Topeka — They're digging a big, expensive hole in the Capitol grounds to build an underground parking garage.
Some say it's an appropriate symbol for the debate surrounding the state budget as the 2002 legislative session starts Monday.
Declining tax revenue, increasing welfare costs and a national recession have put the state in its deepest budget hole in a generation and some people say new taxes are needed.
But others ask if the budget is in such bad shape, why is the state building a nonessential, $15 million parking garage?
And while lawmakers consider whether to cut funding to public schools, universities, or services for the poor, elderly and disabled, they'll also be fighting and posturing for their political lives.
All 125 House seats are up for re-election in November, and the Legislature has to redraw the boundaries for all legislative and congressional districts to accommodate population shifts recorded by the recent census.
If the budget problems and redistricting fights weren't enough, the session also will offer a preview of the contest over who will be Kansas' next governor.
Gov. Bill Graves, who has called for new revenues to repair the budget, is in the final year of his second term and has already announced that his future plans involve leaving Kansas to run a national trucking association.
The president of the Senate, Dave Kerr, R-Hutchinson, is considering running for governor. If he does run, he will face Atty. Gen. Carla Stovall and State Treasurer Tim Shallenburger in the Republican Party primary.
Stovall's running mate is Kent Glasscock, who happens to be the leader of the House; Shallenburger is a former leader of the House and the unofficial head of the conservative Republicans.
Democrats, vastly outnumbered by Republicans in the Legislature, will be trying to improve the chances of their lone statewide elected official Kathleen Sebelius, the insurance commissioner who is unofficially running for governor.
"This session will be the greatest show on earth," said Richard Alldritt, a Democrat from Harper who recently resigned from the Legislature.
"The conservatives' goal is to elect Shallenburger, the House Democrats', to elect Sebelius. Glasscock's goal is to survive the session and hope Stovall wins. And it's probably the worst budget year yet," Alldritt said.
For the record, Graves officials say a proposed $4.3 billion budget that relies on existing revenue is about $300 million short of covering the cost of current services, and that is without adding an employee pay raise or taking into account inflation or increasing caseloads for welfare.
But Kerr says a tax increase can be avoided by reducing the state's emergency reserves and cutting spending by about two percent, except for public schools and higher education, which would be cut about 1.2 percent.
The fight will be over what a majority of the Legislature can live with in an election year cutting the budget or raising taxes or perhaps both.
Oh, and there's that parking garage, which was quietly slipped into the final spending bill of 2001. Crews are now excavating the Statehouse grounds, which has cost about 45 lawmakers their coveted parking spots around the Capitol building.
On Friday, lawmakers arriving in Topeka were already arguing, but the arguments weren't about the budget. They were about who was in who's parking spot.
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