Lawrence city commissioners had an interesting idea this week — what if the city used funding from sales taxes on groceries bought by the poor to fund programs that would help the city’s most impoverished residents?

Kansas is one of just 13 states that still applies sales taxes on groceries. Taxes on groceries are the most regressive form of tax. Since the volume of groceries needed per person is relatively fixed regardless of income or the economy, the burden of the tax increases as income decreases.

At the state level, state Sen. Tom Holland is supporting a bill that looks to gradually reduce the sales tax on groceries from 6.5 percent to 2 percent. Holland would recoup the lost revenue by imposing an income tax increase for those in the highest tax bracket.

The bill in the Legislature would not affect cities like Lawrence. But Mayor Stuart Boley brought up the idea of using grocery sales taxes paid by the poor to help the poor.

“I’ve been working to figure out how much people in Lawrence who are in poverty pay to the city, to us, in sales tax on their groceries, with the idea that we might be able to turn some of that money back around to mitigate hunger in Lawrence,” Boley said.

Some 17 percent of people living in Douglas County are “food insecure,” meaning they have limited or uncertain access to adequate food, according to the Douglas County Community Health Assessment. That rate is worse for children, with 1 in 5 living in households that are food insecure.

In 2016, the city collected more than $5 million in revenue from local sales tax charged on groceries, according to sales tax reports. That figure represents about 13 percent of the city’s sales tax revenue and about 2.5 percent of the city’s overall revenue for the year.

City Manager Tom Markus warned that changes in how the revenues are used will result in cuts elsewhere. “If you acknowledge that there probably isn’t a substitute revenue (source), the logical extension is that it would have to come from a cut in expense from something else,” Markus said.

But what about excess sales tax revenue?

City of Lawrence sales tax revenue collections have more than doubled in the past decade, going from $12.4 million in 2007 to $25.2 million last year. Since 2010, sales tax revenue has increased more than $6 million, or 32 percent. That’s an average increase of 4.6 percent per year.

Perhaps commissioners could commit to using excess sales tax revenue — revenue above and beyond what the city budgets for — to mitigate hunger. It’s a good idea that rightfully tries to balance the inherent unfairness of taxing groceries.