributed to Kansas newspapers Oct. 3, 2005)
TABOR?
There’s an interesting little facet of the Taxpayers’ Bill of Rights, touted in last week’s 23-city statewide bus tour, the "American Dream Express," that probably is confusing to most Kansans.
The concept of TABOR (that’s the acronym for the TAxpayers’ Bill Of Rights) is to limit state spending increases to the combination of increases in inflation and population growth in Kansas.
That limit would be put in the Kansas Constitution, if two-thirds of the House and Senate agreed, and voters approved by a simple majority at the polls the proposition.
The interesting facet is that the Kansas Legislature, if it could agree to it, could limit spending or cut spending without bothering the voters to amend the constitution. They just wouldn’t vote to do it, and there would be peace in the valley...
The problem, if you believe spending and taxing is a problem, is that it takes just 63 votes in the House of Representatives and 21 in the State Senate to enact law doing either of those. It means a simple majority of the people you elect make decisions. It takes 84 in the House and 27 in the Senate to pass a resolution that would put a constitutional question on the ballot for you that would take those decisions largely out of the hands of the people you elect. And most of the people and groups who support TABOR can’t get a simple majority of legislators to agree with them.
It gets interesting because there are a lot of legislators who would like to cut spending and taxes by state government–voters tend to like that a lot, and remember favorably people who cut taxes on election day. Nobody’s going to campaign for wild spending and shooting up taxes, but there aren’t a lot of legislators who, having battled through primary and general elections, don’t think they’re sent to Topeka to exercise their best judgment on behalf of their constituents, and don’t need any constitutional constraints.
So, should this TABOR be in the constitution? Proponents say lower taxes would make Kansas more attractive to businesses, which would hire more people and make the state prosperous and let individuals keep more of the money they earn. Now, that’s gotta be a good thing.
But opponents say it’s an artificial ceiling, and that in the worst of times when people need help, the Legislature’s hands would be tied.
Enlightened self-interest pretty much guarantees that organizations or issues (think the needy and public schools) would oppose TABOR. Any organization that receives money from the state for any reason that doesn’t oppose TABOR is, well, not run by very bright people. Because few legislators want to vote against money for a suitable education, or to deny assistance to the poor and frail and sick, a limit on spending creates a boxing match, with the educators fighting the poor, in what can only be an ugly battle for the votes of legislators. Consider that public education is probably the cutest puppy in the basket, and welfare and health programs for the poor are a moral obligation most accept, and those two fight it out and other programs get short shrift.
Surely somewhere in the mix legislators will scrutinize spending, cut out waste, cut out things that really aren’t the responsibility of state government to finance. That’s presumably what even TABOR opponents want--efficient government. And, when there’s no limit except what voters will stand for without voting out their legislators, there’s not a lot of reason for that scrutiny. That’s a problem.
TABOR with its limits on spending might fix that problem--or not. It doesn’t demand scrutiny of spending, just puts a lid on it.
Without TABOR, reasonable levels of spending require legislators to make some tough decisions, learn more about programs, and just say no to more spending and taxes.
It ought to be interesting to see which way we go...