Voice For Liberty

Category: Kansas state government

  • Kansas Governor delivers weekly address

    Kansas CapitolToday Governor Sam Brownback delivered the Republican weekly address. His remarks follow, and video is below.

    Hi I’m Kansas Governor Sam Brownback.

    A week ago nearly a third of the world’s population celebrated Easter, the resurrection of Jesus. New life. Well, we need new life in our nation and economy.

    Washington is broke. Big spending programs are running out of money and change is coming. The ideas on how to fix the federal government are now percolating in the states, 30 of which are led by Republican governors.

    You see, you don’t change America by changing Washington — you change America by changing the states. And that’s exactly what Republican governors are doing across the country — taking a different approach to grow their states’ economies and fix their governments with ideas that work.

    They involve a more focused government that costs less. A taxing structure that encourages growth. An education system that produces measurable results. And a renewed focus on the incredible dignity of each and every person, no matter who they are.

    Now, take my state, Kansas, as an example.

    The year I became governor, the state began the fiscal year with just $876.05 in the bank — less than $1,000 and it projected a $500 million deficit. Two years later we had a $500 million ending balance — and did it without tax increases.

    Now to make that financial turnaround a reality, we didn’t cut state funding to schools, we didn’t cut state funding for our universities and colleges, we didn’t cut state funding for our Medicaid system, we didn’t cut state funding for our prisons.

    We did consolidate agencies, cut overhead costs, offered a voluntary retirement buyout to state employees and eliminated outdated programs.

    We reformed our state’s Medicaid system to save a billion dollars over five years while at the same time, we expanded health care services for our neediest Kansans.

    We found ways to reduce the cost of running state government while increasing our investments in key areas like research in aviation, agriculture and medicine.

    We reduced the number of state employees and increased the number of students taking technical education courses which will help them prepare for a future with a better paying job.

    We reformed our court of appeals so that judges are selected more democratically.

    We took steps to safeguard our state’s water resources for future generations and gave Kansans more local control of their future water needs.

    And we passed the largest tax cut in state history — eliminating the income tax on small businesses altogether. This took us from being one of the highest tax states in the region to one of the lowest.

    My objective is to make Kansas the best place in America to raise a family and grow a business.

    Now, for those who come to our state because of lower taxes, opportunities abound.

    We had an all-time record of new businesses formed in Kansas last year.

    Kansas recently received an “A” for its friendly small business environment and we have one of the lowest unemployment rates in the country at 5.5 percent.

    All signs of strong economic growth.

    Governors compete each and every day for citizens and for businesses, and unfortunately, Kansas hasn’t kept up with that competition the last 30 years, but working with the legislature, we’re back in the game.

    What I and other Republican governors around the country are doing is a lot like the Wichita State Wheat Shockers basketball team playing in the NCAA Final Four this weekend — unranked as a team, the pundits said “you can’t win” and the Shockers said, “watch us.”

    Republican governors have been told you can’t cut taxes, balance your budgets and invest in the future all at the same time, and we’ve said, “watch us” and done what we said we would do.

    Growing our economies, building strong family structures and making wise government investments produces winning results.

    Our Republican message is a belief in the power of the people more than the control of government. This unleashes the creativity of entrepreneurs and the strength of hope and dreams.

    Join us as we remake our country, not into a place that looks more and more like Europe. We don’t need to do that. We just need to become America again. And that is the rebirth we are doing.

    Thanks for listening. God bless you all.

  • Bonding KPERS debt is not the solution

    Burden of debt, money

    The Kansas House has passed, and now the Senate Ways and Means Committee will consider HB 2403, captioned “Issuing $1,500,000,000 of pension obligation bonds to finance a portion of the unfunded actuarial liability of KPERS.”

    Borrowing money to shore up the Kansas state employee pension plan is about the worst idea that could come out of Topeka. Legislatures across the country, and counties and cities of all sizes, have shown that government is fundamentally unable to manage the responsibilities of a defined benefit pension plan.

    For more about the problems with KPERS, see KPERS problems must be confronted. Newspapers are not helping Kansans grasp the gravity of the problem; see KPERS editorial a disservice to Kansans. Below is a helpful explanation written by Kansas Policy Institute Adjunct Fiscal Policy Fellow Barry Poulson, Ph.D.. He is also Emeritus Professor at the University of Colorado — Boulder.

