Discussions surrounding taxes were front and center at a Saturday morning legislative coffee hosted at Manhattan’s Sunset Zoo.
With the session reaching the halfway point, the tax bill has become the number one issue to be resolved before legislators depart Topeka in May. Sen. Usha Reddi serves on the Senate Tax Committee and says she expects more conversations to come as legislators work through different ways toward meaningful tax relief.
“I think that even though the House has sustained the governor’s veto, it has resurrected in Senate, so we’re still going to be talking about it, and the reason that’s so important is because there are so many good pieces to that bill,” she said.
Rep. Kenny Titus says the tug-of-war on the issue stems from Republican leadership wanting a single-rate tax, while Gov. Laura Kelly does not. But with Kelly wanting to increase baseline budget increases by over $1 billion, Titus says the question is not if the state can afford a tax cut, but rather how much money the government should spend to achieve this.
“What I’d like to see is a tax cut that really targets the middle class because when you crunch the numbers, the single-rate plan was better in the long-run for middle income earners. The governor’s plan doesn’t really do much for middle income earners either, so I picked a number in the middle. For a family, two parents, two kids that make $80,000 a year, the difference between the single rate plan and the governor’s plan is about $60,” he said.
As the House now begins work on a new version of the bill, Rep. Sydney Carlin says it should include elements of the governor’s proposal, with no flat tax, exempting social security and immediately ending the state sales tax on food.
“I do believe that we need a good tax plan, a new tax plan. We need to have a cut, we need to reduce the $3 billion that we have in extra revenue,” she said.
Rep. Mike Dodson says getting a tax bill accomplished is crucial, given the revenues in the state’s coffers, noting the state is not a bank.
“You’ve got to balance. When we put taxes in there, the expectation is we don’t put too many in, but we do expect services. In every economic proposal that we have, we’ve gotta have housing, healthcare and child care. If we don’t have that, then we’re not going to grow,” he said.
Medicaid Expansion
Each of the Manhattan area legislators say they’re pleased that House leadership has agreed to hold a hearing on Medicaid expansion, but agree that the conversation is likely not going much further this session.
“Probably nothing will come of this. We’re going to have what I would call a show trial. All the information that we need is already known, so this is just an argument about how we go forward,” Dodson said.
Kansas is one of 10 states yet to expand Medicaid since the Affordable Care Act was signed into law in 2010, despite growing support for expansion on both sides of the political aisle. Rep. Carlin says it’s unfortunate that Kansas has yet to take advantage of federal incentives to widen the reach of the state’s healthcare coverage.
“I like that we’re taking care of people. I don’t like that we have other ways to do it and are not taking advantage of that,” she said.
Sen. Reddi says she believes if the Medicaid expansion debate was put to a public vote, it would pass overwhelmingly, which is why she says she’s ready to debate the issue.
“I would like to have a chance to vote on it and see if we can’t pass it. I think that’s the best way to do this. In my opinion, this is an investment, just as an economic development issue would be. This is an investment in our communities, and in healthcare and it’s also a prevention mechanism,” she said.
Rep. Titus says while he supports a discussion among legislators on the topic, he still questions the role the state should play in the matter moving forward.
“There are legitimate arguments on both sides of this question and before we remove a lot of people that are already on insurance and put them on government insurance, I just think we need to have a really careful conversation about the role of government in healthcare and the total cost to the state long-term,” he said.
WATER POLICY
Three House bills tied to water have advanced with overwhelming bipartisan support to the Senate.
At Saturday’s legislative coffee, Rep Titus who serves on the House Water Committee and has studied the issue extensively, credited the groundwork laid nearly a decade ago by Gov. Sam Brownback, setting for the state’s 50 year vision on water-related matters.
“So what they did was they said out west we have these issues with groundwater decline. In the east, which hadn’t been getting a lot of attention, is that our reservoirs were filling up with sedimentation and we’re losing our public water supply when we depend much more on surface water through rivers in this part of the state,” he said.
That vision has continued to come into focus over the past few years, with Titus noting some progress with water policy matters tackled in the House Water Committee this session.
“We have a five year funding plan in place. We’ve now given the groundwater management districts specific instructions to deal with the decline with local solutions and we’ve given them a timeframe to do it. So with all those pieces over the next five years, we’ll keep a close eye on it and I would be really surprised if anyone comes in and wants to try and de-emphasize that or pull funding back from those positions just because there’s been so much popular support for it,” he said.
House Bill 2633 would provide additional revenue sources for the water program management fund. House Bill 2634 would give groundwater management districts additional correctional control provisions for chief engineers. House Bill 2678 would extend how long a groundwater right can be deposited in a water bank.
Friday was the turnaround deadline for bills to advance from one chamber to the other or be shelved until the next session. Legislators will resume their work on Wednesday.
