Good news is hard to come by these days, Caryn Tyson said Monday.
The Kansas senator, who represents Allen County, spoke with Allen County Farm Bureau members at their legislative update Monday evening.
Rep. Kent Thompson, who also represents Iola and much of the county, was ill and unable to attend.
Tyson touched on a broad number of topics, from the state’s ongoing budget crisis to her efforts to block privatization of the Osawatomie State Hospital.
“It’s just not a pretty picture right now,” Tyson, Parker Republican, said of the budget, and its $342 million deficit that must be balanced before the fiscal year ends June 30.
Finding a workable solution will be difficult, she admitted. Tyson stopped short of saying which avenues she favored, aside from voicing opposition to using Kansas Department of Transportation funds or further dipping into the state’s public employee pension funds. She hinted of potential support for a rollback of some tax cuts enacted in 2012.
Likewise, Tyson has seen little support for Gov. Sam Brownback’s proposals to increase business filing fees from $40 to $200 annually.
On the bright side, Tyson sees a new legislative body with members more willing to work together and have frank discussions about workable solutions.
“There’s a better attitude than we’ve seen in the past, which is critical,” she said.
“I didn’t go up there to raise your taxes,” Tyson said, “but we’ve got to get this budget situation under control. There’s a perception out there that there’s a group not paying its fair share. A betting person would say there’s going to be some movement.”
The most palatable solution, she said, would be a tiered rollback, in which those with incomes of less than, say, $50,000 or $100,000 still would pay no income taxes,” and those at higher income levels taxed at a certain percentage, comparable to personal income taxes.
In order for Tyson to support such a maneuver, however, she would also favor seeing farmers’ income losses become a larger part of the equation.
“A solution has to be fair for everybody,” she said, “and there’s still a rural-urban divide.”
But even with a roll back on tax cuts, it does nothing to solve the current budget deficit, Tyson acknowledged. Added revenues from those maneuvers are 12 to 18 months down the road.
Tyson also rejected any thought to another increase in sales taxes, akin to what legislators did in 2015 to close a budget deficit. “It’s maxed already,” she said, to the point Kansas has the highest sales tax on food in the nation. “It’s not a good situation.”
She recommended the state formulate its budget on the previous year’s revenue figures.
Despite the dark clouds on the horizon, Tyson sees some silver linings.
“As bad as it’s been the last three years, Kansas still has taken in 3 percent more revenue,” she said. “Who would have guessed that?”
The added revenue, however, falls short of keeping the budget in balance.
TYSON, who won re-election to a second four-year term Nov. 8 against a write-in candidate, said she again would sponsor a bill to make any efforts to privatize the Osawatomie State Hospital subject to legislative approval. Such a bill passed last year, but was good for only two years. Her proposal would make such a bill indefinite.
Tyson said she would support privatization, “if I truly thought privatization would benefit patients.”
However, she points at KanCare as an example of a flawed system in which three private companies manage the state’s Medicaid system.
“Talk to anybody using that system of all the problems and issues,” she said. ‘It’s just a mess. The bottom line is those three vendors are in it for profit. They have to be.
“Why would we want somebody in it for profit to manage our mental health?” Tyson continued. “I get the relationship, but I’m not in favor of turning over the hospital to them.”
TYSON was noncommittal when asked about a push to expand Medicaid services in Kansas — an issue clouded at the federal level because of a push to repeal the Affordable Care Act — but noted there is discussion about the topic this year in Topeka.
“They are going to have hearings on it this year, something that hasn’t happened before,” she said.
TYSON spoke briefly of a case involving Jeremy Ketler, a Humboldt resident who was convicted of federal gun charges in November for buying a silencer from a Chanute gun dealer.
Attorneys for Kettler and the seller, Shane Cox of Chanute, both cited a state statute that grants exemptions from federal gun laws.
“I’m trying to figure out where the disconnect is here,” she said, citing as an analogy Colorado state laws that allow the sale and consumption of marijuana, despite federal statutes against both.
