Lonely in Topeka
The full legislature reconvened yesterday, April 28, for the final few days (or weeks?) of the 2010 legislative session. This phase of the session was traditionally called the veto session, but in recent years has become better known as the wrap-up session because it now involves much more legislative business than merely considering gubernatorial vetoes. This year is no exception, and the dominating issue will be crafting a budget for the coming fiscal year in the face of continually declining state revenues.
To address that daunting task, the Senate Ways and Means Committee and House Appropriations Committee arrived early to get started on resolving the budgetary dilemma. Ways and Means met last Monday, Tuesday, and Wednesday. Appropriations met on Thursday and Friday. As a member of the Appropriations Committee I participated in that session. But I actually came to town on Monday April 19 and sat in on the Ways and Means proceedings. I figured it was too wet to plant corn yet, and I was anxious to get a better grasp on the budget issues. I’m not certain I got any smarter, but it was certainly entertaining watching senators go about their work!
At times it seemed a little lonely in Topeka last week. My early arrival was NOT at taxpayer expense!
There Will be a Tax Increase
A good deal of the discussion about the budget revolves around the question of whether the correct approach is to continue to cut the budget even further, or to take a look at the distasteful alternative… raising taxes. The Senate is taking the approach that some further cuts can be made to the budget, but not enough to avoid a tax increase. The House plan throughout the session has been to craft a budget entirely with cuts. However the current version of the House budget achieves that objective by continuing the recent practice of shifting responsibility for governmental expenditures to the local level… cities, counties and school districts. Shifting that responsibility means also shifting the tax… from state sources like sales or income to local sources… property tax. This just cannot be wise tax policy, and will not be good for the 118th district and other rural areas of the state.
This year will be different. The ongoing fiscal crisis has made crafting a budget extremely difficult this time around, and it appears that neither the House nor the Senate will have passed or even debated a budget before we leave town this week. The prevailing opinion seems to be to put off that decision until the latest state revenue estimate is available in mid-April. So it now appears that we will adjourn early, possibly as early as Tuesday evening. That will leave more legislative days available to use during the wrap-up session in early May. Those of us who are corn farmers as well as legislators will be hoping for enough dry weather to get the corn in before we are called back to Topeka on April 28!
Unemployment Rate Drops in February
The National Bureau of Labor Statistics reports that the unemployment rate in Kansas declined to 6.8% in February. This is certainly good news, and represents a significant drop from the recent high of 7.8% unemployment last July. Kansas Secretary of Labor Jim Garner issued the following comment: "While it is still too early to say the Kansas labor market is out of the woods, I am encouraged by a number of promising signs in the February Labor Report. There were considerable job gains in manufacturing for the first time in 16 months – gains that go beyond what we typically see from January to February. Additionally, job loss is slowing in nearly all industries, there was a drop in initial claims numbers and several other major industries had slight over-the-month job gains. These are encouraging signs that we’ll be watching closely over the coming months."
Quote of the Week: The one who says it cannot be done should never interrupt the one who is doing it. - Anonymous
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