However the sales-tax debate turns out, state lawmakers and Gov. Sam Brownback can say they lowered one tax by a whopping 30 percent this year – the property tax on boats and other watercraft. That tax had been so high in Kansas that many residents unlawfully registered and kept their boats in neighboring states. Voters finally passed a constitutional amendment last November authorizing lawmakers to classify and tax watercraft on a different basis from other personal property, and Brownback signed the resulting measure April 16 as part of a larger tax-related bill. Now, boats will be taxed at 11.5 percent of appraised value next year and 5 percent as of 2015. The new tax rate should benefit Kansas boat owners and dealers as well as the state’s lakes, parks and budget.
The professionals at the Kansas State Department of Education have invested significant time and money in helping develop the Common Core standards, a multistate effort to align standards and progress measures on English and math. And it looks like the standards may escape a legislative attempt to scrap them in Kansas. But Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., was among nine GOP senators who signed a letter last week asking for language in an appropriations bill that would bar the use of funds to develop, implement or evaluate state-level education standards. Also last week, Kansas Reps. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park, and Lynn Jenkins, R-Topeka, and 31 other House members sent a letter to Education Secretary Arne Duncan complaining that the “burdensome and misguided” Common Core standards “fail to address the specific needs of our states,” and raised concerns about how the federal government collects and distributes student data. The Common Core standards have been adopted by 45 states, including Kansas, and the District of Columbia, and officials have said it would cost Kansas $30 million to develop other standards and tests at this point.
At an April Wichita Downtown Rotary luncheon meeting featuring Gov. Sam Brownback, the questioners included Jill Docking, the Democrat and financial adviser who lost to Brownback in his first U.S. Senate race in 1996. Docking, a member of the Kansas Board of Regents from 2007 to 2010, wrote on her policy site, the Docking Blog, about Brownback’s recent lobbying to keep higher-education funding flat by extending the higher sales-tax rate. “Taken on its face, the governor’s endorsement of ‘no cuts’ sounds like support, even the work of a savior. But when you take a look at the history of funding for the regent institutions in Kansas, it becomes apparent that the governor is advocating for maintaining not adequate funding but recession-level funding,” Docking wrote, citing an 11 percent decline in state funding for higher ed from 2008 through 2012. Now that Brownback wants to “lock education funding into recession levels” to help fund his “experimental” business and personal income-tax cuts, she continued, one “danger is that those states reinvesting in higher education after the recession will prey on our talent pool – at the cost of Kansas’ future economic competitiveness. When you understand this context, you come to realize that the governor is not solving the problem of adequate funding of higher education – he is exacerbating it.”
“We know who these people are. They’re the good guys. Why would we take the good guys’ right to defend themselves away?” – Rep. Jim Howell, R-Derby, talking on Kansas City public radio station KCUR about the new law allowing concealed-carry in more public buildings
“This is definitely an unfunded mandate. I just don’t like someone telling me what I can do in my house.” – Pratt County Sheriff Vernon Chinn, about the concealed-carry expansion
“We have become a pawn in a game of high-stakes poker.” – Shawn Naccarato, director of community and governmental relations at Pittsburg State University, on how higher-education funding figures into the Statehouse’s sales-tax debate
“Why in the world would we abolish one of the rarest things in American political history, a government program that’s working?” – Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach, in the Washington Times, on federal legislation that would repeal the E-Verify immigration-status check system
Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., issued no formal statement about his April 17 vote against bipartisan legislation meant to strengthen background checks for gun buyers. But he told the Baldwin City Rotary Club this week that he didn’t think the measure would have prevented criminals from getting guns and he feared it would have burdened law-abiding citizens. “I have no problem with anyone who is in the business of selling firearms having to do a background check on whomever they sell to. The question is, how do you get to the dad handing the gun off to the son, which is not what we’re after,” said Moran, as quoted by the Baldwin City Signal. (The proposed legislation would not have affected a gun transfer from father to son.) Moran also spoke of the need for more emphasis on mental health at the state and federal levels, calling community-based programs “woefully underfunded.”
According to a Huffington Post article about the 61 of 82 vacant federal judge slots in the U.S. that don’t even have nominees, President Obama “put forward fewer nominees at the end of his first term than his two predecessors. But a closer look at data on judicial nominees, and conversations with people involved in the nomination process, reveals the bigger problem is Republican senators quietly refusing to recommend potential judges in the first place.” Two of those mentioned GOP senators are Kansas’ Jerry Moran and Pat Roberts, “neither of whom has put forward nominees for a district court slot there that has been vacant for 1,246 days.” When Huffington Post asked the GOP senators mentioned in the article why they hadn’t submitted names for long-vacant seats, only one responded, Sen. John Cornyn, R-Texas.
