Update on the legislature

Budget
     The Legislature adjourned earlier this month without a budget for next fiscal year.  Each house passed a budget but the House and Senate have very difference visions for the state budget.  They will return to Topeka on April 27 to hash it out.
      State revenues, which have fallen the past several years as the recession drags on, continue to perform below projections. An updated revenue forecast will be conducted this week, and legislators will use those estimated numbers when negotiating differences between appropriations bills passed by the House and Senate.  When the 2011 session started, legislators faced an estimated $500 million revenue shortfall for the next fiscal year between expected revenue and committed spending.  At this point, both chambers’ proposed budgets are in the $14 billion range, with $6 billion of that coming from state taxpayers.  However, there are significant differences between how the Senate would fund state government and how the House sees it.
     Our state is among the lucky ones.  Our budget shortfall is in the lowest range in the nation at approximately 8.7%.  Our neighbors are not so well off, relatively, Iowa 18.9%, Missouri 9.4%, Nebraska 9.6%, Colorado 21.6%, Oklahoma 14.8%.
     Concerning the largest portion of state funding — public schools — the Senate would cut base state aid per pupil by $226, while the House proposes a deeper cut of $250 per student. Either cut would reduce base state aid to its lowest level in a decade.  Our students and instructors are sharing in the pain of this recession big time!
     But while base state aid falls, costs to renovate the Capitol continue to go up. The latest price tag is $340 million, which is triple some early estimates. The Senate budget bill includes $55 million in new bonds for the renovation, $22 million of which would fund repairs to the building’s leaky roof and dome.  Golly, I would sure rather delay the renovation rather than let a second grader suffer larger class sizes.

Taxes
     Despite revenue problems, some Republicans in the Legislature continue to work on tax cuts. Brownback has pushed for a plan that would give a 5-year income tax holiday to residents moving from out of state to any Kansas county that has seen a population decline of 10% or more since the 2000 Census. He also wants tax credits for expensing of capital purchases by businesses.  Businesses already do not pay property taxes on business machinery and equipment.  Wish I got tax credits for buying food and such and wouldn't we all like to be excused from paying property taxes on our cars and houses?
     Remember all that talk during the election about the 1-cent sales tax passed last session which sunsets in a couple of years and helps pay for continuing to take care of roads and highways?  Well, even though Gov. Brownback was opposed to repealing the tax, a vote was taken in the House and it failed to repeal the sales tax.  And then, a vote was taken which would have made it PERMANENT and used the revenue to cut corporate income taxes.  Are you kidding?????  A single mom pays more sales tax on baby's milk and cereal but corporates take her pennies and get an income tax cut . . . or at least those corporates who pay any tax at all.
     A group of Republicans in the House and Senate are seeking reductions in individual and corporate income taxes.  You probably wouldn't feel their proposed reduction because it is aimed at the richest among us.  During the last few years, the state has shifted the burden more and more to property taxes.  The income tax, which has the potential to be the more fair tax (progressive in that it should not burden the poor more than the rich), which brought in about one-third of state revenue in 1995, now brings in about 20% while property taxes amount to 35% and sales taxes bring in the rest.  To me family economic stability and quality of life in communities is dependent upon fair taxation that does not excuse the most successful businesses while unfairly burdening the working families and seniors.  And who is bearing the burden of the revenue shortfalls?  Where are the cuts being aimed . . . at corporate welfare?  at business tax credits and exemptions?  NO.  The losers will be meals on wheels, mental health services, home and community based assistance to allow seniors and disabled folks to stay at home and not in nursing homes, school children and teachers and government employees.  But then, what do I know.

Arts funding
     The Kansas Senate rejected Gov. Brownback’s executive order to abolish the Kansas Arts Commission and replace it with a nonprofit fundraising group. State funding of the commission, however, is still up in the air.

