On April 28 the Kansas Legislature will have another try at passing a budget for the coming fiscal year. The lawmakers took their spring break before agreeing on a fiscal 2011 budget because they couldn’t decide how to cope with a looming $400 million deficit. Senate leaders want to raise taxes; the House budget bill slashes state spending still further and passes the buck for school funding to school district property taxpayers.
Taking Kansas back to the days when schools were funded primarily with the property tax would be devastating to southeast Kansas. Allen County and its neighbors make up the poorest quadrant of the state. Property values are low, which means levies would have to be high in order to raise the millions needed by school districts. Average family incomes in SEK are significantly below the state average, so it would not be practical to turn to local sales or income taxes for school funding. There are similar disparities in wealth between rural and urban counties across the state.
It was this geographical and demographical disparity in wealth that led to a court decision in 1991 that the constitution required that every Kan-sas student be provided “a suitable education” and further ruled that state funding of the public schools was the only practical way to achieve that requirement. That district court ruling that was later upheld by the Kansas Supreme Court led to the public school funding system the House of Representatives is now seeking to dismantle.
There is every reason to believe that the courts will insist that the state live up to its responsibility to its youngsters — and, indeed, to the economic and cultural future of all of Kansas — and raise the money it takes to provide good schools in every Kansas district.
Come April 28, then, our lawmakers should resolve to pass a tax package that raises at least $350,000 in additional income for the general fund and, if reason prevails, also raises enough new money to allow the Kansas Department of Transportation to fully fund its maintenance budget.
There are three basic sources of tax income in Kansas: the sales tax, property tax and income tax. As the population has moved away from the farm to the cities over the years, tax policy has shifted away from the property tax to sales and income taxes. The nature of the 2007-09 recession seems likely to extend this trend. The market value of residential housing has dropped 30 percent since 2007 and it’s not expected to rise to pre-recession levels any time soon. Commercial real estate also has been hit hard. Returning to the local property tax to finance schools is as unrealistic as it is inequitable.
KANSAS CAN afford to meet these challenges. According to Ed Flentje and Joe Aistrup, Kansas ranks almost exactly in the middle of the 50 states in the amount raised in taxes.
“In 2008, Kansas taxpayers paid $12.2 billion in state and local taxes. … This tax burden equates to … 12.1 percent of personal income. … In 2007, Kansas ranked 23rd in state taxes per capita and 26th in state taxes as a percent of personal income.
“ … On most measures of state and local tax burden, Kansas ranks lower than Nebraska, but higher than Missouri and Oklahoma. In the recent rankings Colorado ranks lower than Kansas on state and local taxes in terms of personal in-come but higher on a per capita basis,” as reported in their book, “Kansas Politics and Government.”
While the Kansas economy can readily bear the relatively small additional amount of money needed to stop the bleeding in school and general government spending, it is clear that the job can’t be done with higher levies on tobacco and alcohol. Sure, raise those levies to discourage use, but then go after the real money. The first target should be to withdraw the exemptions to the sales tax that have grown so numerous over the years.
Next stop, repeal special tax breaks given to business and industry, which will level the playing field while raising needed cash. Then make up the additional money needed with modest in-creases in the state sales and income taxes.
Will higher taxes hurt? Wrong question. The alternatives to good schools, great universities and a first class state highway network simply aren’t acceptable.
— Emerson Lynn, jr