“This 1-cent sales tax will only last for three years, then drop to 0.4 cents to pay for the ongoing transportation plan,” wrote Democratic Gov. Mark Parkinson (in photo) in July 2010, arguing the statewide sales-tax increase would avert a sixth round of budget cuts and help fund schools, public safety and social services. But now Republican Gov. Sam Brownback is lobbying the House to join the Senate and extend the full 6.3 percent sales-tax rate – to avoid cuts to higher education and other items in a budget under pressure from last year’s deep income-tax cuts. How does Parkinson feel about the likelihood of his temporary tax hike being made permanent? When The Eagle editorial board e-mailed Parkinson, now president and chief executive officer of the American Health Care Association in Washington, D.C., he said: “I believe that interjecting myself in current issues would just be noise and not helpful. Running a state is not easy. The current governor and Legislature don’t need me second-guessing their actions.”
The proof of Kansas Sen. Jerry Moran’s effectiveness as chairman of the National Republican Senatorial Committee won’t be known until the midterm elections in November 2014. But it doesn’t reflect well on Moran that the NRSC raised $6.9 million in the first three months of the year, while the Democratic Senatorial Campaign Committee raised $13.7 million. According to the Hill newspaper, the NRSC was slow to hire fundraising staff after Moran took over in November. “We’re confident we’ll have the resources needed to win in 2014,” NRSC spokeswoman Brook Hougesen told the Hill.
Praise is due Sens. Pat Roberts (left) and Jerry Moran (right), R-Kan., for trying again to do something about the 11 natural-gas storage fields in the state that have gone without government inspection since a 2009 court ruling. Like their similar 2011 bill, the latest legislation should be a no-brainer – “allowing states to step in when the federal government fails to monitor natural-gas storage sites,” as Moran said in a statement. Anyone wondering why this matters should check with residents in Hutchinson, the site of a 2001 tragedy in which migrating gas underground caused explosions that killed one couple and destroyed a block of downtown businesses. The longer Congress waits to respond to the federal government’s inaction and to restore the state’s authority to regulate interstate gas storage, the greater the risk of more explosions.
At least Congress proved last week that it still has the ability to pass legislation when a crisis arises, in this case the sequestration cuts that prompted furloughs of air traffic controllers and many flight delays. Both chambers quickly passed a bill giving the Obama administration flexibility to move money among Transportation Department accounts. As Sen. Jerry Moran, R-Kan., a dogged critic of the Federal Aviation Administration’s sequestration decisions, said Thursday night: “This bipartisan solution is a victory for air travelers and communities nationwide.” Still, it was hard to disagree with comments along the lines of this tweet: “Sequester Head Start classrooms, deny cancer patients, reduce Meals on Wheels, but don’t delay a senator’s flight!”
It’s good to see city and Sedgwick County officials communicating about a new law enforcement training center. A joint tour last week of the outdated facility at 37th Street North and Meridian underscored the need to act soon. The governments should try to stick to their earlier commitment to join the Kansas National Guard and build at the new Heartland Preparedness Center at K-96 and I-135, and try to scale back the original plan and $30 million shared cost to fit their current budget challenges. County Commission Chairman Jim Skelton’s (in photo) idea of a design to allow expansion makes sense. But officials need to get moving on the project.
“We got rid of the wind production tax credit. I worked really hard on it. We got rid of it for 23 hours. Crowning achievement of my time here in Congress so far. And then in the Senate, they stuck it back in, in the dark of night.” – Rep. Mike Pompeo (in photo), R-Wichita, at a Politico forum on energy and taxes
“There was a bright light in the room.” – Sen. Debbie Stabenow, D-Mich., sparring with Pompeo
“An alien who has a terrorist background can call himself ‘Rumpelstiltskin’ without having to prove that that is his real name.” – Secretary of State Kris Kobach, arguing against an immigration-reform bill last week in Senate Judiciary Committee testimony
“The testimony had nothing to do with this office.” – Kobach spokeswoman Kay Curtis, after Sunflower Community Action asked in a news release, “Has Anyone Seen Kris Kobach in Kansas?”
“If I do vote for it, it would end my political career. Politics in this state are brutal.” – Rep. Don Hineman, R-Dighton, at a Garden City forum, saying he won’t support the governor’s effort to retain the higher sales-tax rate
No surprise that Rep. Tim Huelskamp, R-Fowler, starred in another clash of the House Republicans – or “Fight Club on the Hill,” as the headline of Dana Milbank’s column in the Washington Post dubbed it. Huelskamp and others rebelled this week against an effort by Majority Leader Eric Cantor, R-Va., to help people with pre-existing health problems get insurance, which Huelskamp dismissed as “expanding Obamacare.” As part of a “Making Life Work” agenda meant to move the party “beyond the fiscal debate,” Cantor also has sought changes to comp and flex time and worker retraining. But he shelved the insurance bill Wednesday. Huelskamp said: “In August, we’re going to hit the debt ceiling and we can’t avoid that. We’re running out of money, and as Republicans, we have to get ready now and talk about the vision of what we have to do to get our country on a 10-year plan to balance the budget,” adding that theme “is the kind of message that gets lost in little things.” Milbank responded: “So helping workers and the sick are ‘little things’? Cantor can forget warm and fuzzy for now; he has enough trouble just making his colleagues sound humane.”
