photo by: Peter Hancock

Gov. Sam Brownback announces he's calling the Kansas Legislature back into special session beginning June 23 to address a state Supreme Court ruling on school finance.

TOPEKA ? Gov. Sam Brownback signed a proclamation Wednesday calling the Kansas Legislature back into special session beginning Thursday, June 23, to address the Kansas Supreme Court’s recent ruling on school finance.

But he also said key committees will come back before then, possibly as early as next week, to get started drafting a new bill and holding hearings.

During a Statehouse news conference, Brownback made clear he still disagrees with the ruling, and that he believes the court overreacted by threatening to close public schools on July 1 if lawmakers don’t comply with its orders.

photo by: Peter Hancock

Gov. Sam Brownback announces he's calling the Kansas Legislature back into special session beginning June 23 to address a state Supreme Court ruling on school finance.

“The amount of money in controversy here is $38 million out of this $4 billion appropriation. That’s less than 1 percent,” Brownback said, referring to the estimated additional cost of one alternative that has been discussed. “And the majority of this $38 million will not provide education for a single student. Not a single one. Most of the money will go for property tax relief.”

Last month, the Supreme Court struck down the method of distributing equalization aid that subsidizes the local option budgets of Kansas school districts. The court said the formula forces relatively poor school districts to levy higher property taxes in order to raise comparable amounts of money as wealthier districts.

All told, those local option budgets, which are funded mainly through local taxes, add up to about $1 billion statewide, or roughly 25 percent of the total education budget.

The court did not order a specific change in the formula, but it did offer one alternative as a kind of “safe harbor” that would be sure to pass constitutional muster. That would be to re-enact the formula that was in place before lawmakers repealed it in 2015, and fully fund it.

But Brownback said it’s unlikely lawmakers will adopt that plan.

“I think it would be very hard to do that … in a special session, where you’re going to re-enact the old school finance formula,” he said. “What we’ve been doing is discussing this with legislative leadership to see what they can get passed through.”

In 2014, the Supreme Court first struck down the equalization formulas for both local option budgets and capital outlay budgets, money districts use for big-ticket purchases. Then it remanded the case back to a three-judge district court panel in Topeka for further review.

Lawmakers quickly addressed those issues during the 2014 session, and in December of that year, the panel agreed the Legislature had cured the constitutional issues.

But for a variety of reasons having to do with shifts in property valuations that year, the changes they made ended up costing the state more than anticipated. In response, the 2015 Legislature repealed the old equalization formulas and adopted new ones. The district court later found the changes made to the local option budget formula were unconstitutional, and last month the Supreme Court agreed. The court then gave lawmakers until June 30 to come up with a formula that would meet constitutional muster.

Kansas law does not limit what issues the Legislature may consider during a special session, although Brownback said he hopes they will focus only on the school funding issue and addressing the Supreme Court’s order.

Any bill that redistributes money among the state’s 286 school districts would normally fall to the two budget committees, House Appropriations and Senate Ways and Means. The two education committees may also play a role on broader education policy issues.

Rep. Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe, who chairs the House Appropriations Committee, said his would be among the committees that would work on a new bill. He said he and other legislative leaders were still discussing how to fit those meetings into the schedules of lawmakers who normally return to their regular jobs and their re-election campaigns this time of year.

But an aide to House Speaker Ray Merrick said in an email Wednesday that the House and Senate Judiciary committees will be called back to hold joint hearings a week before the session, June 16 and 17, to “discuss ways to address the court’s proposed remedies on issues of school finance.”

Rep. John Barker, R-Abilene, who chairs the House Judiciary panel, said the purpose of those meetings would be to analyze the court’s opinion in order to help the education and budget committees comply with the court order. But he would not rule out the possibility that some committee members may want to propose additional legislation directed at the judicial branch itself.

In a joint statement, Merrick and Senate President Susan Wagle said they would try to focus exclusively on making sure schools remain open.

“Despite the court’s attempts to stir up fear and close Kansas schools, it’s not going to happen,” Merrick said. “During the upcoming special session Republicans will focus on ensuring the court does not close schools. All efforts will be made to get in, get our business done and get out.”

Brownback said there was also some strategy behind the idea of calling lawmakers back June 23, which gives them exactly one week to produce a bill that the governor can sign and send to the Supreme Court for review.

“You need deadlines to force things to happen,” he said.

The last time lawmakers held a special session was in 2013, when they were called back to address a flaw the Supreme Court had found in statutes authorizing the so-called “Hard 50” sentence for people convicted of certain kinds of first-degree murder. That session lasted only two days.

Lawmakers also were called back for a special session in 2005 to address an earlier Supreme Court ruling on school finance in which the court ordered lawmakers to increase funding by hundreds of millions of dollars a year. That session dragged on for 10 days in the Senate and 11 days in the House as conservative GOP leaders at first refused to comply with the court’s order.

Brownback said he hopes this special session can be wrapped up in one or two days.

— Peter Hancock can be reached at 354-4222 or phancock@ljworld.com.