(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers Feb. 2, 2015)
This state budget mess got clearer last week.
Revenues to the state were some $47 million less than expected for the month of January, and are now $59 million less than the estimate on which the governor has based his $280 million-and-change emergency budget-patching bill: Which means that the $280 million shortfall that he engineered a way around now needs to be stretched to a $340 million patch. In the next five months…
The real problem for the governor is coming up with more money from Kansans.
There are some diversions possible, shuffling more money from the Kansas Department of Transportation—the so-called “Bank of KDOT”—or delaying payments that agencies, school districts and higher education institutions have counted on. It’s practically the same problem some Kansans have if their paycheck is late—you shuffle and delay payments and eat more chicken.
There’s a limit, of course, on all of that, but the real problem is that Kansans just aren’t paying enough in taxes to keep the state and the programs that we want the state to provide us in business.
That is the clarification of the budget mess. It’s finally a very simple problem that nearly squeezes—nearly, of course, we’re dealing with politicians here—the solution down to just not paying some bills and getting more money into the state treasury by June 30, end of the current fiscal year.
There’s a lot of finger-pointing about who caused the mess. Most of us recall that every time a glass of milk was spilled at the breakfast table it was your sister’s fault. But mom still had to clean it up.
Well, mom…err, governor and Legislature…it’s time to clean it up.
That’s going to be the interesting thing to watch.
No Republicans are mentioning anything that sounds to us Statehouse dwellers like it has a chance. Oh, there’s that $1.50-a-pack increase (to $2.29 a pack) in cigarette taxes, but more than a third of Kansans live close enough to the border of Missouri (17 cents a pack) that a little drive there pays for itself, and maybe lunch.
The booze tax increase, from 8 percent to 12 percent? That’s not a big increase, actually, but you get the flavor of the Republican/business community’s view of it when that 4 percent increase that just means less change from your $20 is referred to in terror as a “50 percent increase.”
Oh, there’ll be a little more cigarette tax next year, and probably a little more liquor tax next year…if the Legislature will make the politically unpopular choices to get to that new fiscal year.
Republicans who control the Legislature with numbers large enough to pass legislation if every Democrat voted no or just took the day off are so far without a plan to end the year to get to next year.
Democrats? So far, they’re not offering up any solutions from the safety of their political minority. It’s the problem they’re talking about—the 2012 and 2013 tax cuts that they opposed but which are now solidly printed in the law books—not any way out.
And, because there’s no check box on state income tax forms, there’s no reliable way to know whether those income tax scot-free Kansans are Republicans or Democrats, though you’d imagine just by voter registration that there are more Republican tax skaters than there are Democrats, but still some Democrats are in that “rich who escape taxes” that Democrats blame for the revenue shortfall.
So watch the political talk from the Statehouse, where you don’t see many children or homeless or food stamp recipients or Medicaid recipients hanging out.
We’ll see whether this revenue crisis growing clearer makes things simpler…