Governor-elect lays out state's budget priorities
By Gene Meyer and
Rachel Whitten
Kansas Reporter
TOPEKA -- With a roughly $500 million budget hole to fill, Gov.-elect Sam Brownback said the core functions of state government will get top priority in the next Kansas budget, without a lot of room for much else.
Brownback said in an interview with KansasReporter recently that in his administration's coming effort to revive the state's economy and balance next year's state budget without raising taxes, his most immediate budget priorities will focus on Medicaid, K-12 education, higher education and public safety at the top.
"Those areas we're really trying to protect -- the core functions of state government," Brownback said. "It's a tough budgetary atmosphere and we're working hard to keep them as level as we can."
Those categories amount to roughly 80 percent of the state budget, Brownback said, which leaves the remaining 20 percent more vulnerable to aggressive cuts until state finances improve.
"What is it we still need to do in state government? If we don't need to do it, then let's not do it," Brownback said.
Details of the cuts won't be known until the governor-elect formally submits a proposed budget to the legislature next month. But the revisions needed to fill an ever-changing budget hole could come in different forms, including transitioning divisions of state government to other entities, consolidating entities, or getting rid of them all together.
"We'll be proposing consolidation of a number of entities -- I'm not going to say (what) agencies or at what levels," Brownback said.
Because of the large budget shortfall, Brownback said repealing the 1-cent sales tax that went into effect July 1 is not an option.
"I don't think we can do it and realistically meet the budget hole we're already in," Brownback said.
Within a year of taking office, Brownback said he hopes to have a whole new Medicaid system.
The joint federal-state Medicaid health care system is a difficult program for state budget writers to deal with, in part because states are required to provide service for all qualified applicants in exchange for a federal pledge to pick up about 60 percent of the cost. Higher expected case loads in 2012 and reduced federal stimulus are projected to swell Kansas' total social services spending to more than $73 million.
The goal for the new system is to produce a higher quality of service at a reduced price, and shed the 1960s Medicaid model, Brownback said.
"I don't want to find myself in a year or two where Governor Parkinson (incumbent Gov. Mark Parkinson, whose term expires next month) was where he says one of the only answers he had was to cut Medicaid providers 10 percent," Brownback said. "I've met with governor, he said right after he did that he knew it was a bad move, because that's your most vulnerable population."
School finance is another high priority that will probably not be addressed right away, Brownback said. A group of 63 Kansas schools filed a suit in November against the state, alleging that recent school aid cuts violate an earlier promise to keep funding at imprecisely defined levels required by the state constitution. Brownback said he hoped that the amount of time that probably will be required for the suit to unfold in court would give the state additional time to make meaningful change in its funding formulas.
Concerning the lawsuit specifically, however, Brownback said he wants the state to defend against the matter in court more aggressively than previous school funding disputes.
"I despise the issue of this being resolved by the courts," Brownback said. "I think some people in the past have said this is kind of the easier political route to resolve -- let the courts do it. That is not what should happen."
Instead, the school finance issue should be the priority of the legislature, Brownback said.
"The legislature's primary responsibility is the power of the purse and allocation of state resources -- not the courts," Brownback said. "So I'm going to be defending vigorously against this and pushing the legislature aggressively that we redo school finance. It will be a tough political discussion, but it should be."
In addition, Brownback has reforms in mind to improve the quality of education in Kansas, such as removing current restrictions on funds collected by school districts for a specific purpose, and instead giving school boards the ability to move that money around at their discretion.
Another one is removing the requirement for teacher certification in public schools. Currently, even if a Kansan is an expert in their field, they cannot teach it at a public school without a teacher certification that requires 30 credit hours of completion.
"I really think we've got a lot of things we could do here," Brownback said, adding that might be a job that falls under his newly created Office of the Repealer.
Although he is staunchly anti-abortion, Brownback said his main focus for his governorship is economic growth and getting the budget under control.
"I hope pro-life legislation gets to my desk. I will sign it," Brownback said. "But the focus is on growth and restraining the budget."