Kansas House passes spending plan that would put state $460M in the hole within three years

Yahoo

28-03-2025

Rep. Henry Helgerson, seen during a March 11, 2025, session of the House, warned the state is in "a financial mess." (Sherman Smith/Kansas Reflector)
TOPEKA — The House adopted a spending plan Thursday that puts the state on a course to blow through billions in reserves and face a budget shortfall within three years.
Senate Bill 125 finalizes $27.08 billion in spending plans for the current fiscal year, which ends June 30, and provides the blueprint for how the state will spent $25.6 billion next year. Those figures include $10.85 billion from the State General Fund in the current year and $10.64 billion next year.
When coupled with the five-year, $2 billion slash to income taxes from last year's special session, and assorted new legislation that would deliver tax cuts, the state would be an estimate $461 million in the red in fiscal year 2028. That would be a stark departure from the $3.2 billion surplus from a year ago, which is already projected to decline to $2.1 billion as expenses for the current fiscal year exceed revenues.
Rep. Henry Helgerson, an Eastborough Democrat, said the state was in 'a financial mess.' He warned House members they were 'going to come to loggerheads with a new governor' as a result of last year's tax cuts and an appetite for spending that was created by federal COVID-19 aid.
'The chickens are coming home to roost, and we are in a hole,' Helgerson said.
Rep. Troy Waymaster, a Bunker Hill Republican who chairs the budget committee, acknowledged 'a tough road ahead.'
'That's the reason why we had the new legislative budget process,' Waymaster said, referencing the decision by lawmakers to ignore the governor's budget proposal and make their own.
The House adopted the budget on an 89-36 vote. The Senate planned to take action Thursday night.
Senate Democrats expressed concerns in a caucus meeting Thursday about the abbreviated schedule for the legislative session. A revenue forecast in late April will show the full impact of income tax cuts passed during a special session last year, but lawmakers are set to wrap up business April 11.
'This is deliberate that we pass things without having knowledge,' said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes.
Republicans pressed forward with their budget, which attaches numerous policy strings to the money allocated to state agencies, universities, boards and other government entities. The provisos include directives to ban the use of gender-identifying pronouns in state employee email signatures and to stamp out any diversity, equity and inclusion positions, mandates, policies, programs, activities and training.
Rep. Susan Ruiz, a Shawnee Democrat, said it was 'troubling' that the state would hold Department of Administration funding hostage until the agency showed it had implemented the directives.
'I don't know what it's satisfying or who it's satisfying,' Ruiz said.
Other provisos will end continuous eligibility for Medicaid recipients, ban purchases of candy and soda with money for food assistance, raise the rent of journalists who work from the Statehouse, allow the state treasurer to invest rainy day funds, authorize the Kansas Developmental Finance Authority to issue STAR bonds, and prohibit Larned State Hospital from using contract agency nursing staff in 2027.
Lawmakers got rid of a proposed mandate that all executive branch employees work from the office, opting instead for a requirement that state agencies report how many employees are working from home.
The budget would fully fund public schools but eliminates funding for training and other items not required under the school finance legal settlement. It also provides just $10 million in new funding for special education services, short of the $73 million commitment made a year ago.
Spending items include the allocation of $106.3 million for state employees, mostly for 2.5% wage increases, $5.8 million for a top-secret military weapons project in Wichita, $24.9 million for a new Kansas Highway Patrol dispatch center in Salina, $19.3 million to complete renovation of the Docking Building, $10 million for firearm detection software in public schools, $179 million for local bridge construction, $71.2 million for a Wichita Biomedical Campus, $41.3 million for an Ag Innovation Initiative at Kansas State University, and $30 million for a Health Science Education Center at Wichita State University.
The budget eliminates funding for the Blueprint for Literacy, an initiative the Legislature adopted last year to train teachers and improve reading levels. The program is a collaboration among the Kansas Board of Regents, Kansas State Board of Education, state universities and K-12 teachers.
Rep. Nikki McDonald, an Olathe Democrat who serves on the Blueprint for Literacy advisory committee, said she was 'ashamed' the Legislature would defund the initiative.
'It's insulting to the work that we've done in good faith, and the more I talk about it, the more mad I get,' McDonald said. 'So I think I'm just going to leave by saying a budget is a reflection of our priorities, and I had hoped that we would prioritize our children more.'
The budget also calls for the state to take on $128 million in debt for a veterinary diagnostic laboratory in Manhattan and $80 million in debt for a new Kansas Bureau of Investigation headquarters in downtown Topeka.
Adam Proffitt, the state budget director, told Senate Democrats that Republicans had taken 'an across-the-board shotgun approach' to trimming the budget that lacks strategic planning. And he said he was concerned about adding debt after spending the past few years trying to pay it down.
'Now we're going in the wrong direction,' Proffitt said.