Voice For Liberty

Category: Kansas state government

  • Kansas court system to be explained

    At this Friday’s meeting of the Wichita Pachyderm Club, Judge Eric Yost will present “An Overview of the Kansas Court System.”

    Yost is a judge in the 18th Judicial District Court System, which is the court system for the State of Kansas for Sedgwick County. These courts are “the trial courts of Kansas with the power to preside over all civil and criminal cases, including divorce and domestic relations, damage suits, probate and administration of estates, guardianships, conservatorship cases, care of the mentally ill, juvenile matters, and small claims. It is here that the criminal and civil jury trials are held. The district court also has appellate jurisdiction for municipal courts and most administrative agencies.”

    Yost works in the civil division. He has served in the Kansas House of Representatives and the Kansas Senate, including as Vice-President of the Senate.

    All are welcome to attend Pachyderm meetings. Lunch is $10, or you may attend the meeting only for $3. The meeting starts at noon, although those wishing to order lunch are encouraged to arrive by 11:45. The location is Whiskey Creek Steakhouse at 233 N. Mosley in Old Town. You can view a map of this location by clicking on Google map of 233 N. Mosley.

  • Dale Swenson, tea party critic, a barrel of laughs

    Today’s Wichita Eagle contains a story (Tea party organizers: We paid for event) covering the dust-up between a member of the Kansas House of Representatives and tea party organizers.

    The state representative — Dale Swenson, a Democrat whose district covers parts of southwest Wichita — said of the tea party event: “We need taxes to support their protests.”

    Today’s Eagle story reports on organizer Lynda Tyler’s expenditures necessary to put on the event. It’s much the same information as in her statement presented in my post Wichita tea party paid its expenses from Sunday.

    In his defense, Swenson told the Eagle “I was just being funny.”

    Actually, joking around might be a believable defense in Swenson’s case. For example, last November he was re-elected to the Kansas House as a Republican. Then, just two months later, he decided he was really a Democrat and switched parties. I wonder if the voters in his district think that was a funny joke.

    When running for the Kansas House for the first time in 1994, Swenson, according to a profile in the Wichita Eagle, was in favor of 12-year term limits for the Legislature and Congress. He must have been joking around then, because as is the case with many politicians who are initially in favor of term limits, he decided that term limits are just a funny joke, too.

  • Kansas judicial selection needs examination, reform

    The upcoming retention election for Kansas Supreme Court Justice Carol Beier provides an opportunity to examine the judicial selection process in Kansas.

    In the Kansas Liberty news report Republicans won’t campaign against Justice Beier in 2010, University of Kansas School of Law professor Stephen Ware explains the perverse dynamics of Kansas judicial retention elections:

    “With no opposing candidate, there’s no one with an incentive to raise money for a challenge and to advocate change,” Ware said. “So voters don’t see the sort of discussion of the issues that would spark an interest in the judiciary. This lack of interest by the citizenry allows lawyers to decide the liberal or conservative direction of the courts because lawyers play the dominant role in initially selecting justices and then those justices stay on the court until retirement because they face no challenge from meaningful elections.”

    The problem is one of perception. The judicial retention elections appear to give citizens a voice. The state holds elections, after all. But as Professor Ware explains, the choice is illusory. More about this and Ware is in my post Kansas has the appearance, without the reality, of judicial accountability.

    Ware’s 2007 research on this matter may be read at The Bar’s Extraordinarily Powerful Role in Selecting the Kansas Supreme Court. The opening sentence of this report starkly states the uniqueness of the process in Kansas: “Kansas is the only state in the union that gives the members of its bar majority control over the selection of state supreme court justices.”

  • Lawrence Journal-World headline doesn’t deliver

    Yesterday’s edition of the Lawrence Journal-World has the headline ‘Buried treasure’ claims debunked. The headline and article refer to a report issued by the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy and covered in my post Kansas funds have large, unneeded balances.

    The dictionary says that “debunk” means “to expose the sham or falseness of.” The article doesn’t come anywhere near fulfilling this promise.

