Revenue coming to state coffers in February being $54 million less than expectations will deal the universities of Kansas and Kansas State, and other public colleges and universities, significant blows.
Of the $17.2 million in funding cuts imposed by Gov. Brownback Tuesday afternoon, KU and its medical center in Kansas City will lose $7.2 million, the Board of Regents announced. Kansas State will be forced to forego $4.9 million. Pittsburg State University, $1 million.
What other cuts will be made have not been announced. In any case they will weigh heavily. Public schools are struggling to get by, having cut staff positions, curtailed programs and reduced days in the classroom because of funding woes. The Kansas Department of Transportation’s reserves have been raided, as has funding set aside for children’s programs.
The sad commentary is that none of this would have happened had economist Arthur Laffler been kept at arm’s length of the governor. Laffler, you see, is a dyed-in-the-wool believer in trickle-down economics: The more the rich have, the more that will spill over to help the rest of us.
Brownback believed slashing income taxes for the wealthy and exempting business owners from taxes would lead to job creation because they would use the extra capital to invest in expansions and improvements.
To date the experiment has been a failure, and February’s numbers portend worse.
We have had growth in Kansas, but not nearly as much in most other states. Meanwhile, employees who depend all or somewhat on state funding — in schools, foremost — have lost their jobs. Teachers are looking to neighboring states for more stable opportunities.
Revenue shortfalls the past four years have totaled about $1 billion, “an accurate portrayal of the situation,” said Duane Goossen, former state revenue director who is considered among the keenest of government finances analysts.
But, Goossen says, the loss could be more than $1 billion: “It’s not possible to know exactly what might have been:” i.e., budget cuts and funding increases delayed because of faltering revenue are not a part of actual shortfalls.
OIL AND gas production and farming incomes, as Brownback lamented, are down, but certainly don’t explain a one-month deficit of $54 million, especially when income tax collections are not nearly as great in those arenas as they were before income tax cuts.
— Bob Johnson
