The Legislative session last week was fairly slow, but the pace on action in committees has picked up. Since we don’t have as many bills to sort through, we can concentrate more closely on Senate bills in the various committees.
The governor had a press conference to explain additional reductions in spending because revenues have continued to fall.
The governor is proposing shuffling some money around from highway programs and delaying some payments from the state retirement fund, as well as using some federal refunds, among other things.
This would balance the current budget for now, but if revenues continue to fall, additional adjustments may have to be made.
Any revenue shortfall not accounted for in the current budget year will carry over to next year, making the shortfall of about $400 million even larger.
House and Senate budget proposals continue to be worked on and should be in full hearing mode this week. It will take about two weeks for the House Appropriations and Senate Ways and Means to finish its budget proposals for full House and Senate action. If all goes as planned and each chamber passes their budget, the difficult process of budget conference committee negotiations begins.
The Health and Human Services committee has had a few informational hearings and taken action on relatively uncontroversial bills except for a resolution known as the Healthcare Freedom Act. This is a constitutional amendment that would attempt to counteract health-care requirements the federal government may pass and would allow Kansans to have more say in health-care issues.
Constitutional amendments are very difficult to pass as two-thirds of both the House and Senate have to vote in favor to get this on the ballot for a vote.
The agriculture committee is very slow as most of our issues were taken care of before turnaround. The Senate Agriculture and Natural Resources committees have not sent a large number of bills for us to consider.
Taxation committee continues to be of interest to many with the various proposals for tax adjustments.
House bill 2549, the “exemptions” bill, passed out of committee in a much watered-down version. I expect this bill will take considerable time when it hits the House floor for debate.
Coming up for possible action this week are bills on property tax limits and increasing taxes on alcoholic beverages, as well as others.
The amount of work left to do here on the budget will be very challenging. A full range of ideas, from increasing taxes to making further cuts to balance the budget, are being tested. But, revenue projections and additional information regarding expenditures are needed to know what the final budget proposals will be.
I have legislative coffees coming up in Burrton and Sedgwick in the next few weeks, but have a few Saturdays open in April if someone would like to host an additional coffee.
The coffees are enjoyable as I have the opportunity to hear your thoughts on various legislative issues.
Rep. Don Schroeder represents District 74 in the Kansas House of Representatives. He can be contacted at don.schroeder@house.ks.gov.