    Public officials in Kansas have proposed using pension obligation bonds to solve the funding crisis in the Kansas Public Employee Pension System (KPERS). In my view this is not a solution to the funding problem and I will discuss what I perceive to be flaws in this proposal.

    The rationale for using pension obligation bonds to pay off unfunded liabilities in the pension plan assumes that the state can borrow funds at a low interest rate and then earn a higher rate of return on the proceeds deposited with the pension fund. The flaw in this rationale is the assumption that KPERS will earn a higher rate of return on bond proceeds deposited in the KPERS fund. KPERS assumes an 8 percent return on assets accumulated in the fund. For a number of years, economists and actuaries have questioned this assumed rate of return and the use of this assumed rate to discount liabilities in the plan. The Government Accounting Standards Board has issued new standards, 67 and 68, to be implemented over the next two years, requiring state and local governments to use a lower interest rate, the mortgage bond rate, to discount liabilities in their financial statements.

    If we assume that a lower rate of interest, such as the municipal bond rate, is the interest rate relevant in discounting unfunded liabilities in the pension plan then it is not clear that issuing pension obligation bonds will generate returns above the interest cost on those bonds. If the returns fall below the interest cost on the bonds then this introduces an additional risk and could in fact exacerbate the funding problem in KPERS.

    A major flaw in the proposed issuance of pension obligation bonds is the lack of nexus between the investment of the bond proceeds and payments for unfunded liabilities in the plan. The experience in other states is that sometimes bond proceeds are earmarked for other state expenditures. The most egregious example of this problem is the state of Illinois which issued $10 billion in pension obligation bonds and then used the proceeds to meet current expenditures rather than to pay off unfunded liabilities in the pension plan.

    Even if the state of Kansas would not commit this form of fraud on the taxpayers the fungible nature of state funding makes it impossible to guarantee the nexus between bond proceeds and the payment for unfunded liabilities in the pension plan. If legislators see that additional funds are available to pay off unfunded liabilities in the pension plan they may choose to allocate less general fund money to meet these pension obligations. The state has not allocated the annual required contribution (ARC) to KPERS for several decades and is not projected to do so for the foreseeable future. Legislators continue to promise pension benefits without allocating the funds required to meet these obligations. We should expect this moral hazard to be even greater with the issuance of pension obligation bonds.

    Even if the proceeds of pension obligation bonds could be set aside in a lock box and earmarked to pay off unfunded liabilities in the pension plan the state must still address the accumulation of unfunded liabilities in the defined benefit plan. Without fundamental structural change, including shifting public employees to some form of defined contribution pension plan, these unfunded liabilities will continue to accumulate. Legislators should not be diverted from this difficult task by non-reforms, such as the issuance of pension obligation bonds.

    Shifting the cost of pension obligations from one generation of employees and taxpayers to the next generation is not a solution to the funding crisis in KPERS. The defined benefit plan offered by KPERS is not sustainable.

    I analyze the sources of unfunded liabilities in the plan and explore alternative reforms to solve this problem in an upcoming paper with KPI.

    Some of my other work for KPI on KPERS is here and a legal analysis of what can, and cannot, be changed in KPERS is here; the latter piece was done by another scholar.

  • Personal income growth in the states

    As Kansas debates whether to move forward with a new vision, especially in tax policy, we should examine how we have fared under the policies of recent decades.

    The visualization below starts in 1994, the year Bill Graves was elected governor. That started a 16 year period of governance by moderate Republicans and Democrats, a period now promoted as a golden area of common sense government that has led to prosperity in Kansas.

    But in the visualization below, where does Kansas rank in relation to some of our surrounding states? The answer is: Not well.

    To see how your state compares with others in personal income growth, use the interactive visualization below. Click the check boxes to add or remove states. Use the slider to adjust the range of years. Click on state names in the legend below the chart to highlight one or more states’ data (Ctrl+click highlights more than one state.)

    You may use the visualization below, or click here to open it in a new window, which may work better for some people. Data is from U.S. Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA); visualization created by myself using Tableau Public.

  • Progress in Kansas

    Progressives throughout Kansas are up in arms over the prospect that our state might someday have no income tax. They point to moderate, common sense Kansas governance that they claim has built Kansas into a great state.

    Here’s one writer:

    Who will stand up to this Governor and say that there is a self inflicted and avoidable form of cancer being foisted upon the body politic of Kansas. … This cancer is self defeating, self sustaining, and metastasizing rapidly. Who will try to stop it? Who will find the cure? Who among us will find the courage to stand up to the bully and stop feeding the beast?

