(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers June 29, 2015)
Not in recent memory has the sine die (that’s the formal name) adjournment of the Kansas Legislature left quite so much unfinished work for state government.
In the good—or at least the old—days, that sine die adjournment was shaking hands, wishing fellow legislators a fun and productive summer, a little vacation planning talk. The high point for many lawmakers was the lifting of the during-the-session ban on taking campaign contributions from political action committees, businesses, unions, lobbyists and such. In the old days, there were actually envelopes handed to legislators as they walked to their cars—containing those campaign contribution checks.
But after this year’s sine die last Friday, there’s a real sense that this year’s work isn’t done.
And, it isn’t.
The immediate action will be watching this month and next for the governor, through his budget director, to cut about $50 million in spending which lawmakers will read about in the local newspaper. And, these cuts are unilateral, no legislative fingerprints on them, no legislation, no debate, no conference committee action, just the governor’s office looking for places to cut state spending with the minimum political effect on Kansans.
Which Kansans? That’s what insiders are looking for…will the prosperous who may occasionally need a Highway Patrol trooper to stand by while auto club workers change a flat tire on the Interstate or who need to renew their drivers’ licenses be inconvenienced?
Or, will Kansans who generally have more money spent on them—the poor, the sick, the children, the hungry—see cuts in spending that will show up almost immediately in their lives?
Or, of course, are there things that the state hires workers to do that just aren’t that important? This could be a thoughtful pruning of services the state has traditionally provided that not many even notice. Who really cares who takes possession of the antlers of a deer shot in someone else’s wheat field? Not enough hands go up to create much shade, do they?
Surprisingly, that $50 million in administration-ordered spending cuts might just create a few waves…but chances of that happening are slim.
The larger-spectrum effect of those cuts is to create about $80 million or so of ending balance in the budget for the coming fiscal year, enough to take care of emergencies and opportunities that might occur in the upcoming year. There are times that state government, like most individuals, just needs a little pocket change—though obviously the state’s pockets are considerably larger than even those loose-fitting jeans we tend to wear as we grow older.
Now, there is that other $50 million that a panel of judges just demanded the state spend on school districts… That’s a problem, which means if the state can’t wriggle out of it, there’s another $50 million to be spent from the relatively small fiscal year 2015 carryover from Tuesday (June 30) to Wednesday (July 1) that creates. But that $50 million is owed to schools, and wriggling out of it doesn’t sound right.
So, we have the upcoming cuts, the bill owed to schools, and if both are accomplished, then there’s about $37 million left in the treasury at the end of the next fiscal year. Probably enough, but it is dependent on all those tax increases passed this session that might, or might not, produce all the money that bookkeepers predicted they would.
Sine die adjournment? How about we classify that little exercise as just a breather, not exactly the summer off, but a break while non-legislative wheels of government are spinning and providing us some interesting money-moving and sliding of funding from here to there and hoping that it’s possible for us to at least scrape through until Jan. 11, 2016, when things start again…