From the Bureau of Labor Statistics, the trend in Kansas private sector employment and government employment.
Related content is at Kansas Loses Private Sector Jobs as Government Grows , Government employees thrive, Governor Claims Growth While Jobs Disappear, Kansas continues to suffer from job growth deficit, and Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius and Kansas jobs.
The website Kansas Votes provides information about pending legislation in Kansas as it works its way through the law-making process. This process, which can appear complicated to the average citizen, is explained in plain language on this website.
Here are some features of Kansas Votes:
Now citizens have a valuable tool to help them follow the action in the statehouse. This is especially important as traditional media such as newspapers devote less coverage to news like this.
And did I mention it’s free?
To use Kansas Votes, click on Kansas Votes.
The income of Kansans is falling behind the national trend. In 1977, the starting year of this chart, per capita income in Kansas was only slightly below the national average. Since then Kansas has lagged behind the rest of the nation, and the gap is getting wider.
At the same time, Kansas, over the long term, is becoming a high tax-state. This chart shows Kansas’ rank among the states for tax burden. A low ranking means the burden is high. (I’ve presented the vertical axis in reverse order, so that as the line rises, it means the Kansas tax burden is increasing, relative to all other states.)
Over the 30 years represented in this chart, it’s evident that Kansas has trended from being a low-tax state to becoming a high-tax state. For much of the 2000s, Kansas was moving in the right direction. But for the past few years, Kansas is moving in the wrong direction, relative to other states.
A group of citizens who don’t agree with Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson’s decision to sign the statewide smoking ban bill is planning a protest in Salina.
The governor will sign the smoking ban bill on Monday at 3:30 pm at the Salina Public Library. It’s a ceremonial signing, as the actual bill was signed earlier today.
Update: Coverage of the hearing, including written testimony, is at Medical marijuana testimony presented in Kansas house committee.
Next week the Kansas House Health and Human Services Committee will hold an informational hearing on medical cannabis in Kansas.
Representative Gail Finney, a Democrat who represents parts of east and northeast Wichita, has introduced HB 2610, which would legalize the use of medical marijuana for “certain debilitating medical conditions,” according to the bill’s summary.
The hearing on this bill, which is informational only and will not result in a vote by the committee, will be held at 1:30 pm on Wednesday March 17, in room 784 of the Docking State Office Building, which is just west of the Kansas statehouse.
This week USA Today published an article Slowly, states are lessening limits on marijuana which describes efforts across the country to allow those suffering from certain medical conditions to make use of medical cannabis. The article mentions Finney and her effort in Kansas:
Even in conservative Kansas, where the Legislature recently voted to outlaw a synthetic drug that mimics marijuana, backers of looser marijuana laws say they have hope.
Rep. Gail Finney, a first-term Democrat, has proposed legalizing marijuana for use by the critically ill. The bill is unlikely to pass this year, Finney says, but she wants to use the hearings to educate fellow lawmakers and plans to reintroduce it until it passes.
“It’s time for Kansas to have an open, honest debate about this,” she says.
She thinks many of her House colleagues would support the bill if they didn’t fear backlash in an election year — a fear she says is unfounded. A Feb. 2 poll of 500 Kansans by KWCH-TV in Wichita found 58% supported medical marijuana.
“If they were in touch and in tune with their constituents,” Finney says, “they would know that this is what they want.”
The poll referred to is available here.
Kansas Senator Chris Steineger (Democrat from Kansas City) has formulated a list of items that he says could lead to “fast, achievable savings” for the state of Kansas. This list is titled the “$100 million list.” Some of the items have cost savings given, and some don’t.
In particular, the idea of selling state-owned office buildings is appealing. Steineger showed me preliminary research that showed that the “rent” the state charges agencies is more expensive than private office space in downtown Topeka. The revenue from selling the buildings is a one-time boost, but the reduced operating expense is ongoing.
Here’s Steineger’s list:
Today the Kansas Senate debated and passed Senate Substitute for House Bill 2437.
This bill creates a “primary” seat belt law, meaning that a law enforcement officer can stop a car when the officer believes someone in the car may not be wearing a seat belt. Currently, the car must have been stopped for other reasons before the officer could cite occupants for not wearing seat belts. The bill would send about $11 million federal dollars to Kansas; $1 million earmarked for transportation safety, but the rest could be shifted into the state general fund. Governor Mark Parkinson has identified this money as being used to close the state’s general fund budget gap.
Senator Tim Huelskamp, a Republican from Fowler, objected to the bill because it’s a federal mandate that interferes with our local state control. The federal government has taken our tax money, he said, and is using it to coax our state into passing the primary seat belt law. Huelskamp’s actual language was stronger, using the term “outright bribery,” and noting with displeasure that the governor was acceding to this action.
Senator Davie Haley, a Democrat from Kansas City, along with Senator Oletha Faust-Goudeau, Democrat from Wichita, expressed concerns that the seat belt law and the texting laws could be used as pretexts for stopping cars when the real aim of the officer is to perform a stop or search that couldn’t have been performed otherwise. “Driving while black” is the term both senators used, perhaps alluding to studies that have shown that minority drivers are stopped more often for minor traffic violations than non-minority drivers.
The bill also bans text messaging or electronic mail while driving. During the debate Senator Chris Steineger, a Democrat from Kansas City, gave Kansans a defense if they’re ticketed for texting while driving: The bill doesn’t prohibit using a phone for making telephone calls while driving. In fact, the bill contains language providing an exception “if the person reads, selects or enters a telephone number or name in a handheld wireless communication device for the purpose of making or receiving a phone call.”
Steineger wondered how a law enforcement officer could tell, just by looking, if a person is dialing a telephone number or entering a text message. He couldn’t get a specific answer from Senator Dwayne Umbarger, who was carrying the bill.
By Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute.
If President Reagan had attended Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson’s press conference last Friday, he likely would have said, “There you go again…” in response to Parkinson’s claim that $9 billion in tax cuts and exemptions over the last decade are to blame for the budget crisis. South Carolina Congressman Joe Wilson (R) might have put it less delicately, but both would have been justified in challenging the governor’s claims.
The $9 billion dollar figure comes from a Department of Revenue (DOR) estimate of the effect of selective tax changes enacted between 1995 and 2009. I say “selective” because DOR only included changes that reduced taxes but conveniently ignored changes that increased taxes; they also made no allowance for taxes generated from economic activity as a result of any changes. Further, the $9 billion total is artificially inflated. The largest item on the list is a property tax “reduction” of $4.4 billion that doesn’t belong on the list. The amount represents the difference between collecting 35 mills for school funding versus the current 20 mills. The change was made in the mid-90s following property revaluation; when property values were adjusted upward to market value, the mill rate was supposed to be lowered so that the higher property values generated the same amount of property tax. By the way, property taxes increased 96% between 1995 and 2008.
The governor also claims that big business and wealthy people have benefited the most from those changes, with “ordinary Kansans” receiving virtually nothing. Well, there he goes again. The second largest amount on the DOR list is car tax reductions at $1.4 billion. A lot of ordinary Kansans benefited from that one. Other large tax reductions that Parkinson seems to be overlooking include:
There’s also $825.9 million attributed to reductions in the inheritance, or “death” tax. The two primary reasons for making that change are to avoid double taxation (the income was already taxed once when it was earned) and to encourage people to stay in Kansas and continue paying income, sales and property taxes. Those with high-value estates can easily (and do) move to other states where they can avoid double taxation and leave their estates to their families.
It’s also important to understand that most of the changes on that misleading $9 billion list were implemented in the 1990s following 75% revenue growth from 1990 to 1998, much faster than necessary to sustain spending. Government could easily afford to reduce the tax burden and the vast majority of that relief was directed to “ordinary Kansans.”
So what about the governor’s claim that tax reductions are to blame for the budget crisis? Once again, cue President Reagan. Revenue grew another 41% over the next ten years, well beyond inflation (28% according to the Midwest Urban Consumer Price Index). At the same time, however, general fund spending grew 61%. That is the reason we’re in this mess. In fact, if spending had been held to 4.5% growth over just the last five years, we would have finished last year with a $3 billion surplus and could have easily weathered the recession.
Then there’s the claim that the state has already reduced spending by more than a billion dollars. There he goes again! Prior to changes announced last week, the governor’s own estimate put FY 2010 spending at $5,451 billion; last year’s actual spending was $6.064 billion. That’s a reduction of $613 million; a big number to be sure, but not even close to a billion dollars.
There were some tax reductions over the years that were not good policy; sound tax policy says reductions should be broad-based and not favor one group over another. But the facts clearly demonstrate that the vast majority of our budget problems stem from spending well beyond our means. President Reagan once explained it as only he could: “Government is like a baby. An alimentary canal with a big appetite at one end and no sense of responsibility at the other.”
Speaking of no responsibility, Governor Parkinson failed to mention that he not only voted for, but actually led the charge for some of the sales tax exemptions for which he now castigates the legislature for passing.
It’s bad enough having to work our way out of a budget situation that is largely self-inflicted. Distorting or ignoring the facts to justify a tax increase is a disservice to “ordinary Kansans.”
As Kansas struggles to deal with a budget deficit, Democrats and some Republicans are proposing tax increases, particularly an increase — temporary, they say — in the sales tax. A common argument advanced is that an extra one cent tax on every dollar spent will hardly be noticed. The one cent tax used to build the Intrust Bank Arena in downtown Wichita is cited as an example of a sales tax used for the common good of the people.
Besides the fact that it’s way too early to judge the success (or not) of the arena, sales taxes do hurt.
My post from 2004 Prepare for sales tax-induced job effects now described job losses in Little Rock due to the sales tax that paid for that city’s arena. In this example, the job losses were smaller than the number of jobs created by construction. This is partly because the sales tax lasted just one year, and more importantly, the state of Arkansas paid for 40% of the arena’s cost. In other words, the entire state subsidized the construction job gains in Little Rock. Still, jobs in retail and service industries were lost.
If the state of Kansas raises its sales tax, we won’t have the luxury of a huge inflow of out-of-state money to duplicate the effect observed in Little Rock from the inflow of out-of-city money. Instead, it’s certain that a sales tax increase will negatively affect private sector jobs and our state’s economic growth and future.
As evidence, a 1996 study by the Federal Reserve Bank of Atlanta found that state and local taxes negatively affect a state’s growth rate, and that this effect of taxation is sizable. This study looked at all taxes.
Specifically considering sales taxes, a 1998 study by the Beacon Hill Group looked at the effect of a half-cent increase in Ohio’s sales tax. The study “found that an increase in the state sales tax rate from 5% to 5.5% would result in the loss of at least 49,000 jobs and would leave Ohio’s stock of capital at least $4.4 billion smaller.” The authors concluded there was a 90% certainty that this result would occur.
More recently, a 2009 proposal to increase Washington’s sales tax from 6.5% to 6.8% was analyzed by the Evergreen Freedom Foundation. Its conclusion was that the tax increase “would cost the private sector approximately 6,800 jobs and result in less disposable income for Washington residents.
A sales tax increase will provide funding for more public sector jobs at the expense of private sector jobs. The result is a loss of economic freedom as individual choice is replace by spending controlled by the legislature and government bureaucrats. Does anyone believe that government spends as wisely as people spend their own funds? I don’t.