    Funny. I thought government was the beast that we taxpayers have been feeding. When taxing and spending is reduced, and when people are allowed to keep more of what is rightfully theirs — that’s a reduction reduction in bullying, and puts government on a diet.

    In the Winfield Daily Courier, Dave Seaton wrote “Neither the Senate nor the courts are any longer a bulwark against extremism in Topeka. The Senate has become a palace guard for the governor, and the courts are fighting for their independence. We, the people in the middle — moderate Republicans, moderate Democrats and unaffiliated voters — are the only force that remains to turn our state back to a common sense direction.”

    We might ask Mr. Seaton what is the record of moderate and common sense Kansas government? Perhaps the most important issue for most Kansans is jobs. In this regard, Kansas — under leadership of moderates and “common sense” governors — has performed poorly. A chart of the number of private sector jobs in Kansas as compared to a few surrounding states over the past eleven years shows Kansas at or near the bottom. (Kansas is the thick black line. Data is indexed so that all states start at the same relative position.)

    Kansas private sector job growth compared to other statesKansas private sector job growth compared to other states. Data is indexed, with January 2001 equal to 1. Source: Bureau of Labor Statistics

    Incredibly, not long ago Kansas was reported to be the only state to have a loss in private sector jobs over a year-long period. (Revisions since then have shown a small gain in jobs.) This is the culmination of governance by the coalition of moderate, traditional Kansas Republicans and Democrats.

    Here’s a link to an interactive visualization of job growth in the states. You can compare Kansas to any other state or combination of states. Can we be satisfied with the performance of Kansas?

    Further evidence of the harm of moderate Republican/Democratic “common sense” governance was revealed last year when the Tax Foundation released a report examining tax costs on business in the states and in selected cities in each state. The news for Kansas is worse than merely bad, as our state couldn’t have performed much worse: Kansas ranks 47th among the states for tax costs for mature business firms, and 48th for new firms. See Kansas reasonable: We’re number 47 (and 48).

    Then, there’s our schools. Here’s what House Democratic Leader Paul Davis wrote on his Facebook page: “The state should not be investing $10 million taxpayer dollars into private schools (which basically means public money with no strings attached) while leaving our local public schools severely underfunded.”

    I’d like to ask Rep. Davis if he’s really proud of the results of Kansas schools — or if he is aware of the statistics. Many in Kansas say that our schools are much better than Texas schools, and that we don’t want our schools to fall to the level of Texas schools. If we look at National Assessment of Educational Progress (NAEP) test scores, we see that when reporting scores for all students, Kansas has higher scores than Texas, except for one tie.

    But when we look at subgroups, all the sudden the picture is different: Texas has the best scores in all cases, except for two ties. Similar patterns exist for previous years. See Kansas school test scores, in perspective for tables.

    kansas-texas-naep-test-scores-2011

    Kansas students, in the aggregate, score better than Texas students, that is true. It is also true that Texas white students score better than Kansas white students, Texas black students score better than Kansas black students, and Texas Hispanic students score better than or tie Kansas Hispanic students. The same pattern holds true for other ethnic subgroups.

    Comparing Kansas to the nation: Kansas does better than the national average in all cases. But if we look at the data separated by racial/ethnic subgroups, something different becomes apparent: Kansas lags behind the national average in some of these areas. See Kansas school supporters should look more closely for tables.

    By the way, Texas spends less on schools than does Kansas. In 2009, Kansas spent $11,427 per student. Texas spent $11,085, according to the National Center for Education Statistics. Considering only spending categorized by NCES to be for instruction purposes, it was Kansas at $6,162 per student and Texas at $5,138.

    Texas also has larger class sizes, or more precisely, a higher pupil/teacher ratio. Texas has 14.56 students for each teacher. In Kansas, it’s 13.67. (2009 figures, according to NCES.)

    Do these facts matter to Kansas progressives who want to maintain high levels of taxation and government spending? We first must ask if they are even aware of the facts. Sadly, I suspect they don’t want to know.

  • Legislator’s guide to delivering better service at a better price

    Service bell

    From Kansas Policy Institute:

    How can Kansas get to the point of lowering spending, lowering taxes, and allowing for more job creation? It is not an easy process, but “A Legislator’s Guide to Delivering Better Service at a Better Price” offers an outline. This road map from KPI was recently released and will be updated as new analysis is added and ideas are refined.

