TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas legislators moved closer Tuesday to approving a plan to increase the state’s spending on public schools even as they rejected another proposal for increasing income taxes to pay for it and fix the state budget.
The Senate gave first-round approval just after midnight to a bill that would phase in an increase in education funding of roughly $230 million over two years. Senators planned to take another vote Wednesday morning and were expected to pass the bill and send it to the House.
The House has its own plan to phase in a $285 million increase over two years, and the final plan is likely to emerge from negotiations between the two chambers. Their bills are a response to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in March that the $4 billion a year that the state now spends on aid to its 286 local school districts is inadequate.
But even as lawmakers made progress on school funding, they found continued disagreements over rolling back past income tax cuts championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. The state faces projected budget shortfalls totaling $887 million through June 2019 - gaps that don’t include new money for schools.
The House voted 85-37 against a bill that would have raised $1.2 billion over two years by raising income tax rates and ending an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners, undoing much of the cuts enacted in 2012 and 2013 at Brownback’s urging. The vote late Tuesday night came less than an hour after the Senate had approved it, 26-14.
Tuesday was the 102nd day of what was supposed to be a 100-day annual session. Top Republicans have said the Legislature will exhaust its budget for the session on Friday.
Republican leaders have gone back and forth on weeks on whether they should push such a plan and try to build the two-thirds majorities necessary to override a potential Brownback veto. The alternative would be to pass a plan with smaller income tax increases and a mix of other revenue-raising measures that the governor would sign.
House Taxation Committee Chairman Steven Johnson, a moderate Assaria Republican, said he’s more inclined to work on a plan Brownback can sign. The plan rejected late Tuesday by the House was similar to one it had rejected last week.
“It’s pretty hard to prove there’s a will there,” Johnson said.
The latest tax plan split Republicans, including GOP leaders. Senate Vice President Jeff Longbine, a moderate Emporia Republican, said “we need a massive tax increase” to cover budget gaps and comply with the court’s mandate on education funding.
But GOP conservatives said the tax increases won’t be big enough if lawmakers won’t control spending.
“Be honest with the people,” said Sen. Ty Masterson, a conservative Andover Republican. “You go out there and tell them, ’I want to; I want to increase spending by hundreds of millions of dollars and tax you for it.’”
On school funding, attorneys for four school districts that filed their successful lawsuit against the state in 2010 have said both the Senate and House plans are inadequate. The court did not say how much school funding must increase when it set a June 30 deadline for lawmakers to pass a new school funding plan.
Democrats and some GOP moderates have taken those statements to heart. Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat, proposed nearly doubling the size of the increase, phasing in an extra $420 million over two years, but the vote was 23-16 against his amendment.
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