Topeka — With legislators facing a decision on whether to raise taxes, Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley wants to try some old ideas from the late Gov. Joan Finney.
Finney won the 1990 governor's race and made tax fairness a major campaign theme. She advocated eliminating what she viewed as special-interest exemptions from the state's sales tax.
Hensley cited Finney's policy in urging a fresh look at some of the 60 exemptions that remain. The state faces a $426 million gap between expected revenues and spending commitments for the next fiscal year.
"We haven't had a good debate in a long time about tax policy in general," Hensley, D-Topeka, said Thursday. "It would seem it would be beneficial to have a blue-ribbon group get together."
Some legislators aren't enthusiastic about reviewing the sales tax exemptions.
"They're all there for a good reason," said Sen. Dave Corbin, R-Towanda, chairman of the Senate Assessment and Taxation Committee.
Services generally are exempt, and some exemptions allow nonprofit groups to make purchases tax-free.
Finney, a Democrat who served as governor in 1991-95, pursued the elimination of sales tax exemptions as a way to raise money for education so that school districts could reduce their property taxes.
In 1992, she convinced legislators to eliminate some exemptions, but school-finance legislation relied more heavily on sales and income tax rate increases to raise money.
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