Kansans for quality communities
     A coalition of advocacy groups has announced plans for at least five town-hall-style meetings to be held across the state before the Legislature returns for the wrap-up session.  The purpose of the meetings is to call attention to proposed cuts in state spending being considered by lawmakers and the potential consequences for social services and education.  The Legislature is scheduled to return to work April 27. Members of the budget conference committee are scheduled to come back to Topeka earlier to begin hammering out more than 200 differences between the House and Senate's spending plans.  The Town Hall meetings are to give folks out here in the real world a chance to look at what’s happening in the Legislature.  The advocacy coalition is called "Kansans For Quality Communities"  and represents public schools, social service agencies and other non-profits serving the young, the old, the disabled, and other vulnerable Kansans.  Coalition members include KNEA, the Kansas Association of School Boards, the Kansas Area Agencies on Aging, Oral Health Kansas, the Statewide Independent Living Council of Kansas and the Big Tent Coalition.  The Big Tent Coalition includes several groups that represent programs and services for people with disabilities, the elderly and low-income families.
KAN-ED
     And those who work with school kids and social services are not alone in worrying about the state programs on the chopping block.  When House and Senate budget negotiators return to the Statehouse next week to begin settling their differences, one item on the bargaining checklist will have the particular attention of hospital administrators and librarians as well as school officials.  Since 2003, most of the state’s schools, hospitals and libraries have relied on a broadband data link known as Kan-ed, a state-subsidized digital network that many members call indispensable and - in some instances - life saving because of the way it is used to route critically ill or injured patients to hospital emergency rooms.  The Kansas House, in one of the last mean moves of the regular session, approved House Bill 2390, which would eliminate Kan-ed effective July 1, 2012.  And perhaps more significantly, the House budget plan does not include the $10 million for Kan-ed that was recommended by the governor and endorsed by the Senate.  Should the House prevail, funding for Kan-ed would end June 30.
     So you don't think you care much about Kan-ed?  Well people in Kansas see the benefits of Kan-ed at work every day. Emergency room doctors in small, rural hospitals use it to consult EMResource, a tracking software that lets them know in real time whether the ER at an urban trauma center is at capacity so they can divert an emergency patient, if necessary, to a hospital not so busy.  The high definition video links provided by the network allow patients in small towns to have remote consultation with doctors in Topeka or Kansas City without having to drive to the big city and navigate the parking or building mazes common to large medical centers. That also helps keep business at home for the smaller hospitals like the ones in Leavenworth.  Nurses routinely use the video conferencing capacity of Kan-ed for long-distance training sessions that otherwise would be difficult or impossible for them to squeeze into a busy workday.  Kan-ed provides databases such as ProQuest, which are used by medical librarians to research “best practices” for doctors and other providers in treating patients.
   The benefits of Kan-ed seem clear and have been acknowledged even by legislators who voted to abolish it. The central question, for many House members is why must taxpayers support it instead of Kan-ed members and users.  Since the 2010 elections, conservatives in the Kansas House have been looking hard - like their counterparts in Congress and other statehouses around the country – for ways to cut government spending.  Their dilemma is finding the answer to the question being faced in most government quarters these days: How to continue what have been government services absent government dollars.  Legislators during floor debate on the bill said there was nothing to stop the Board of Regents or some other organization from continuing Kan-ed even though HB 2390 would erase the program’s authorizing language and the budget bill would zero out its funding.  Unfortunately, the Legislature has severely cut higher education funding and, even it the Regents have the political will to continue the government function of a program repealed by the Legislature, it is unlikely Kan-ed would be picked up by another cash strapped agency. If the Legislature decides it doesn’t want to fund Kan-ed, there is no other “magical source,” of money to pay for it.
    Would you feel a loss if Kan-ed disappears?  Kan-ed probably is most appreciated by people like librarians who see its benefits every day as part of their jobs.  But thousands more Kansans use Kan-ed connections or services and are likely only dimly aware of what it is or how the network came to be. According to Kan-ed’s annual report, it has 883 member organizations and more than 420,000 registered users, including many members of the public who use Kan-ed databases and connections at their local libraries for things such as job searches, researching medical conditions or simply emailing children or grandchildren.  Those general uses are more important to Kansans in rural areas with little access to broadband.  The benefit to all of us is that the network includes most of the state’s schools, hospitals and libraries, which means all those entities can draw on one another’s resources. For example, a nurse or doctor from a small hospital without its own medical library can go to the public library, log on to the Kan-ed network and retrieve information from the same medical research database that a doctor at KU Hospital or Providence or St. Lukes could access.
     If the program is repealed, the existing fiber for broadband might stay in the ground without Kan-ed and some members would be able to find ways to pay for broadband or databases from another provider, but universal use among institutions of common focus would certainly crumble.  Kan-ed is able to negotiate and receive discounted group rates for expensive, medical research databases that even large urban hospitals couldn’t afford; so if Kan-ed disappeared, a hospital in a small town will be unable to pay for a program like Kan-ed provides to access near-instant clinical information about drug reactions among certain diabetics, for example.  You might never need that kind of access, but, if you do . . .
     Opponents of HB 2390 included the Kansas Hospital Association, the Kansas Association of School Boards, telemedicine experts from the University of Kansas Medical Center and small-town librarians.  Caleb May, director of the Meade Public Library, said he was a “strong, fiscal conservative,” and was painfully aware of the tough economic times.  But, in testimony opposing the bill given to the House budget committee, he said, “Do you really want to subject the future of rural Kansas libraries to the whims of the private sector? Essential government functions, such as access to information through libraries, do not always make sense in a purely dog-eat-dog economy. We have to ask ourselves if investing in the future of our democratic republic is worth the expense.”
     Oh, and Kan-ed is not paid out of your general taxes.  Kan-ed was approved in 2001, but it wasn’t funded until 2003. Since then, it has received about $75 million drawn from the Kansas Universal Service Fund, which is a fund paid into by everyone who has telephone service in Kansas. For example, if you have a landline and cell phone, included in your monthly bills is a KUSF tax. The portion that goes to Kan-ed is about 25 cents per phone.  The Legislature would be redirecting that funding from Kan-ed to something else.

