AP Analysis: Old business big for Kansas Legislature

1/14/2013

By JOHN HANNA

AP Political Writer

TOPEKA (AP) — With conservative Republicans in control, the Kansas Legislature will spend much of the annual session that begins Monday replaying debates from the past two years.

Conservatives will probably revive — and have a good chance of passing — proposals to change how members of the state's appellate courts are selected, limit labor unions' political fundraising and mandate a 401(k)-style pension plan for new teachers and government workers. A plan from conservative Republican Gov. Sam Brownback to overhaul public school funding is all but certain to get serious consideration.

Even a supposedly forward-looking debate over how best to build on last year's massive income tax cuts will revisit part of last year's debate. Legislators are expected to reconsider their refusal to keep the state's sales tax from dropping in July as planned to offset income tax reductions, though the idea is still likely to be a hard sell.

"By and large, the issues that have not made their way through the legislative process in the past two years are going to dominate the debate," said incoming Senate Majority Leader Terry Bruce, a conservative Hutchinson Republican. "They have a much greater chance of working their way through."

Republicans will have majorities of 32-8 in the Senate and 92-33 in the House. The numbers are the same as before last year's elections, but political redistricting and conservatives' efforts to defeat moderate incumbents in GOP primaries gave the Legislature 53 members who have no previous experience in either chamber.

Also, conservatives who already had a solid House majority toppled the Senate's moderate GOP leaders, who'd often worked with centrist and liberal Democrats. Conservative Republicans complained that the Senate reflexively rejected proposals from the House, regardless of their merits, and GOP moderates saw the Senate as the last bastion against the conservatives.

The Legislature must close a projected $267 million gap between anticipated revenues and existing spending commitments for the fiscal year beginning in July. The shortfall results from the income tax cuts approved last year, but many GOP legislators, arguing that the budget problems are temporary and continued reductions will boost the state's economy even further, want to move the state closer to eliminating income taxes.

That's certain to revive the debate over the sales tax, which is set to drop in July to 5.7 percent from 6.3 percent. Democratic and moderate GOP leaders and Brownback's predecessor as governor raised the sales tax in 2010 to close an earlier budget shortfall but promised that most of the increase would be temporary.

Last year, Brownback proposed keeping the sales tax at 6.3 percent permanently to lessen potential budget problems from cutting income taxes aggressively. Legislators rejected the idea, as well as other measures, such as eliminating popular income tax deductions for charitable contributions and interest on home mortgages.

All of those proposals could come back, though most likely if they're tied to a proposal for eliminating income taxes. House Republicans had a plan in 2011 to reduce corporate income taxes and phase out individual income taxes. It stalled in the Senate, but GOP conservatives never have abandoned the idea.

"Having new members, we don't know where everybody is," said incoming House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey, a conservative Louisburg Republican.

But even if new legislators make the debate more volatile and the outcome less predictable, renewing past debates is still worthwhile for conservatives. If GOP moderates had remained in charge of the Senate — or at least could work with Democrats to thwart new conservative leaders — reviving old proposals would be futile, and they'd likely be more selective.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce, which backed conservatives with hundreds of thousands of dollars' worth of mailings and broadcast advertising, wants to reopen the debate over public pensions, despite two years of legislation designed to whittle down a long-term funding shortfall for the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System. With GOP moderates in control in the Senate, legislators stopped short of putting new hires in a 401(k)-style plan.

The chamber also backs legislation to prevent public employee unions from using the money they automatically deduct from members' paychecks to finance political activities. The idea, too, has been blocked in the Senate.

Senators also blocked proposals to change the process for picking appellate court members by giving the governor and Legislature more power and eliminating the screening of applications by a nominating commission with attorneys in the majority.

There was also Brownback's plan to rewrite the state's school funding formula, which would have eliminated existing limits on property taxes levied by local school boards.

All are now ripe for reconsideration. The Legislature is likely to see many do-overs.

"When the powers that be change, we're probably going to re-discuss issues we've discussed before," said Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, a Topeka Democrat.