Dear Friend:

It was a long week in Topeka.  A colleague lost his wife on Thursday in a horrific accident.  My condolences and prayers are with Rep. Dennis Hedke and his family during this difficult time. Though we disagree on certain issues, Dennis is a gentle and gracious man who never lets those disagreements become personal. The House session has been rearranged Monday to allow us to attend the funeral service in Wichita and pay our respects.

The business of the week was difficult to deal with as well. Cuts, fund sweeps, and budget deficits were the focus as detailed below: 

Floor Action

Rescission bill: H Sub SB 4 is a short-term solution to a serious long-term structural problem with our tax code. Without this bill, the only available source of immediate dollars to keep the state solvent would have been the money still owed to schools.

• Rescission is from the word “rescind” and means to revoke, cancel, or repeal the current budget, which is in state law. 

With the state rapidly running out of money, this bill was needed to protect education funding and Medicaid payments, both of which were in the crosshairs as the alternative to the rescission bill. No other option existed that could provide the revenue needed quickly enough.  We need meaningful solutions to our revenue problem, but nothing we do to resolve that problem can take place in a timeframe that keeps government functioning in the next few months. 

• Kansas City Star article

The cuts in the rescission bill are painful, however they did not go far enough. Governor Brownback announced Thursday that he will make across the board cuts to K-12 public schools 1.5% and higher education institutions 2%. This will fill an additional $54 million of the state’s shortfall for this fiscal year ending June 30. 

As difficult as those amounts are for schools to absorb mid-year with contracts in place, the damage without the rescission bill would have been many times worse.  Let me repeat this to be clear – without the rescission bill the only available source of immediate dollars to keep the state solvent would have been the money still owed to schools.  SMSD is due over $55 million in general state aid this school year. The cuts announced by the governor will cost SMSD $1.4 million.

• My Explanation of Vote on the bill: MR. SPEAKER: The vote today is not a choice-the state has an obligation to pay its bills. I will not contribute to default by voting no, however responsible governance begins with the courage to admit we have a problem. Today I vote yes on H Sub for SB 4, but I will not support any other temporary fixes that enable magical thinking to triumph over responsible public policy. --MELISSA ROOKER
• Kansas City Star article

Take a look at what’s going on in the various committees next week: Calendar

Education Issues

I attended a hearing in the House Education committee on HB 2034, which would limit the items available for negotiation in teacher contracts to salary and benefits only – a proposal generated from the minority report of the K-12 Study Commission. Dave Trabert with the Kansas Policy Institute was the only proponent of the bill, while the teachers association (KNEA), school board association (KASB), and superintendents association (KSSA) all testified against the bill and outlined the agreement they have reached cooperatively to reform the collective bargaining agreement. This collaborative process took more than a year to reach an agreement all stakeholders can support. 

To Mr. Trabert, compromise is a problem.  He described compromise to mean that “nobody got everything they wanted.”  Funny thing, the bill he prefers would give only one side what they want. The K-12 Student Performance and Efficiency Commission recommended support of the agreement reached by the stakeholder groups. Their new version of the professional negotiations act has been introduced as a bill in the Senate (SB 136) and the House.