If you want change, you have to try something new.
So by all accounts, Gov. Sam Brownback is hunky-dory with the state of affairs in Kansas because he sees no reason to change his course.
In fact, according to Brownback, if the media would just pipe down about our $74.5 million budgetdeficit and the subsequent cuts to state projects and programs, then everything would be OK.
Oh, so we’re making a mountain out of a molehill, is that it?
So it’s no big deal the state now has a goose egg in its savings account instead of the $700 million we had only several years ago.
And we should take it in stride that Kansas schools are struggling to find teachers because of low pay and that parents increasingly are expected to supply their children’s classrooms with supplies.
And it’s fine that Kansas refuses to expand Medicaid, denying more than 150,000 Kansans health insurance. To date, we have turned away more than $1 billion in federal funds to implement the expansion. If implemented today, the state could see a financial gain of almost $160 million in 2017.
All of the above — a faltering state budget, a health care system on life support and underfunded schools — lie at the feet of our governor and those in the Legislature who support his agenda of aggressive income tax cuts.
Since Brownback came into office, Kansas’s economic standing has fallen behind those of its peers. Nebraska, Missouri, Iowa, and Colorado have all witnessed steady increases in their economies. For 2015, our growth rate was a minus 0.3 percent, putting us fifth worst in the nation.
Employment-wise, Kansas lost a total of 4,500 jobs over that same period.
Had we not cut income taxes or given tax breaks for 330,000 businesses and farmers, receipts for the recently concluded 2016 fiscal year would have been $1 billion higher, according to economists.
In fact in 2014, legislators scrapped a law saying the state must maintain an ending balance equal to 7.5 percent of its general fund and for the second year in a row Moody’s Investors Service has rated the state’s outlook as negative, saying the structural balance of our budget is off-kilter and our pension program is underfunded.
If these things don’t call for change, then we’re living in denial.
— Susan Lynn
