Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer

Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer said Wednesday that administration officials have completed work on a plan for closing a $932 million budget hole over the next 18 months and that it is ready to be presented to the Kansas Legislature in January.

Speaking with the Journal-World over breakfast in downtown Lawrence, Colyer declined to offer many details of the plan, except to say that it will be “structurally balanced” and will not involve massive spending cuts, tax increases or furloughs of state employees.

“We will fund core priorities,” Colyer said. “Education is a core priority. Public safety is a core priority. We have a core priority on Medicaid and people that are on a safety net. I think you’ll see a plan that is a reasonable approach that doesn’t rely on a giant income tax increase nor massive cuts.”

Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer

Colyer has been closely involved in helping to craft the administration’s budget plans, and Gov. Sam Brownback’s office even posted a photograph on Twitter earlier this month showing Colyer, Brownback, budget director Shawn Sullivan and another aide saying, “Coming in January: A balanced budget. Stay tuned.”

Lawmakers will convene Monday, Jan. 9, for the start of the 2017 session with the state in the midst of a budget crisis. In November, state budget officials released new revenue forecasts showing tax collections falling $349 million short of budgeted expenses for the rest of this fiscal year.

The forecast also showed that even if lawmakers were to cut that amount out of this year’s budget, they would still have to cut another $583 million in spending for the next fiscal year that begins July 1.

Many lawmakers, including Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, have criticized Brownback for not ordering cuts or other measures in November, as soon as the new forecasts were released. But Brownback declined to do that, saying instead that he would present his plan to lawmakers for approval in January.

Last year, the administration offered the idea of selling off the state’s future tobacco settlement payments in exchange for a one-time lump sum payment, a financial transaction known as “securitization.” But lawmakers — under pressure from child welfare and education advocates that represent groups that receive funding from that revenue stream — declined to consider it.

Colyer would not say whether that idea or any other one-time source of funding would be part of the budget plan.

“I’m going to let the governor talk to that Wednesday,” he said. “In the end, expect the budget to be structurally balanced so that revenues and expenditures will match up.”

There has been some speculation that Colyer is getting more deeply involved in the budget process and is having more direct contact with legislators in anticipation that Brownback will receive a federal appointment in President-elect Donald Trump’s administration.

Colyer, however, dismissed that notion.

“I’m just doing the same thing, only people are taking notice of it a bit more,” he said. “At the beginning, when the governor asked me to be his lieutenant governor, he said, ‘I want you to be the busiest lieutenant governor in the history of the state.’ And boy, has he gotten it.”

Brownback may offer some outline of his budget plan when he delivers his State of the State address on Tuesday, Jan. 10. The full budget proposal will be spelled out to the House and Senate budget committees the following day, Jan. 11.