It’s a little unsettling to be reminded that even many of those who approved the state income tax cuts that have triggered revenue shortfalls and subsequent tax increases in Kansas knew it was a mistake.

Speaking at the Dole Institute of Politics last week, Senate President Susan Wagle recounted the 2012 events that led to a tax bill that lowered state income tax rates and exempted more than 330,000 business owners and farmers from paying income tax. “The governor was having a struggle getting the bill he wanted through the Legislature,” Wagle said. “And he chose to sign a bill that really slashed income taxes, but was not funded. We knew that we’d have to come back and fix it.”

And yet, two more legislative sessions have passed, and Kansans still are waiting for that fix.

Former Sen. Steve Morris, who was president of the Senate in 2012, tells the story of the tax cuts in a somewhat different way. According to him, the Senate had blocked the large tax cuts and was convinced to pass the bill only after Gov. Sam Brownback assured Senate leaders that the ill-advised cuts would not become law. As Morris recalls, the governor acknowledged that the bill was bad policy and would wreck the state, but urged the Senate to pass it so the Senate and House could negotiate a more moderate proposal in conference committee. Instead of going to conference, the House simply passed the bill and sent it to the governor, who signed it into law.

Morris and a number of other moderate Republican legislators were ousted in 2012 in favor of more conservative GOP candidates.

Wagle, his successor in the president’s chair, basically confirms that Brownback and others knew the tax cuts were a problem. Unlike Brownback and many of her colleagues, however, Wagle is willing to acknowledge that a problem exists and needs to be fixed. She was among legislators who said this year that revisions to the business tax exemptions should be part of the plan to balance the state budget. Brownback, on the other hand, promised to veto any bill that altered those exemptions. So, instead of producing a real “fix” for the state revenue situation, legislators filled the large budget gap with additional sales and cigarette taxes and transfers from the state highway program and other state funds.

Wagle and Morris have slightly different recollections of the 2012 tax debate, but they agree on the point that Brownback said even at the time that the cuts were too much. An influx of new legislators may have complicated the task, but, given the fact that tax-cut concerns have been confirmed by lagging state revenues in the last two years, why hasn’t Brownback tried harder to change the state’s course?