    A few of the ideas from the guide:

    • Use the $2.5 billion held in cash reserves by state agencies to manage the process of lowering spending (Page 3).
    • Review discretionary spending. For instance, State agencies spent $5.8 million on Advertising in 2012 (Page 6).
    • Set up a privatization panel to deliver higher quality service at lower prices (Page 7).
    • Utilize priority-based budgeting that requires each agency to prioritize every program or service from most to least effective. Those on the bottom of the list can be considered for possible elimination and/or being scaled back (Page 7).

    The report is at A Legislator’s Guide to Delivering Better Service at a Better Price: How to reduce government spending and create a better taxpayer experience.

  • Developer welfare expanded in Kansas

    Money Grabber

    This week the Kansas House of Representatives considered a bill that would expand the application of tax increment financing (TIF) and community improvement district taxes. The bill, HB 2086, is not a major expansion, but is still harmful.

    On Monday the bill failed to pass, with 61 members voting in favor, and 60 against. (63 votes are needed to pass a bill.)

    On the following day, Rep. Scott Schwab made a motion to reconsider. If agreed to, Schwab’s motion would force another vote on the passage of the bill. The motion passed, and when the vote on the bill was tallied, it had passed with 81 votes.

    Democrats who changed their votes from No to Yes are Barbara Ballard, Brandon Whipple, Ed Trimmer, Jerry Henry, Julie Menghini, Nancy Lusk, Patricia Sloop, Paul Davis, Stan Frownfelter, Tom Burroughs and Valdenia Winn.

    Republicans who changed their votes from No to Yes are Dennis Hedke, James Todd, Kelly Meigs, Kevin Jones, Marty Read, Ramon Gonzalez, Scott Schwab, and Vern Swanson.

    One Republican, Marc Rhoades, changed his vote from Yes to No.

    The original coalition of votes that defeated the bill on Monday was a mix of free-market Republicans and Democrats. The free-market members vote against this bill because it is contrary to the principals of capitalism. Many Democrats vote against bills like this because they see it as welfare for greedy developers or other business interests. An example of the latter is Rep. Ed Trimmer, who on the Kansas Economic Freedom Index for last year scored very near the bottom in terms of voting for economic freedom.

    But somehow, he and the other Democrats listed above were persuaded to change their votes.

    (Click here to open spreadsheet in new window.)

  • Kansas Open Records Act needs improvement

    File folder and documents

    Testimony to Senate Standing Committee on Federal and State Affairs as proponent of SB 10: Open meetings; minutes required; open records; charges limited, by Bob Weeks, March 13, 2013.

    Chairman Ostmeyer and members of the Committee:

    Thank you for this opportunity to present testimony on problems with the Kansas Open Records Act regarding high fees for the production of records. In 2008 I personally encountered this problem, as reported in the Wichita Eagle:

    Open Records Requests Can Spell High Fees (Wichita Eagle, March 9, 2008)

    Want information from the governor’s office? Get ready to pay up. That’s what Wichita blogger Bob Weeks says he discovered when he requested four days’ worth of e-mails sent and received by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius and her staff.

    To get the records, he was told he’d have to pay a lawyer in the governor’s office $27 an hour, for 50 hours, to read the e-mails to make sure they aren’t exempt from disclosure. That and 25 cents a page for copies or an unspecified extra charge to get the e-mails in electronic form. “Please make your check for the amount of $1,350 payable to the state of Kansas and reference your open records request,” said a letter Weeks received from JaLynn Copp, assistant general counsel to the governor.

    State Sen. Timothy Huelskamp, R-Fowler, said he was aware of Weeks’ case. He said he thinks the fees are excessive. “It doesn’t mean much for it to be an open record if you can’t afford it,” he said. In addition, he said a sluggish response to the request from the governor’s office appears to have violated the state Open Records Act. Huelskamp said the law requires state agencies to fulfill records requests within three business days or provide a detailed reason why that can’t be done. Weeks mailed his request on Feb. 7 and got an initial response Feb. 13. His cost estimate didn’t come until Feb. 26, and neither letter explained the delay, Huelskamp said. “It’s really in violation of the letter and the spirit of the law and I’ve seen that happen more than once,” he said. (Full article available online at bit.ly/openrecordsks001)

    Based on this and other experience, it is difficult to obtain email records at reasonable cost. If one makes a very narrowly-defined request that is affordable, there is a chance that the request will not produce the desired documents. If the request is broad enough to catch the records one needs, it is likely to be very expensive.

