As the Kansas Senate works to develop a structurally balanced budget for the state there will be hearings beginning Monday in Topeka.
State Senator Jeff Longbine said for fiscal year 2017 they must find a combination of cuts, or borrow money from the pooled investment board that must be paid back over a seven-year period. “The Senate will introduce a rescission bill on Monday and begin hearings on that, and we will also simultaneously introduce a tax package that will begin to put us back into a structurally balanced budget.”
The projected revenue shortfall for the current fiscal year has been estimated at approximately $350 million.
Longbine told a legislative coffee audience in Junction City about the different measures in the proposed tax bill. “That tax package will include closing the LLC loophole, and it will include probably some individual income tax rate changes up as much as three or four tenths. So on a $100,000 wage earner it would be about a $300 additional tax per year.”
Longbine noted if painful structural cuts are not made this fiscal year, there are few options in 2018, and there would still be a negative balance in fiscal year 2019. But a cut and tax package would put the state in a strong ending balance in 2019. He added that could allow a new school finance formula to be written that year, let the state be weaned off of transportation sales tax dollars, allow the State to begin backfilling of agencies that have been drastically cut the past three years, and state employees could hopefully get either a cost of living adjustment or a pay raise. They have not had a pay raise in nine years.