Predictably, Kansas Secretary of State Kris Kobach was a star witness at Monday’s Senate Judiciary Committee hearing on the Gang of Eight’s immigration reform bill, fearmongering about its potential to lead to more attacks like the Boston Marathon bombings. But another witness, anti-tax crusader Grover Norquist (in photo), surprised some with his testimony in favor of reform, arguing that “people are an asset, they’re not a liability,” and that those who would make the nation less immigrant-friendly “would also make us less successful, less prosperous and certainly less American.” Afterward, Norquist tweeted: “Anti-immigrant witnesses @ Senate Judiciary hearing were quite weak. The communities of faith, farmers and business guys are all with Reagan.” When Norquist visited Topeka in January with a similar message for conservative legislators, Kobach responded that Norquist “has no legal expertise in immigration law.”
Law enforcement authorities in Wichita can take pride in having helped pass the state’s new anti-human trafficking law, which Gov. Sam Brownback signed Monday. Because of local officials’ good work investigating and prosecuting such cases in recent years, traffickers now will face tougher justice statewide, as vulnerable victims and survivors are handled with more care and compassion. “Kansas has made great strides forward in the fight against modern-day slavery with this new law,” said Brownback, who was a leader in the global fight during his time in the U.S. Senate. As the bill passed the Legislature unanimously, though, one concern got too little attention: its resulting costs to local governments. In February, Sedgwick County commissioners were told by county staff that such legislation would cost the county about $255,000 more a year.
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Proponents of the Second Amendment Protection Act, which Gov. Sam Brownback signed last week, see no legal problem with its wording exempting Kansas-made guns from federal laws. But Robert Cottrol, a law professor at George Washington University, told the Huffington Post that the Constitution’s commerce clause generally covers trade within a single state that affects trade in a given industry nationwide. He suggested another way to exempt Kansas gun owners from federal gun laws: “Declare a large number of citizens deputies. That would be in the power of state government.”
“We don’t have the money to keep the towers open. We simply don’t,” Transportation Secretary Ray LaHood told a House committee last week. But the fight against LaHood’s plan to close 149 air-traffic control towers is strong and bipartisan, spanning the likes of Sen. Jerry Moran (in photo), R-Kan., and actor and pilot Harrison Ford. “General aviation is more than guys in corporate aircraft,” Ford told Bloomberg. “It’s police and fire services. It’s EMS. It’s a guy flying his fish to market. It’s tractor parts getting to a rancher or a farmer. It’s a broad range of businesses that are affected.” On the administration’s plan, Moran told Bloomberg: “There’s a rural aspect to it that certainly catches my attention, but it’s more a belief in government doing its job responsibly as compared to seat of the pants.”
In a week full of awful news, one story stood out as hopeful – the report from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention that the infant-mortality rate dropped 10.5 percent nationally and 15.6 percent in Kansas between 2005 and 2011. The state has done good work in recent years trying to address its comparatively high rate of infant deaths, including by convening a Kansas Blue Ribbon Panel on Infant Mortality. Together with the March of Dimes and other private efforts, state leaders need to keep up the study of infant deaths and be aggressive in targeting medical factors such as congenital abnormalities, preterm births and sudden infant death syndrome. For example, Kansas Health and Environment Secretary Robert Moser recently announced an initiative to cut the premature birthrate from 11.2 to 10.3 percent by the end of 2014.
“I think we’re all Bostonians this week.” – Sedgwick County Commissioner Karl Peterjohn (in photo), at last week’s commission meeting
“It just reminds you that with public service comes the real possibility that you could be a target.” – Sen. Pat Roberts, R-Kan., about the letters possibly contaminated with ricin that were sent to President Obama and Sen. Roger Wicker, R-Miss.
“Imitation is the finest form of flattery.” – Mike O’Neal, president and CEO of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, on Missouri legislation to slash individual income taxes on business income
Duane Goossen, former longtime state budget director, warned that the state’s “current spending levels dramatically exceed expected income.” On his blog for the Kansas Health Institute, Goossen noted that state general fund spending approved for fiscal year 2013 is nearly $6.2 billion, while the estimated revenue for fiscal 2014 is only $5.4 billion. He also said the fiscal 2014 budgets proposed by the governor, Senate and House variously rob highway money and cut higher education and courts but still don’t get to even $6.1 billion. “The inability to close the gap with spending cuts suggests the solution must be increased revenue,” Goossen wrote, saying the governor and lawmakers could “transfer money from other funds,” “use up the available bank balance” and “add tax revenue.” They also can hope Friday’s updated revenue estimates will narrow the budget gap, he wrote.
