With the passage of its 28 billion dollar budget, the Kansas legislature has decided to invest in the maintenance of a local lake.
66th District Rep. Sydney Carlin (D-Manhattan) says the legislature has set aside about 850 thousand for the dredging of Tuttle Creek Lake.
“We’re going to use a new system called water injection dredging. The lake was built in the ’60s and supposed to last 50 years and so it’s time to be trying to sustain that lake,” she said.
Carlin shared the information Monday, in an end of the legislative session recap with News Radio KMAN. Listen here:
According to the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, dredging involves the removal of sediment and other materials from the bottom of water bodies in order to maintain or increase water depth.
As for the budget as a whole, Carlin says she approves of it despite not being a frequent supporter of past spending bills.
“We do have an ending balance which, when we started the session it looked like in ’21 and ’22, we would be under water. So I’m keeping my fingers crossed that I didn’t get bad information and we really are going to be able to do all the things we are planning to do,” she said.
Carlin says the state has increased higher education spending in its latest budget, though not to perhaps the threshold universities and colleges had hoped for. She says the state made the move in order to avoid federal-funding disruptions brought about by past failures to meet education-spending requirements.
“We have put in a $53 million amount for higher education to try to please them,” she said.
Carlin says the money must be used on one-time expenditures.
“It’s going to be scholarships and grants and money for technical colleges, community colleges and the Regent schools. That’s a good thing,” she said.
For a full breakdown of the budget, visit budget.kansas.gov/budget-report.
Carlin also said Monday that the state is seeking to improve an unemployment system hit hard by an array of issues, including fraud over the past year.
Carlin says the legislature is creating a program to help those whose credit has been impacted by unemployment benefit distribution problems.
“What we’re going to do is send information that can be given to the credit bureaus that will verify that through no fault of their own they were a victim of this process being inadequate,” she said.
Those interested in using this program, which takes effect July 1, will need to submit a request to the the Kansas Department of Labor.
As part of its effort to improve the system, the legislature has also invested in improving KDOL’s technology.
According to Carlin, the decades-old equipment was overwhelmed as unemployment claims increased from about 20 per day to thousands per day during the pandemic.
