In 2018, we said Laura Kelly was the clear choice for Kansas governor, pointing out her “practical yet determined plan” to repair the fiscal damage of her predecessors.
She executed that plan. Today, we strongly endorse Kelly, a Democrat and the incumbent governor, for the second term she now seeks.
Kansans should not forget the disaster Kelly inherited when she took office in 2019. The state was still reeling from the tax cut “experiment” of former Gov. Sam Brownback, which led to cratering revenues and underfunded schools.
Remember endless special sessions? Last-minute budget transfers? Plummeting state credit ratings? “It was pretty dire,” Kelly said in September, during an hourlong grilling with The Star’s editorial board. “We were suffering under a huge debt. We weren’t able to pay our bills without robbing every bank account we had.”
As governor, Kelly ended the chaos by rightsizing the budget, repaying debt and shoring up the state’s credit.
She had help, of course. The federal government has provided billions for COVID-19 relief. The state’s economy has also rebounded, pouring hundreds of millions of additional dollars into state coffers.
She resisted repeated attempts to squander some of that money on tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy. She wasn’t always successful, but her efforts helped limit the damage.
Now, under Kelly’s leadership, Kansas fully funds its schools, has stopped raiding the transportation fund and will soon end the state sales tax on food, which helps the poor and middle class. Those are solid accomplishments.
And an important element of those wins is the fact that she found common ground with mainstream Republicans who control the Legislature, and without whose support she would have gotten little done legislatively. That’s not a blotch on her report card, but rather a shining feature of the benefits of a state where political power is divided among the parties. It’s something Kansas would be wise to continue.
She has had other successes. Sports gambling has come to Kansas, providing additional revenue for the state. She worked with the Legislature to provide more than $800 million in incentives for a battery plant near DeSoto, which, despite its flaws — especially its failure to set specific salary and hiring thresholds — will greatly help the state.
Despite intense criticism, and very little cooperation from the GOP, she carefully guided the state through the COVID-19 pandemic. She was the first governor in the nation to close schools in 2020, which was the right thing to do to protect students and teachers.
COVID pandemic, foster care, unemployment system
Her opponent keeps slamming her for her supposedly “over-aggressive” approach during the pandemic, especially her decision to close schools early on, and her attempt to delay reopening schools by a month in August 2020, which the state board of education denied. But here, too, he mistakes a feature for a bug. Divided government produced a result we could live with, and for all the moaning about it, she can’t be held liable for the results of something that did not happen.
Kelly now promises to invest additional state dollars to help struggling students recover from remote learning difficulties, which is also the right thing to do.
Kelly has had setbacks. She has improved the state’s foster care system, but it still falls far short of protecting every foster child. That work must continue. The creaky, outdated computer system managing the state’s unemployment insurance structure collapsed under the weight of the pandemic, leaving thousands without needed relief. An audit found Kansas paid more than $400 million in fraudulent unemployment claims. “Honestly, I can’t see it as failure,” Kelly told us, dubiously. “We worked with what we had, and did what we could.”