Is there more Congress can do to respond to the Boston Marathon bombings? “I don’t think so,” House Speaker John Boehner, R-Ohio, said Tuesday, while noting that law enforcement officials “are going to have all the resources they need.” Rep. Mike Pompeo, R-Wichita, predicted that cuts to police departments will become a big issue in the months ahead, and suggested the U.S. can better reallocate resources to reflect modern warfare. “Last month, the last M1 tank departed Europe for the first time since D-Day,” Pompeo told Politico. “We probably should’ve done that 10 years ago – we’re slow to change to the evolving threats.”
Kansas’ new law to drug test some recipients of Temporary Assistance for Needy Families cash assistance or unemployment benefits is narrower than the one that sparked a long court case in Florida, so it should lead to fewer tests and legal problems. But it requires that welfare applicants or recipients be screened “when reasonable suspicion exists” that they are using a controlled substance, which seems a subjective standard at best. It will cost the state an estimated $1 million next year and require four additional state employees. And as Gov. Sam Brownback signed the bill Tuesday, it was disappointing to see him join those claiming the law’s main purpose is to help people by providing treatment. Who doubts that for many of the 29 senators and 106 representatives who voted for the bill, the motivation was more punitive than beneficent, and based on the myth that drug abuse is rampant among welfare recipients?
“Republican Sen. Pat Roberts is on a glide path toward re-election, having won endorsements from each of the state’s four members of Congress as well as five statewide officeholders,” wrote Kansas City Star columnist Steve Kraske. “Oh, did I mention he’s got $1.1 million in the bank, too?” Kraske also credited Gov. Sam Brownback and his political operative, David Kensinger, with “the solidarity the Kansas GOP is maintaining in the wake of its historic clean-sweep election of 2010. The temptation to break rank and run for Senate or governor, and trigger a primary, is extraordinary given the number of down-ballot officeholders with oversized ambitions,” he wrote. “But so far, the dam is holding.” Of course, the newly powerless moderate Republicans are angry and restless, and will see their only statewide officeholder, Insurance Commissioner Sandy Praeger, retire after 2014. The GOP primary for that job will feature at least three conservatives, including repeat candidate David Powell of El Dorado.
The D.C. Circuit Court of Appeals has four vacancies, including, unbelievably, the one created when Chief Justice John Roberts left that bench in 2005. President Obama is hoping his latest nominee for that court, Sri Srinivasan, will avoid a GOP filibuster. Srinivasan, who played basketball in high school with Danny Manning while growing up in Lawrence, is the Obama administration’s principal deputy solicitor general and has been endorsed by the likes of Kenneth Starr. He had an uneventful hearing Wednesday before the Senate Judiciary Committee. The Washington Post’s Jonathan Bernstein called the Srinivasan nomination the “moment of truth” for Obama’s nominations to the court, which is often seen as a stepping-stone to the Supreme Court. “If 41 or more Republicans simply will not vote for anyone to the left of John Roberts, the only option left to Democrats will be Senate rules reform,” Bernstein wrote. “On the other hand, if Srinivasan can be confirmed, Republican claims that they have objected only to specific nominees for specific reasons can be taken more seriously.”
“We should swallow hard and extend the sales tax,” concluded Kansas City Star columnist Steve Rose, urging the House to go along with the Senate and Gov. Sam Brownback. The 2012 tax plan won’t be repealed, Rose wrote, and extending the sales-tax hike beyond its June 30 sunset date is the only way to avoid draconian budget cuts to K-12 schools, higher education and social programs as state revenue ebbs. “It is appropriate to feel sympathy for those who would like to see the governor pay the price for his irresponsible income tax cuts. And sympathies abound for those who were viciously attacked for supporting the sales-tax hike in the first place,” Rose wrote. “But let’s not shoot ourselves in the foot while aiming at Brownback.”
However the sales-tax debate turns out, state lawmakers and Gov. Sam Brownback can say they lowered one tax by a whopping 30 percent this year – the property tax on boats and other watercraft. That tax had been so high in Kansas that many residents unlawfully registered and kept their boats in neighboring states. Voters finally passed a constitutional amendment last November authorizing lawmakers to classify and tax watercraft on a different basis from other personal property, and Brownback signed the resulting measure April 16 as part of a larger tax-related bill. Now, boats will be taxed at 11.5 percent of appraised value next year and 5 percent as of 2015. The new tax rate should benefit Kansas boat owners and dealers as well as the state’s lakes, parks and budget.