 Planned Parenthood
     Yep, the Kansas House is also talking about "balancing the budget" by cutting funding to Planned Parenthood.  The Kansas House and Senate have approved two different budget plans for the fiscal year that starts July 1. The House plan includes a provision that eliminates the pass-through of federal family planning funding to Planned Parenthood clinics.The Senate budget plan doesn’t include such a proposal.  Abortion opponents succeeded in putting the proposal in the House plan because they say taxpayer funds shouldn’t go toward paying for abortions.  However, as you may have learned from watching the Congressional melee, taxpayer funds are not used to fund abortions. It has long been illegal to use what are called Title 10 funds for abortions.  The funds at stake -- approximately $335,000 -- go toward getting low-income women needed health care services, such as breast exams, Pap smears, cancer screenings, tests for sexually transmitted diseases, and birth control.  And these funds from the feds for necessary health care for women will just be lost to our state.  Not an abortion will be averted; just the contrary.  These services help women avoid unintended pregnancies, they say.   It makes absolutely no sense to eliminate access to preventive Title 10 health services that actually could reduce the incidence of abortion, in a guise of pro-life politics.  Such legislative activity is not pro-life; it is anti women.
     According to a recent study, Planned Parenthood health centers in Wichita and Hays serve nearly 9,000 women per year. Not a single abortion occurred at either one of those clinics. The Hays clinic is the only one for low-income women in Ellis County.  But this is not new, the rider diverting the funds from Planned Parenthood has been approved by the Legislature several times in recent years and has been vetoed by former governors Kathleen Sebelius and Mark Parkinson.  How are low-income women to avoid unwanted pregnancies if they are denied birth control services?  Gov. Sam Brownback said he wasn’t familiar with the provision in the House bill, but added that he has never been in favor of federal funding going toward Planned Parenthood.


