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Kansas Statehouse in Topeka

Debates on everything from medical marijuana to legalized sports betting to an old-fashioned fight on income tax rates are expected in Kansas’ upcoming legislative session, but local lawmakers said Friday that predicting their outcomes was difficult.

The local legislative delegation, though, was more confident on one issue: removing the state sales tax on groceries. Several legislators said they expected that some way, somehow that bill would win approval.

“I think we can make progress on the sales tax,” Rep. Boog Highberger, D-Lawrence, told a crowd who attended a virtual legislative priorities event hosted by the Lawrence chamber of commerce Friday morning. “I think there is bipartisan support.”

Both the presumed Democratic and Republican nominees for governor have proposed an elimination of the state’s sales tax on groceries to fall in line with most other states that no longer tax those goods. But Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly has insisted that the Legislature deliver to her a clean bill that addresses only the sales tax issue and not other priorities important to the Republican-controlled Legislature.

Whether lawmakers meet those requirements is far from certain, but Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said the chances of a sales tax elimination were bolstered because the issue had been gaining bipartisan support for several years and the state’s budget was now in a position to absorb the loss of revenue.

“Our coffers are flush,” Holland said.

Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, who is the longest-serving member of the local delegation, said the state was in a different financial shape than in many of the 30 years she’s been in the Legislature.

“The budget is healthy, and everybody now thinks they can get more money,” she said.

All members of the local delegation in attendance expressed support for eliminating the sales tax on groceries, and Highberger is pushing for an amendment that also would remove the sales tax on feminine hygiene products.

Members also expressed support for increased funding of higher education. Both the higher education budget, which funds KU and other state universities, and the K-12 public schools budget have momentum this session thanks to a federal requirement. When states accepted hundreds of millions of dollars in federal aid related to the pandemic, states had to agree to budget certain amounts for higher education and K-12 education or else repay the federal aid. That requirement remains in place for the next budget year.

That will put those budgets under less stress than previous years, but leaders heard from a KU representative that the school will need to see an “increased investment” from the state in order to avoid tuition increases for the next school year. KU has kept tuition steady for three years, but Kelly Whitten, director of state relations for KU, said the university would argue for a tuition increase if state funding didn’t increase to certain levels. Ultimately, though, KU can’t raise its tuition without approval from the Kansas Board of Regents.

Rep. Mike Amyx, a Lawrence Democrat who sits on the higher education budget committee, said he’d be pushing for enough funding to accomplish a couple of objectives.

“I want to bring those funding levels up to be able to provide raises (for employees) and hold tuition costs down,” Amyx said.

Rep Christina Haswood, D-Lawrence, also is working on some university-related issues, both for KU and Haskell Indian Nations University. She said she was working on legislation aimed at making polling places easier to access for college students, and she also is working with city leaders to try to reduce or eliminate the bus fare the city charges Haskell students to take public transportation to campus.

More broadly, she said she also wanted to work on state policy to focus more on the opportunity for economic development around Indigenous communities, which she said could benefit Lawrence greatly.

Lawmakers, of course, will be dealing with several hot-button, statewide issues too. Sen. Marci Francisco, D-Lawrence, said she was not sure how they’d turn out, but she’s confident of two that will get lots of debate.

“This will be the year for medical marijuana and sports wagering discussions,” Francisco said.

She also said the state was likely to address technology problems that plagued the state’s unemployment registration and payment systems during the height of the pandemic, although she said they wouldn’t be “quick fixes.”

Like pretty much every other member in the Lawrence delegation, she said she also would push to expand Medicaid, although there were acknowledgements that the issue hasn’t gained much traction with Republican lawmakers, who command strong majorities in the Legislature. Francisco said she intended to hammer home the point that Medicaid expansion was estimated to increase state revenues by $60 million in the short term.

“That is another really good reason to pass it this year,” she said.

Some of those Republican majorities, though, are expected to spend time arguing for income tax cuts now that the state’s budget is strong. The governor is expected to argue for one-time tax rebates instead of cuts to the actual tax rates. Sen. Holland said he expected that would be a major issue and that Democrats needed to build a coalition to try to stave off those income tax rate cuts and vigorously support tax rebates instead.

“That won’t hobble us with long-term income tax cuts that will come back to bite us later,” he said.

The state’s legislative session is scheduled to begin on Tuesday.