photo by: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel

Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly greets lawmakers before giving her State of the State address, Wednesday, Jan. 15, 2025, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan.

Topeka — Gov. Laura Kelly’s seventh State of the State speech on Wednesday called for investing in water resources and public schools, streamlining early childhood regulation, pursuing a sustainable tax policy and expanding Medicaid.

Kelly, a Democrat who took office in 2019 as the state’s 48th governor after serving 14 years as a state senator, urged the Kansas Legislature to frame these significant issues in the context of what Kansas could look like at the end of this century.

She asked lawmakers to step outside the day-to-day competition to score short-term political points. She recommended elected officials at the Capitol devote more energy to shaping what would lie ahead for Kansas’ children and grandchildren.

“Since I’ve been in office, we have built an incredibly strong foundation for our state. Kansas has never been in better financial shape,” Kelly said. “Now, it’s time to build on that foundation.”

While looking down the road to 2100, she posed big questions: Is the agriculture economy booming because water resources were preserved and rural Kansas didn’t dry up? Do Kansas businesses have the best and brightest workers because the priority was superior public schools? Is Kansas an economic-development powerhouse? Did Kansas hold onto its small-town traditions?

“It’s easy to forget that we aren’t playing some kind of game here,” Kelly said. “We have real power. The decisions we make in this building touch every aspect of the lives of the people we work for. Here’s the truth. The Kansas our grandkids will inherit is up to us right now.”

Kelly said the mission was to filter through some pretty wacky notions to settle on smart, reasonable common-sense bipartisan ideas.

“I’m not asking you not to love your political party,” the Democratic governor said. “I’m just asking you to love your state a little more.”

Young kids and water

Kelly said the way Kansas chose to invest in children would hold sway over the trajectory of the rest of this century. A child’s experiences from birth to age 5 played a central role in social and emotional development, academic achievement and career success, she said.

She said the state recognized the shortage of child-care providers and that skyrocketing costs handicapped businesses. Urgent state investment meant Kansas would add more child-care capacity in the next two years than in the previous 15 years, the governor said.

The problem? Kansas has siloed early-childhood services into four different state agencies.

“If a family is searching for care for a newborn, that family must navigate among three different agencies to figure out which program is the right fit,” Kelly said. “If a child care center wants to get off the ground, it must work with one state agency to get licensed, another to receive financial aid and workforce support, and a third to get assistance with start-up costs.”

Kelly’s solution: Create the Office of Early Childhood. It would be a one-stop shop for young families. This idea of eliminating irritating red tape and bureaucracy gained traction in the Kansas House in 2024, passing the chamber with 110 votes.

Meanwhile, Kelly proposed creating an Office of Natural Resources to streamline management of water resources. Currently, those programs are shared among 14 different state agencies. This consolidation would improve the state’s ability to align policy, planning and investment, she said.

“When I imagine the end of this century and the state our youngest Kansans will inherit, I see so many good things on the horizon,” Kelly said. “But, there is one thing that is seriously concerning. Our dwindling water supply. Forget making it 75 years down the road. Some parts of western Kansas don’t have the groundwater to last another 25 years.”

Last year, the Legislature appropriated an additional $35 million in each of the next five years to improve the state’s ability to deliver a clean, sustainable water supply, stabilize the Ogallala Aquifer and maximize the capacity of reservoirs in Kansas.

Kelly’s budget recommendations, to be presented to House and Senate members Thursday, would add $30 million to the state’s annual investment in the water supply. That would raise the level of state investment to $90 million annually.

Public schools

Kelly said the state required a solid K-12 public school system to continue to attract new businesses and young families in the future. Ninety percent of the state’s students attend public schools, she said, and those districts represented the most effective place to invest in the next generations.

“When we talk about protecting the Kansas way of life, our public schools are the heart and soul of so many of our communities,” Kelly said. “For both, the future we aspire to create and the values we aspire to maintain, we must continue to make our public schools our top priority.”

Kelly said she would “never, ever” take taxpayer dollars from public schools and give it to private schools. Kansas Republican legislative leaders have been preparing another bid to expand support for private or parochial education.

“Doing so weakens our public school system, particularly in our rural communities,” the governor said. “As a state, we just can’t afford to do that. Simply put, I will continue to reject any attempt, no matter what it looks like, to reroute public taxpayer dollars to public schools.”

No Brownback 2.0

Kelly, who defeated Republicans Kris Kobach in 2018 and Derek Schmidt in 2022, campaigned in both races against the 2012 income tax reductions signed into law by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback. His goal was to end the state’s income tax. The resulting steep decline in state revenue wasn’t balanced with equivalent spending cuts, leading to years of budget problems that cut into appropriations for schools, highways and other core services.

In her six years as governor, Kelly said she’d signed into law more than $2 billion in tax cuts. In June, she signed into law a bill that cut state taxes by $1.2 billion over three years.

She said she wouldn’t support a proposal to slash the state corporate income tax to zero. She referred to the idea as a “non-starter.” The GOP leadership in the Senate and House also indicated they would attempt during the 2025 session to lower property tax burdens.

“We must stay on the path to prosperity as we move through the rest of the 21st century,” she said.

She preferred to postpone discussions about new tax reductions until the 2026 legislative session to get a better handle on the full fiscal impact of tax cuts adopted last year. However, she said she would consider changes to the state’s tax structure that paid for themselves and didn’t threaten the state’s long-term financial health.

Kelly did renew her push for the Legislature to expand eligibility for Medicaid to about 150,000 lower-income workers in the state. The proposal has been blocked by Republican lawmakers for more than a decade, and the governor said the only remaining objections centered on partisan politics.

“If we can strip away partisan politics and just look at the numbers, we will expand Medicaid this year,” Kelly said.

— Tim Carpenter reports for Kansas Reflector.