Florida's loss, Kansas' gain
     You may have read that Florida Gov. Rick Scott rejected $2.4 billion in federal funds to build a high-speed rail project in his state.  Well, federal officials put the money up for grabs for other states and Kansas joined 24 states, along with Amtrak, and submitted an application for a portion of the funding for our state.  The Kansas application would be for $1.1 million and would go toward renovation and restoration of the Burlington Northern Santa Fe depot in Lawrence. The application was made by the Kansas Department of Transportation and would include a match of $283,786 from the city of Lawrence.  The Lawrence non-profit group, Depot Redux, which is wanting to restore the depot at Seventh and New Jersey streets says that getting the federal funding would "be a dream come true.”
     After Florida’s governor canceled a project that would have connected Tampa and Orlando with high-speed trains, U.S. Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood opened the funding up to other projects that could deliver public and economic benefits. The department received 90 applications totaling more than $10 billion.  Among those was a proposal from Amtrak for $1.3 billion to improve service between Boston and Washington, D.C. The state of Missouri applied for nearly $1 billion in funding for high-speed rail service between St. Louis and Kansas City.  In fact, the feds "got tons more applications than they had money,” said Steve Swartz, spokesman for KDOT.  No date has been determined on when the projects will be selected.

Healthy marriage
     You may agree with me that we need a lean efficient government that does only the things that we cannot do for ourselves, the things like roads and schools and maybe some social services that we want to do as a community to make our city, state or country safe and sound.  Many people do not like the "welfare state" concept of caring for those who need a safety net.  Well then, how about this?
     Gov. Brownback and the state’s Secretary of SRS met Thursday with a group of people to brainstorm on “healthy marriage initiatives.”  Michelle Schroeder, a spokeswoman for the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, said, "The goal is to have more intact families in Kansas.”  She said SRS Secretary Rob Siedlecki and Brownback met with scholars and researchers from across the nation but she declined to name them when asked by the press.  "We’re at the beginning of the process,” she said.
     Secretary Siedlecki and Brownback have talked in the past about promoting marriage. Siedlecki has also said he was developing new faith-based initiatives at SRS.  Siedlecki is a former high-ranking Florida Department of Health official who also worked in the U.S. Justice Department’s Task Force on Faith-Based Initiatives under President Bush.
     So . . . are you thinkin' our tax money will go for marriage counseling and church led marriage retreats or what?
 

Here are some of the major issues the Legislature approved during the regular 2011session or will continue to work on:

Kansas Public Employees Retirement System (KPERS)
     High-level negotiations will continue on addressing the state pension system’s long-term funding problems.  The House has passed a 401(k)-style plan for new public employees, while the Senate has approved a plan that would require workers and the state to pay more into the system. The Senate plan also sets up a study commission to make recommendations to the Legislature.
     Our KPERS system is in deep financial trouble.  It has three plans: one for judges, one for police and firemen, and one for all other state employees including public school employees.  It has 260,000 active, inactive and retired members and manages approximately $11 billion in assets.  While benefits are safe in the near-term, KPERS will not have enough assets to provide benefits already earned by members and to pay off the unfunded actuarial liability (UAL). Although the System doesn't have an immediate crisis, long-term funding is in jeopardy. KPERS has a fundamental shortfall that will continue to grow unless legislative action is taken.
     The unfunded liability is due to several factors, some bad investments in past years, a failure of the Legislature for the past 15 years to pay the proper employer share, the increase in benefits in the 90s by the Legislature during good economic times without increasing state funding for the system, the fact that retirees are living longer, and the recession's effect on KPERS' investments in recent years.  There is no way for returns on present investments to repair the long term viability of the system.
     While I was in the House, there were efforts made to address the problem.  In 2003, the Legislature increased the employer contribution required of the state and in 2004, the state issued pension obligation bonds that added an additional $440.2 million to the System’s fund balance. Also in 2004, legislation increased the Local group’s employer contribution rate cap.  In 2007 legislation modified benefits for future members, creating a new plan tier. The new plan design included increased service requirements for retirement eligibility, reduced benefits more when members choose early retirement, and increased employee contributions for new members by 2%. New employees vest in five years rather than ten years and receive a regular cost-of-living adjustment that state employees employed before 2009 do not receive. These changes will significantly lower liabilities and employer contributions beginning in approximately 20 years.  These efforts were beginning to improve KPERS’ funding projections until unprecedented investment market declines in 2008, due to the financial crisis, had a substantial negative impact, reversing the progress made in previous years.  In 2010, bills were introduced that would have raised employer and/or employee contributions but nothing passed.  At the end of that session, a bill was passed to create a defined contribution retirement plan for future hires.
     Since the State has a long history of not paying into the program what is due, it is hard for me to believe that a 401K type plan would work if the employee depends upon the state to match employee contributions to the plan.  This state does not keep its promises.