    Kansas could use as a model the federal Freedom of Information Act (5 USC § 552), which provides for a limit on fees in certain cases: “Fees shall be limited to reasonable standard charges for document duplication when records are not sought for commercial use and the request is made by an educational or noncommercial scientific institution, whose purpose is scholarly or scientific research; or a representative of the news media.” (emphasis added)

    There are other problems with the Kansas Open Records Act. Enforcement is weak. In my case, the Sedgwick County District Attorney took 14 months to produce a ruling that I believe is contrary to the intent of this Legislature. As the Kansas attorney General refers all cases to the local District Attorney, I have no other avenue for enforcement except for a private lawsuit at my expense.

    Cities and other local governmental bodies have set up non-profit organizations to conduct business such as economic development. These agencies, as in the case of the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation, may receive up to 98 percent of their revenue from taxation, have only government as clients, and perform functions that are governmental in nature, yet they are judged not to be a public agency for purposes of the Kansas Open Records Act. This flies in the face of the Legislature’s declared intent in the preamble of the Act: “It is declared to be the public policy of the state that public records shall be open for inspection by any person unless otherwise provided by this act, and this act shall be liberally construed and applied to promote such policy.”

    While the Kansas Open Records Act requires agencies to respond to the request within three business days, a response might be “This will take more time.” At that point, as far as I know, there is nothing to prevent an agency from stalling indefinitely in fulfilling the records request.

    In some jurisdictions, if three or more records requests are received on the same topic, the agency must post the records. Kansas should go a step farther and require that governmental agencies post online all documents and records produced in response to records requests. In this way, the work done to fulfill requests could be leveraged and appreciated by a broader audience. An example of an agency doing this is Community Unit School District 300 in Illinois, at www.d300.org.

    Elected officials and bureaucrats often are either misinformed regarding the Open Records Act, or have a poor attitude towards open government. This Wichita school district, for example, has told me that my records requests are a “burden” that interferes with the education of children. A Wichita city council member argued that if the city manager was satisfied with the level of service that an agency provided, there was no need for the agency to produce records.

    The council member then extended that argument, wondering if any company the city contracts with that is providing satisfactory products or service would be subject to “government intrusion” through records requests. He must not have been aware that the Kansas Open Records Act contains a large exception, which excepts: “Any entity solely by reason of payment from public funds for property, goods or services of such entity.” So companies that sell to government in the ordinary course of business are not subject to the open records law.

    In 2007 the Better Government Association and National Freedom of Information Coalition gave Kansas a letter grade of “F” for its open records law. In 2011 State Integrity Investigation looked at the states, and Kansas did not rank well there, either.

    There is much that Kansas can, and should do, to strengthen its Open Records Law to give citizens and journalists better access to records and documents. Reigning in the ability of agencies to erect a protective wall of high fees is a first step.

    I have additional information about the Kansas Open Records Act and its problems at wichitaliberty.org/open-records.

    Respectfully submitted,
    Bob Weeks

  • Kansas spring elections should be moved

    Ballot boxFollowing is testimony I will deliver to the Senate Standing Committee on Ethics, Elections and Local Government as a proponent of SB 211: Elections; municipalities; primary and general elections; date change; partisan.

    Thank you for allowing me to present testimony in favor of SB 211, which would move city and school board elections from the spring of odd-numbered years to the fall of even-numbered years to coincide with state and national elections.

    I’ve gathered statistics for elections in Sedgwick County, and these numbers show that voter turnout in spring elections is much lower than in fall elections. (For these statistics I count the August primary as part of the fall election cycle.) Since 2000, turnout for fall elections, both primary and general, has been 44 percent. Over the same period, spring elections turnout has been 18 percent.

    Remarkably, a special Wichita citywide election in February 2012 with just one question on the ballot had voter turnout of 13.7 percent. One year earlier, in April 2011, the spring general election had four of six city council districts contested and a citywide mayoral election. Turnout was 12.8 percent, less than for a single-question election.

    The problem of low voter participation in off-cycle elections is not limited to Sedgwick County or Kansas. In her paper “Election Timing and the Electoral Influence of Interest Groups,” Sarah F. Anzia writes “A well developed literature has shown that the timing of elections matters a great deal for voter turnout. … When cities and school districts hold elections at times other than state and national elections, voter turnout is far lower than when those elections are held at the same time as presidential or gubernatorial elections.”

