Kansas University Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Tim Caboni urges members of the Lawrence legislative delegation to fight for stable higher education funding in the upcoming session. Caboni was among several local business, government and education leaders who spoke at the Lawrence chamber of commerce's annual pre-session breakfast on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016

Business, government and education leaders in Lawrence shared their wish lists for the 2016 legislative session with area lawmakers Friday morning. And if there was one common theme among all of them, it was this: “Please do no more harm.”

Those comments came during the Lawrence chamber of commerce’s annual Legislative Priorities Breakfast, where officials from the chamber, the city of Lawrence, Douglas County, the Lawrence school district, Kansas University and Haskell Indian Nations University shared their priorities for the upcoming session.

“We’re mostly in a protection mode,” Lawrence chamber board member Beth Easter told the local delegation. “We’re just hoping to not have anything messed up, especially the economic development incentives.”

That may not sound like an ambitious goal. But after the 2015 session, when Kansas lawmakers enacted several measures that Lawrence officials viewed as harmful — raising the state sales tax; cutting funding for Lawrence public schools; and imposing a property tax lid on local governments that is scheduled to take effect in 2018 — the idea of a quiet, uneventful session may now seem like a lofty ambition.

“Flat funding through the block grant system isn’t sufficient, especially if you anticipate growth in student populations,” said Lawrence school board president Vanessa Sanburn, referring to last year’s decision to repeal the old per-pupil funding formula and replace it for two years with block grants.

Kansas University Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Tim Caboni urges members of the Lawrence legislative delegation to fight for stable higher education funding in the upcoming session. Caboni was among several local business, government and education leaders who spoke at the Lawrence chamber of commerce's annual pre-session breakfast on Friday, Jan. 8, 2016

“Our district is growing, which is really great,” she said. “But when they have more students coming, and we’re not using our per-pupil funding basis, then we have to continue utilizing the same teaching staff that we have in order to educate those students. Class sizes go up, and that does not help us meet our academic goals for kids.”

Lawrence Mayor Mike Amyx and Douglas County Commission Chairman Jim Flory both said they hope for a quiet session. And one thing they do not want to see happen is to move up the effective date of the looming property tax lid.

That law effectively limits local governments from increasing property tax revenues by more than the rate of inflation, except for a few specific purposes, without a public vote. The Kansas Association of Realtors is urging lawmakers to move up the effective date of that law.

“Please don’t add any additional roadblocks or obstacles to our ability as elected officials of the governing bodies to generate the necessary revenue needed to meet our obligations and responsibilities,” Flory said.

“The tax measures adopted during the 2015 legislative session present unworkable constraints for our local governments,” Amyx said.

KU Vice Chancellor for Public Affairs Tim Caboni noted that higher education is one area of state government that has not taken significant budget cuts in recent years. He simply asked lawmakers to continue that pattern.

“Flat, in this context, is the new up,” Caboni said. “We ask the Legislature again to do no harm to our budget, even though if you look at our numbers over time, given inflation, the per-student appropriation is really down 40 percent. Given where we are with the state budget, holding us harmless would be a huge win.”

Haskell University President Venida Chenault didn’t ask for much from the Legislature, noting that Haskell is funded and administered under the Bureau of Indian Education, an agency within the U.S. Department of Interior. But she did say the school wants to have a more visible presence within the Lawrence community and the state of Kansas.

“Certainly Haskell makes a tremendous impact within this community,” she said. “We’d like to make a larger impact.”

Chenault said being a university within the federal government is a challenge, and that Haskell is seeking federal legislation that would give it more autonomy to operate as a university.

“We’re currently operating on a budget that I believe has now fallen below the football budget of KU,” she said, “and in order to expand and provide the kind of opportunities that are needed, we’ve got to have support from the community.”

Lawmakers responded, saying they did not expect much action this session on major issues facing the state.

“We’re going to have a real mess on our hands in 2017 because, quite honestly, with this being an election year, and with there being the largest tax increase in state history passed by a lot of conservatives, they’re going to want to run away from that,” said Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City. “So you’re not going to see a meaningful discussion of tax reform or fixing our budget. I don’t think we’re going to get anything done substantively when it comes to school finance.”

Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, acknowledged that the Legislature as a whole is more conservative than Lawrence and Douglas County, and that’s something that local voters need to confront.

“We must out-think and out-work the opposition,” he said. “They’re pretty lazy, and they’re not always very bright. But they have a lot more votes than we do, so we have to be smarter and work harder.”

Rep. John Wilson, D-Lawrence, said the most challenging task in 2016 will come after the session, when the 2016 campaign season gets into full swing.

“To be quite honest, the hard work is going to have to continue from May until November,” he said. “For some key issues, whether we’re talking Medicaid expansion or removing the sales tax on food, I don’t think anything will change until we change the makeup of the Legislature, and that means (electing) reasonable, thoughtful people, regardless of what letter is before or after their name.”