Kansas lawmakers and lobbyists go to work on budget, school funding, Medicaid and more

? Kansas lawmakers will get down to work this week dissecting the budget that Gov. Sam Brownback proposed on Friday, and many key legislators and interest groups have started chiming in.

Brownback’s plan calls for a combination of spending cuts, fund transfers and tax increases to close a projected $714 million revenue shortfall for the next 18 months. It also calls for repealing the school finance formula and funding schools with direct block grants while calling on lawmakers to come up with a new formula.

The school finance plan is likely to draw the most attention, if only because K-12 education consumes roughly half of the state’s entire general fund budget.

Brownback will likely have the support of most Republicans, who now dominate both chambers of the Legislature. During Brownback’s State of the State address Thursday night, Republicans rose to their feet in applause while Democrats sat silently when the governor said, “It is time for a new school finance formula.”

But how long it will take lawmakers to come up with a new formula remains a key question.

“With over 50 percent of our state budget dedicated to funding education, the time has long passed for reevaluating how those dollars are spent,” House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey, R-Louisburg, said in a statement following the address. “House Republicans will offer a student-centered, classroom-focused funding formula that will spend more dollars on educating students. K-12 funding must be transparent, accountable, and meet the needs of the students, not special interests.”

But the task will be more complicated than simply passing a bill through the Legislature because the state is still mired in an ongoing lawsuit over how much money the state puts into the formula.

“The court system has found over and over that the formula is not broken. It’s just under-funded,” said John Robb, lead attorney for the plaintiffs in that suit.

In December, a three-judge panel ruled that the current level of funding is unconstitutionally low, and suggested that as much as $548 million a year in additional money might be needed before funding can be considered adequate.

That decision is almost certain to be appealed. Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt, whose office represents the state in that case, has until Jan. 29 to appeal that decision to the state Supreme Court.

The House Appropriations Committee is scheduled to get a briefing on the governor’s school finance plan Thursday. The Senate Ways and Means Committee hasn’t yet scheduled a hearing on school finance, but is expected to start looking at the governor’s overall budget plan that same day.

At least one portion of Brownback’s tax plan is already drawing support from public health groups. The budget calls for a 189-percent increase in the state cigarette tax, raising that to $2.29 per pack, from the current 79 cents a pack.

A coalition of health groups, including the American Heart Association, American Cancer Society and the Kansas University Cancer Center, issued a statement of support Friday.

“Increasing the price of tobacco products is one of the most effective steps Kansas can take to reduce the deadly toll of tobacco on our citizens,” said Tracy Russell, tobacco prevention manager at the American Heart Association. “This measure will prevent thousands of Kansas children from a lifetime of addiction and will help current users quit.”

Other issues

On Tuesday, the House Utilities Committee will hear a briefing on the Environmental Protection Agency’s Clean Power Program, a set of new regulations scheduled to be finalized July 1 that would require states to adopt plans to reduce carbon emissions from power plants 30 percent by 2030.

That could set the stage for future debates over the state’s own Renewable Portfolio Standard, or RPS, which many conservatives want to repeal. That requires electric utilities in Kansas to produce at least 20 percent of their power from renewable sources by 2020.

On Wednesday and Thursday, the Senate Public Health and Welfare committee will hear testimony on a bill to legalize medical marijuana.

Sen. David Haley, D-Kansas City, has introduced a bill called the Cannabis Compassion and Care Act that would allow the legal use of marijuana for certain debilitating medical conditions including cancer, glaucoma, HIV, hepatitis C, Lou Gehrig’s disease and Alzheimer’s.

Also on Wednesday, the House Vision 2020 Committee, chaired by Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, will continue its hearings into the possible expansion of Medicaid under the Affordable Care Act.

Scheduled to appear that day are Susan Mosier, acting Secretary of the Department of Health and Environment, and Jon Stewart, CEO of Heartland Community Health Center in Lawrence.