State Rep. Brenda Landwehr, left, R-Wichita, confers with lead House negotiator Larry Campbell, right, R-Olathe, during a break in talks with the Senate on school funding legislation, Friday, June 2, 2017, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. Watching them are Rep. Melissa Rooker, center left, R-Fairway, and Melinda Gaul, center right, an aide to House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., R-Olathe. (AP Photo/John Hanna)

Kansas lawmakers plan to work on Saturday and possibly into next week in hopes of wrapping up the 2017 session after they inched closer on Friday to settling some of the major issues still on the table.

Most of Friday was spent with conference committees meeting on various subjects, while small groups of lawmakers met informally behind closed doors, mainly to discuss ideas for a tax package that they’ll need to balance the state’s budget and pay for a court-mandated increase in K-12 education funding.

The frustration of some lawmakers boiled to the surface in the Senate Friday afternoon when Sen. Rob Olson, R-Olathe, questioned whether the Senate was really going to do anything Saturday. Olson, who works in banking and real estate, said the extended session has forced him to delay projects, which is now costing him money. He also noted that the Senate worked on only two minor bills on Friday, and the only business before the Senate Saturday will be to take a final vote on those bills.

Majority Leader Jim Denning, R-Overland Park, however, argued that the holdup is in the House, which has been unable to pass a tax bill since Gov. Sam Brownback vetoed an earlier tax bill in February. Without a revenue plan, he said, lawmakers cannot pass a budget for the next fiscal year, which begins July 1, less than a month away.

New tax ideas

Four new tax bills were introduced in the House Taxation Committee Friday, including one by Democratic Rep. Jeff Pittman, of Leavenworth, that appeared to spark interest across party lines.

His plan called for a formula-driven tax structure so that tax rates would creep up gradually for each dollar a person earns above a certain level. The idea, he said, is to avoid the steep spikes in tax rates when a person crosses from one tax bracket to another.

Under his plan, the first 96.4 percent of anyone’s income would be taxed at 2.95 percent, a little higher than the current lower bracket of 2.7 percent. Each dollar of income above that amount would be taxed at a progressively higher rate that increases by a logarithmic curve.

Pittman, a freshman legislator who works as a logistics engineer, said nobody’s tax rates would go up remarkably under his plan. A person making $1 million a year would pay 6.29 percent instead of the current 4.6 percent. Someone earning $500,000 would pay 5.9 percent, and someone earning $150,000 a year would pay 5.15 percent. Put together, however, his plan would generate about $620 million a year in new income tax revenue.

Committee chairman Rep. Steven Johnson, R-Assaria, said it was coincidental that three different groups working independently have been studying similar concepts. Pittman said he doubted his plan could pass this year, but it’s one he hopes lawmakers will continue to study for possible consideration in the future.

But the House really came no closer Friday to finding a tax plan that can get the 63 votes needed for passage, let alone the 84 votes that may be needed to override another veto by the governor. The last tax bill considered in the House failed by a wide margin Tuesday night after it had passed the Senate by a near veto-proof margin.

House leaders have said they want to take first crack at the next tax bill, but on Friday were still working to find a combination of tax features that might pass.

School finance

House negotiators threw a new wrinkle into the school finance discussion when they said Friday afternoon that they were willing to talk about restoring teacher tenure rights, which lawmakers repealed in 2014. That refers to the right of a veteran teacher to receive a due process hearing before an independent hearing officer before he or she could be summarily fired or not renewed for the following year.

The House actually passed a teacher tenure bill in February, over the objection of Republican leaders, and separately from the school finance plan, but it was never considered in the Senate.

Rep. Clay Aurand, R-Belleville, emphasized that he was not making an “offer” as part of the conference negotiations. But he said the House was willing to discuss the possibility of restoring tenure rights retroactively to all those teachers who had tenure in 2014 before it was repealed, while allowing two years for representatives from teachers unions and the Kansas Association of School Boards to work out a tenure plan they could agree upon. If, after two years, the two sides could not reach agreement, those rights would be repealed again.

Mark Desetti, who lobbies for the Kansas National Education Association, said he was pleased that Aurand, who chairs the House Education Committee, was willing to discuss tenure rights since Aurand had refused to allow that bill to be voted on in his committee. It was only brought to the floor of the House in February as an amendment onto another bill.

But Desetti said he did not like setting up a two-tier system where some teachers would have tenure rights for two years while others would not. And he said the two-year deadline essentially takes away any incentive for the school boards association to negotiate.

The conference committee is scheduled to meet again at 10:30 a.m. Saturday.

Foster care task force

Meanwhile, Senate negotiators finally started discussing the possibility of setting up a task force to study the state’s foster care system and make recommendations for improvement, something the House approved by a 120-0 vote in mid-May 15, but which the Senate so far had declined to consider.

Sen. Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka, said that was because the Public Health and Welfare Committee that she chairs was not authorized to meet during the wrap-up session. It is not exempt from legislative deadlines to report out bills. Also, however, several lawmakers have said that Senate leaders were reluctant to move forward on the issue because Gov. Sam Brownback and Department for Families and Children Secretary Phyllis Gilmore did not want further criticism of the foster care system.

Calls for an oversight task force came after a Wyandotte County man, Michael Jones, was given a life sentence in the death of his son, 7-year-old Adrian Jones, who had been tortured, starved, killed and his body fed to pigs. Records have shown that DCF investigated reports of abuse against Adrian Jones for years before his death.

The House plan would have set up a task force made up mainly of legislators. But the Senate offered Friday to form a different kind of task force with only four legislators. The governor and DCF secretary also would get one appointment, while the Kansas Judicial Council would appoint a number of law enforcement officers, court officials and others involved in child welfare cases.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said the task force would be completely independent from influence by DCF or the governor’s office. But she also said there would be no expectation that the task force’s recommendations would be implemented until 2019, after a new governor is sworn into office.

Rep. Jarrod Ousley, D-Merriam, a member of the House negotiating team who has been a harsh critic of DCF’s management of the foster care system, said he wanted to think about that offer over night and that discussions would continue on Saturday.

That conference committee is scheduled to meet at 9 a.m.