Brownback defends agenda

CHANUTE — Having heard that Gov. Sam Brownback would be addressing a group of business leaders Tuesday morning at a reception hall in downtown Chanute, four participants from the local Circles Out of Poverty program assembled outside the building’s entrance to protest the substance of recent legislation.
Their plans were scrambled, though, by the arrival of Chanute’s mayor, Tim Fairchild — a prominent Circles volunteer — who suggested the women come inside and join the town hall meeting. 
From her seat at a center table, Sarah Maike, one of the Circles members, stood and introduced herself to the governor as “the poster child of poverty.”
“I survive off $1,000 a month. My basic necessities are a roof over my head, food on my table, my utilities paid…and decent health care.
“I don’t wake up in the morning and say ‘I’m going to be poor,’” Maike continued. “‘Or, I’m going to be mentally ill. Or I’m going to skip breakfast today, because I need to pay for my doctor bill.’”
Maike, who described the indignity that many welfare recipients suffer when they present a food stamp card at their local grocery store, criticized the governor’s decision last week to sign House Bill 2258, which limits welfare recipients to no more than $25 per day from an ATM and goes on to impose wider restrictions on how that money can be spent.
“But when I go and spend this money,” Maike told the governor, “it’s not on booze. I’m going to pay my utilities, I’m going to pay my taxes, I’m going to put $20 in my gas tank and see how far that thing can go.”
So, asked Maike, what steps are you taking to help?
At which point the governor produced for the crowd his three-pronged approach for escaping poverty: “It’s work, if you can. It’s education. And there’s a family structure piece to it. … Those are the big three that get you out. It’s not money from the government.” Brownback credits the job-training programs put in place during his first term with transitioning 6,000 people off of public assistance and into the workforce.
Neosho County Community College’s president Brian Inbody quickly detailed, at the governor’s request, the menu of job- and skills-training programs offered at the local college.
Maike bore the explanation of the promises of job-training with patience, but was not diverted from her point. “In the meantime,” she said, “we have bills just like you do, and we still have to pay for that loaf of bread. … I’m just saying: think of us.”
“I am,” said Brownback. “I am. That’s the whole point. It would be simpler to kind of just let the old programs go on, that would be simpler. But it hasn’t changed the numbers.”
“Just know,” Maike said, removing her eyeglasses and wiping their lenses on the hem of her hot pink T-shirt, “that the numbers do not explain everything, OK?”
“Agreed,” said the governor.

But Brownback can be forgiven for having numbers on the brain. Fewer than 24 hours separated the governor from the news, released by the Kansas Legislative Research Department, that the state faces a $400 million hole in its next budget after officials cut projections for tax collections from now through June 2016.
The hard part now, Brownback told the roughly 40 people in attendance, is: “Where are you coming up with the revenue?” It was a question most of the subsequent speakers understandably turned back on him.
Chanute’s Superintendent of Schools, James Hardy, wondered about the $250,000 cut to his district’s current budget and, beyond that, the general anxiety that pervades nearly every question to do with school funding these days.
“It makes us anxious whether you can really fund this plan,” said Hardy. “That’s what makes us all nervous in K-12 education. If you could address the revenue part, we’d appreciate that.”
The governor proposed about $210 million in cigarette and liquor tax increases in his January budget proposal and, on Tuesday, pledged his willingness to further increase taxes on cigarettes. “I’m not a big champion of taxes but that one makes a lot of sense. It doesn’t get you there, but it gets you some of the way.”
Whatever tax revenues enter into Brownback’s package, he’s clear on one thing: “I want to stay on the consumption side of the tax equation.”
A couple of attendees at Tuesday’s town hall, including accountant Phil Jarred, alluded to a counter solution, which would involve rethinking the massive reduction in personal income taxes pushed through in 2012 and 2013. While Brownback has offered to tinker with these cuts — in the form of rolling back certain exemptions or deductions — he’s committed to their preservation in the main, and regards them as the chief attraction to individuals and businesses who choose to move to Kansas.
“But you know,” said Jarred, “I really think there are people out there who wouldn’t mind paying some income tax to help fund their schools.”
Hardy, earlier, made the same point. “We have to try to find a way to raise some revenue, and if it’s taxes — well, people pay taxes for their schools and their roads. You know, that’s the way it works in Kansas.”
“I understand your philosophy,” Jarred told the governor. “But it just seems like the transition is a little rough and I’m not sure we’re going to get there soon enough. … I don’t see all the economic models that you guys see. I’m just hoping you’re on top of it.”
Brownback was also pressed on the subject of Medicaid expansion by Neosho Memorial Regional Medical Center’s CEO Dennis Franks, who said his hospital is losing $2.5 million annually without the expansion due to lost federal reimbursements.
Even Brownback’s supporters, of which there appeared to be a few at Tuesday’s Chamber of Commerce-sponsored event, cautioned the governor, as he continues his legislative experiment, to proceed with humility. Sen. Jeff King addressed Brownback directly: “Anytime you  make historic reforms like you did, it’s not going to work quite perfectly. You have to go back and have the courage to say there are some things that we’ve done that didn’t work quite as well as we want, we can make them work better.”