Sen. Caryn Tyson, a Republican from Parker who represents Allen County in the 12th District, is serving her third term as a state senator. She served a term as a representative before that.
Having that experience gives her the opportunity to serve on numerous committees and a strong voice on issues such as fiscal policy and taxes.
She is a committee leader on taxation and also serves on committees for transportation, commerce, unemployment compensation modernization and improvement, joint information technology, legislative post audit, and administrative rules and regulations.
“I work with a lot of people on both sides of the aisle to get a good product for Kansas. I think that makes me a very effective legislator,” she said, offering in example efforts to work with Democratic Sen. Tom Holland to freeze property taxes for seniors and disabled veterans.
She also worked on legislation to exempt those taxes entirely, as part of a package vetoed by the governor in the last session, but hopes to expand those efforts this year.
“It’s one of my top priorities,” she said. “It’s important to me to get the money back to taxpayers. That is one way to keep more money in pocketbooks.”
Gov. Laura Kelly vetoed several pieces of legislation last year. Lawmakers voted to override some, while other attempts failed by just a few votes.
In some cases, several bills were bundled together, which meant items that likely would have passed on their own failed because of a veto.
Tyson expects to see many of those bills return, perhaps with different language.
Kelly vetoed a tax reform bill that included:
• Replaces individual income tax brackets with a single rate of 5.15 percent.
• Reduces corporation income and privilege tax rates and discontinues corporate rate reductions required by the Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion Act (APEX).
• Expands the exemption on Social Security income.
• Provides for annual standard deduction increases by a cost-of-living adjustment;
• Accelerates the elimination of state sales and compensating use tax on food and food ingredients and the associated repeal of the food sales tax credit and disposition of revenue changes; and
