The first Legislative Coffee of the year took place Saturday at the Grant County Fire Station with State Representative Marty Long of Ulysses and Senator Dr. Bill Clifford of Garden City hearing from a group of about 50 concerned citizens, as well as city and county officials. Among the topics discussed were the state budget, as well as health care and school vouchers.
Long led things off with an update on the state budget, saying Kansas ended the fiscal year with a balance of $3.2 billion.
“That is probably the biggest ending balance Kansas has had since statehood,” Long said. “Our economy is going nicely, we’re continuing exceeding our expectations by 10-20, 25 million dollars per month.”
Long said the legislature is cognizant of the fact that the state is spending $400 million more than it’s taking in.
“So, while we do have a huge surplus, if we’re spending $400 million more than we’re taking in, we can extrapolate that out to see where we’ll be in four or five years, and in our current spending, that is not sustainable,” Long said. “It’s a simple math equation so we’ve been hard at work on that. The Senate has been hard at work, the House has been hard at work. We each come up with our own budgets and then we kind of work through them.”
Long said the state has to find spending that’s sustainable.
He also mentioned property tax relief and how that works in Kansas.
“The Kansas Legislature only collects your property tax from a 20-mill revenue that we take for school funding,” Long said. “We’re talking about rolling back one-and-a-half mills this year to give you some more property tax relief because we have such a surplus in our coffers,” Long said. “To be able to do that we’re going to cut our own spending to make that all sustainable.”
He said they’re not cutting school funding; they’re just lowering the property tax one-and-a-half mills, but that will be funded and still sent to the schools.
Long said there may be a constitutional amendment on the ballot next November to limit residential appraisals. The senate has passed a bill that would limit a 3 percent gain each year on home residential appraisals.
“The House has a slightly different version that we introduced just this week,” Long said. “I’m on the tax committee in the House so I was able to watch this happen. Our proposal is that homes either be appraised at the county at fair market value or a six-year average of the fair market value, whichever is less.”
He said when talking about appraisals on homes it is in an effort to keep property tax down, but it won’t solve the problem of higher taxes by limiting appraisals.
“The biggest determining factor on property tax isn’t appraisals, it really is the budget,” Long said. “County budgets, school budgets, city budgets.
“So, if we start limiting appraisal values on your own, that won’t fix higher tax problems,” Long said.
Long said the House and Senate passed the Help Not Harm Act which prohibits providers from providing gender transition care under the age of 18, which Governor Laura Kelley vetoed. The bill goes back to the Senate, which is expected to override the veto, then it goes to the House, which Long expects the House to override the veto, as well.
Long expects school funding to increase by $10 million in the House version of the budget. February 20 is turnaround day where the House bills go to the Senate, and vice-versa.
Clifford is the only physician in the Senate and is the vice-chair of the public health committee, the local government committee, the utilities committee, and the Federal and State Affairs Committee, which is the intersection between the federal government and the state government.
Clifford said there were 700 bills introduced this session.
“There still could be more because the Senate committees can still take bills, so tax, ways and means for us, appropriations on the House side and fed and state are exempt so bills can be introduced,” Clifford said. “On the Senate side there are 57 bills considered so they have to make across the Senate floor to go over to the House. On the House side I lost count, but there are at least 50 bills that they will consider and send over to the Senate.”
The next Legislative Coffee is slated for 1 p.m., March 15 at the fire station, with the final scheduled for April 19.
Comments
No comments on this item Please log in to comment by clicking here