Topeka ? Hooey. Poppycock. Blarney. Flapdoodle and garbage.

Whatever words voters want to use, they’re still getting plenty of it whenever the major party candidates for governor talk about the state’s budget problems.

Democrat Kathleen Sebelius and Republican Tim Shallenburger continue to make promises they almost certainly can’t keep, draw up plans that will be nearly impossible to execute and perpetuate a fantasy that they can solve Kansas’ financial difficulties without inflicting much pain.

The irony is that under some scenarios, promises to make government more efficient, conduct a top-to-bottom review of state agencies or go after welfare and tax cheats would be significant. But Sebelius and Shallenburger have made too many promises for those scenarios to play out.

Solving this year’s problems

A review of the state’s financial problems starts with revenue projections for the current fiscal year.

The official forecast is that the state will collect a little more than $4.5 billion during the current fiscal year, enough to cover its $4.4 billion in spending.

But no one familiar with the budget expects that prediction to hold. Revenues fell $212 million short of expectations for fiscal 2002. Legislative leaders and State Budget Director Duane Goossen expect the same for fiscal 2003.

If the state collected $4.3 billion, the current assumption of the Legislative Research Department, it would have to cut $103 million from current spending to avoid a deficit on June 30.

If it collected less and some officials worry that it might the required cuts would be larger.

In their last report on the budget, legislative researchers also assumed modest growth in fiscal 2004, leaving the state with revenues of about $4.44 billion.

If that seems optimistic, state officials and university economists are likely to consider more pessimistic numbers when they meet on Nov. 5, Election Day to issue new revenue forecasts.

In addition, the state supported some programs in the 2003 budget with about $94 million in federal funds that won’t be available again in fiscal 2004. The state must either cut those programs back, or shift money from someplace else.

Promising too much

But the problems Sebelius and Shallenburger create for themselves in trying to solve the state’s budget problems start with transportation spending.

Both have said they will protect the state’s $13.6 billion, comprehensive transportation program, started in 1999.

The Legislative Research Department estimates that, under Kansas law, keeping the program whole will divert $193 million in general tax revenues to highway projects.

Keeping the promise lowers available revenues for everything else to $4.25 billion in fiscal 2004, using researchers’ latest scenario.

The promise would force Sebelius or Shallenburger to find at least $164 million in cuts over 18 months, just to prevent a budget deficit on June 30, 2004. That’s 3.7 percent of the current budget.

But both Sebelius and Shallenburger have promised not to cut aid to public schools, some $2.3 billion, or 52 percent of the entire budget.

With that promise, cuts must be made from the remaining $2.1 billion in spending. That $164 million would represent almost 8 percent of everything else.

Shallenburger has said an average 10 percent cut in everything else would be reasonable, but such reductions would in fact be difficult to achieve.

The higher education system; social services for the poor, elderly and disabled; and the prison system account for most of that remaining spending, about $1.7 billion in all.

The prison system seems an unlikely candidate for big cuts, given continuing increases in the inmate population.

So, too, does the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services, where any cuts closing offices, reducing child care for working families, raising health insurance premiums for those same families and cutting spending on services to the disabled and mentally ill are offset by increased costs in federally mandated medical services.

In the Department on Aging, 86 percent of the budget is consumed by reimbursements to nursing homes that care for elderly Kansas, payments federal law says must be based on costs.

Those factors point to the higher education system as the biggest potential target.

Yet, asked last week whether he could trim 10 percent from higher education spending, Shallenburger said simply, “I don’t know.”

But if Shallenburger’s task looks difficult, consider that Sebelius is promising not to cut higher education spending either. That means in her administration, 68 percent of the total budget is off limits.

She’d have to find her $164 million with only $1.4 billion left on the table most of it in social services and prisons.

Pressed last week to explain where she would find enough savings she said: “Well, that’s what we’ve got to look for.”

Voters deserve better.

The choices facing Kansans are tough and stark, and any course of action is likely to involve some significant pain.

But instead of hearing an intelligent debate on the budget from the major party candidates, voters are getting flapdoodle.