    In the same paper, Anzia explains that when voter participation is low, it opens the door for special interest groups to dominate the election: “When an election is separated from other elections that attract higher turnout, many eligible voters abstain, but interest group members that have a large stake in the election outcome turn out at high rates regardless of the increase in the cost of voting. Moreover, interest groups’ efforts to strategically mobilize supportive voters have a greater impact on election outcomes when overall turnout is low. Consequently, the electoral influence of interest groups is greater in off-cycle elections than in on-cycle elections. As a result, the policy made by officials elected in off-cycle elections should be more favorable to dominant interest groups than policy made by officials elected in on-cycle elections.” (Election Timing and the Electoral Influence of Interest Groups, Sarah F. Anzia, Stanford University, Journal of Politics, April 2011, Vol. 73 Issue 2, p 412-427, version online here.)

    I urge this committee to support moving the spring elections to be held in conjunction with the fall state and national elections. This will help reduce the electoral power and influence of special interest groups.

    SB 211 Testimony by Bob Weeks March 13, 2013 by Bob Weeks

  • Tax policies are not tomfoolery

    By Kansas Representative Richard Carlson, Jonathan Williams, and Ben Wilterdink, both of American Legislative Exchange Council. A version of this appeared in the Wichita Eagle.

    Across the country, states like Kansas are looking for ways to become more economically competitive and grow their economy. Fortunately, Kansas appears to be on the right track. Contrary to a recent column by H. Edward Flentje (H. Edward Flentje: State budget high jinks, February 24 2013 Wichita Eagle), the evidence presented in the American Legislative Exchange Council’s economic competiveness guide Rich States, Poor States is well-researched and empirically supported. In fact, the criticisms of the report that Flentje mentioned are severely lacking in research and substance and have been debunked by several economists quite a few times, including the former research vice-president for the San Francisco Federal Reserve Bank. By choosing to rely less on income taxes and more on consumption based taxes (such as the sales tax), Kansas is on firm footing for real economic growth.

    Mainstream economists agree that taxes represent a net drag on an economy. Furthermore, not all taxes are equally as bad for an economy. A study done by the Organization for Economic Cooperation and Development ranked taxes in terms of most distortionary and damaging to an economy. The study found that taxes on capital and income were the most damaging, while taxes on consumption and property were the least damaging.

    In just the last decade, the nine states that avoid a personal income tax greatly outperformed the nine states with the highest personal income tax rates. The population in states with no income tax has grown 149 percent faster than their high tax counterparts. While states with high income tax rates have lost jobs over the past decade, no income tax states have seen a healthy 5.4 percent growth in jobs. Even state revenue has grown 82 percent faster in no income tax states versus their high tax counterparts.

    Lowering income taxes and broadening the sales tax base while keeping rates low is a key pillar of pro-growth tax reform. These points are well-documented in Rich States, Poor States while the conclusions from the referenced “Snake Oil” critique are based on measuring a state’s growth in per-capita income from 2007-2011 alone (the worst economic downturn in recent history). This is a deceiving metric because it penalizes states that have a high rate of population growth and rewards states for losing citizens (and their incomes). Low tax states are booming with people and businesses flocking into them, mainly coming as refugees from their high tax counterparts.

    For example, California gained no congressional seats in 2010 for the first time in its history; Texas, by contrast, picked up four more seats this census. As people flee high tax states for opportunity and jobs, the population decreases, which can substantially spike the per-capita income of the state. This point is especially relevant when unemployed people leave a state with high taxes to find a job in another (commonly low tax) state. Their $0 of income is no longer calculated into the per-capita measures and neither is their unemployment status. The state they left now has higher per-capita income growth and even a lower unemployment rate, but the state has lost a citizen, a worker, and potential future revenue they would have received, shrinking the overall economy. This is exactly the trend that we are seeing when it comes to migration data and IRS tax return statistics.

    Put simply, efforts to lower taxes on personal income and reform the tax code to keep tax rates low while broadening the base are anything but tomfoolery. The evidence is clear that these tax reform efforts help to grow the economic pie for everyone and will help Kansas achieve greater economic prosperity.

    For an example of how per-capita statistics can mask underlying trends, see In Kansas, more debunking of the benefit of high taxes. Also, see States that Spend Less, Tax Less — and Grow More.