The state budget is in the worst shape it has been in at least 20 years.

State general fund receipts are expected to decrease for the third year in a row, and fiscal experts say that drop will continue for a fourth year.

Some have said that has never happened in state history.

Based on statistics since 1990, it certainly hasn’t.

There have been one-year drop-offs in general fund receipts from previous years, but never for three years or four years.

According to statistics provided by the Kansas Legislative Research Department, state general fund receipts in fiscal year 2007, which started July 1, 2006, were $5.8 billion. That dropped to $5.69 billion in 2008, $5.589 billion in 2009 and a projected $5.3 billion in the current 2010 fiscal year. The projection for 2011 is another drop to $5.17 billion.

That would be a $630 million, or 10.8 percent, decrease in the four years.

Despite four rounds of budget cuts this year, the state is looking at a newly estimated $460 million budget hole in the current fiscal year budget.

Filling that hole will take either more budget cuts, a tax increase or a combination of both.

Advocates for school funding are laying the blame for the current crisis at the feet of Kansas lawmakers who have consistently given business interests what they want in the form of tax cuts, even when they knew more revenue would be needed for classrooms because of court-ordered increases.

Gov. Mark Parkinson recently said two things were needed at the Statehouse, and one of those was for lawmakers who claim to be conservatives to be able to say no to businesses asking for tax cuts. The other was more civility among politicians.

Business interests, however, claim the tax cuts have been good for the Kansas economy by keeping the state business-friendly and competitive with other states. Some of those business interests say it’s increased spending, specifically in education, that has gotten the state cornered budget-wise.

The Kansas Chamber of Commerce, in its legislative priorities, says it will fight to hold the line on taxes and that it supports “fiscally responsible efforts to completely eliminate corporate and individual income taxes to encourage investment, business growth and job expansion in Kansas.”

A memo from the Kansas Legislative Research Department shows that tax cuts supported by business interests over the past four years will cumulatively total $1.135 billion through 2013. Lawmakers were even more generous between 1995 and 2005, with tax cuts totaling $5.8 billion, which included sizable tax cuts for individuals, too.

A 2006 study entitled “Sales Tax Erosion in Kansas,” done for the Kansas Department of Revenue, says that sales tax exclusions and exemptions, which number in the hundreds, total nearly twice the amount of the actual sales tax collections. The study also indicates that extending the sales tax to services would increase sales tax revenues by $500 million.