Abortion
     Anti-abortion groups claim several major victories this session.  The Legislature passed a bill tightening restrictions on abortions after the 21st week of pregnancy based on the assertion that fetuses can feel pain.  In other words, if no pain is felt before that, abortion is not such a problem?  The bill also requires doctors to get written consent from both parents for an abortion before a minor can get an abortion. That worries me because I remember young women telling me that their parents forced them to have an abortion they did not want when they were minors.  Does this bill mean that only parental consent counts?  There is also a bill outlining new regulations and increasing inspections of abortion clinics.  I believe all clinics that do surgical procedures outside of hospitals should undergo inspections including unannounced state inspections.  It is important to remember that state inspections require state employees and we are supposed to be downsizing government.  See how fast you get your state tax refund this year . . .  Everything is slowing down in the tax funded state agencies like Revenue, Education, Corrections, and such as the belt is tightened.

Speed and bike safety
     Hey, its a bad economy . . . and gas is practically $4 a gallon, so lets drive faster.
The Legislature approved a bill that would increase the speed limit to 75 mph on some divided, four-lane highways.  What happened to cutting dependence on foreign petroleum by going 55 mph?  Do you remember in the 70s when the country slowed down on the roads, turned out lots of neon lights and went into a conservation mode.  Oh well.  Also, now motorcyclists and bicycle riders can proceed through “dead” red lights (what is that?), and vehicles are required to give bicyclists three feet of space when passing on the left.  My son, back from California, will like that.  He is appalled that nobody bikes much here and bike riders are not given any safe lanes or trails to get around.

Voter ID
     Starting next year, Kansans will have to show a photo ID to vote.  You may have already thought that was the law because it has been pushed and talked about so much.  Secretary of State Kris Kobach made the bill one of his major priorities during the session because he believes there is rampant voter fraud by illegal immigrants who come up here to work, and vote.  The legislation will also require that, starting in 2013, new Kansas voters show proof of citizenship to register to vote.
     We live on the border of two states.  Did you know that someone can move to Missouri and register to vote there while continuing to vote in Kansas?  Yes and they can show their ID and prove their citizenship, too.  You probably know people who have lived out of state for many years but remained listed in the local voter file even though they registered to vote in other states and voted regularly . . . while NOT voting here.  To me that is much more worrisome to the integrity of our elections and it is not addressed by the legislation.
     Also, how do you show an ID if you are disabled or elderly and wish to vote by Advance Ballot from home?  And how will the security measures at the polls help get more than 15% of eligible voters to actually vote in local elections?!

AT&T
     For those of us old fogies who still insist on having a land line phone, you will see increased phone bills thanks to this Legislature.  The Legislature removed price caps on AT&T for basic residential and business phone service. Supporters of the bill acknowledged the measure will lead to increased rates.  Oops, those land lines tend to belong to people who are very dependent on their phones . . .

Immigration
     Bills that would have established Arizona-like anti-illegal immigration rules, and repealed a state law that allows some students whose parents are undocumented to pay in-state tuition, have failed so far. Gov. Brownback has indicated that he does not support either bill.  The efforts to pass these bills drew national attention to Kansas last month when state Rep. Virgil Peck, R-Tyro, made a comment that perhaps the state should consider shooting illegal immigrants from helicopters.  Peck said he had been just joking. He later reluctantly apologized when he was pressured by Republican leaders. Several civil rights groups have called on Peck to resign, which he has refused to do.

Written April 15