(Syndicated to Kansas newspapers March 21, 2016)
The talk is getting a little louder, in this week before first adjournment of the Legislature on Thursday or Friday, that there might just be a special session of the Legislature this June.
Yes, after the month off for Spring Break, the so-called “veto session” of the Legislature is scheduled to start April 27 and if lawmakers hold it to the presumptive 90-day rule (it took 113 days last year), legislators could be free for fund-raising and campaigning by May 18, or maybe a little sooner.
But lawmakers are already wondering whether they can assemble and pass a new school finance law that will satisfy the Kansas Supreme Court’s February ruling that the state is unconstitutionally and unequally distributing funds to local school districts for their Local Option Budgets and capital outlay funds. So far, no bill has been passed that would meet that ruling and prevent the high court from shutting down schools July 1 if its equalization order isn’t met.
Remember 2005? That’s when lawmakers returned for a two-week session (June 22-July 6) to deal with school finance problems identified by the high court.
Oh, and there was that quickie session, in September of 2013, when the Legislature speedily enacted a 50-year minimum sentence for first-degree murder. No real political downside for returning to duty for just a day to get tougher on crime, is there?
But the school finance equity solution is harder and represents a test of power between the Legislature and the Supreme Court, and the court holds another gavel here—shutting down public schools if its order isn’t met.
There are lawmakers who are probably wondering about their vacation/campaign plans if they are called back.
There is also another more politically complicated—can you believe that?—issue looming, the state’s projected budget deficit.
So far it looks like Kansas will be at least $30 million below zero on June 30, the end of the fiscal year, and as monthly revenues trickle in, chances are considered good that the unconstitutional deficit might grow.
Lawmakers might know enough about the future of revenues to meet that necessary budget balance when they return from Spring Break to make some spending shuffles and cuts. It’s too late for any tax increase to be approved in time to raise any new money to balance the budget. That means Gov. Sam Brownback is going to have to find a way—or alternatively, have the opportunity—to balance the budget single-handedly.
The options there aren’t pretty. There’s the freshly passed $100 million late-payment for the state pension fund, or there’s taking more money from the shrinking state highway fund, or…there’s selling off future receipts from the tobacco industry master settlement agreement, essentially a payday loan that will likely lead to a rollback of decades-old services to children and youths of the state.
Or…there’s the point-and-shoot option, where the governor takes money from existing state programs that he doesn’t feel are necessities in a government he would like to shrink in order to meet that $1 budget balance required by June 30 by the state constitution.
Any of those options may—or may not—be reason enough for lawmakers to return to a special session this summer, depending on whether those options draw public outcry that threatens the Republican control of the Legislature for the coming two years—and the final two years of Brownback’s term.
There’s the chance, of course, that the Supreme Court will issue an order saying “never mind.” Or that money floods into the bank in the next few weeks.
H’mmm…that special session is looking more likely than not…