    The article is based on a quotation from Kansas state budget director Duane Goossen: “The key point that I would make is that while the report uses the word ‘unencumbered,’ and seems to suggest that that means somehow the balances in these funds are unplanned for, not budgeted for, or are there for the discretionary use of the agencies that hold the funds — that is not correct.

    In my reading of the report, I don’t see where the claims that Goosen “debunks” are made. The central finding of the Flint Hills research is that there’s a lot of unencumbered money in these funds, and that these balances, for the most part, have grown rapidly.

    The growth of these balances is the strongest evidence that many of these funds are collecting more money — be it in the form of taxes or fees — than needed to support the funds’ mission. The Journal-World article doesn’t address this issue at all.

    As an aside, the comments left to this article on the newspaper’s website criticize the authors without addressing any of the substance.

  • Clarifications to Kansas unencumbered fund balances report

    Last week the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy released a groundbreaking research report detailing the several billion dollars hidden away in Kansas state government funds. My reporting on this, along with links to the study document, is at Kansas funds have large, unneeded balances.

    There’s been a bit of pushback. Some officials have said they simply don’t believe the research. Others quibble over definitions of terms and have said — perhaps mistakenly — that there are more restrictions on specific fund balances than are actually in effect.

    Dave Trabert, president of the Flint Hills Center, has released the following response and clarification regarding some of these issues.

    It’s not all in special revenue funds. Only $241 million of the $1.955 billion in unencumbered cash is in fee funds (from licensing fees paid by barbers, chiropractors, CPAs, etc., student fees paid to universities, certification fees paid by farmers, oil & gas well owners, etc. etc.); somehow, people have been led to believe that all of the money has built up in fee funds. That clearly is not true. Some of the cash is in other types of funds but the source of a great deal of the money is from tax collections. (It’s difficult to say with certainty in the case of some funds based simply on the name of the fund, so the exact amount coming from taxes is not known … much more investigation is needed).

    “Special” can be very misleading. To some, it means that the revenue source is something other than taxes; others use it to refer to money in a fund created to track a particular type of expenditures. In both cases, the “special” designation has been used to at least imply that the money can’t be used for anything else, which may be true in a few cases but most often is not. “Special” means different things to different people and is not a legal definition.

    “Spoken for” is a meaningless phrase. This is another label that has no accounting or legal basis. The sheer fact that agencies have plans to use the leftover money has no legal bearing, and in fact the current and previous governors have swept carryover money out of funds for other purposes. The Government Accounting Standards Board says that unless a specific statute prevents money in a particular fund from being redeployed, it can be. Anyone who says this leftover cash can’t be used for any other purpose should be forced to cite the pertinent statute.

    Even unencumbered cash in bond funds may legitimately be available for other uses — it is not uncommon for bond funds to take in more money than needed to meet obligations. Even at the local level where, for example, schools levy a specific tax to pay off construction bonds, there is a legal mechanism for returning excess collections to taxpayers. Whether that actually takes places is another matter, but mechanisms for returning excess money to taxpayers exist.

    Unencumbered defined. The accounting definition of unencumbered funds is funds that are not subject to any mortgage, lien, charge and/or encumbrance (whether equitable or otherwise) or any other creditor claims whatsoever. This is the definition used in our analysis and we must presume that state agencies and their accountants properly differentiate between encumbered and unencumbered.

    The fact that money is in a designated fund is, in itself, meaningless — there is a perhaps natural assumption that once money is put into a fund, it can’t be used for any other purpose. However, unless restricted by statute, the money is otherwise available to be used for other purposes.

    Federal funds are listed separately. Some agencies have argued that their federal funds are restricted and not available for other purposes; they are right; that’s why we provided a separate list. Ironically, most agencies’ federal funds balances are negative, which means their total balances from state funds are even higher. For example, the Department of Health & Environment has a total unencumbered balance of $188 million, including federal funds with a negative balance of $13 million; their state unencumbered balance is therefore $201 million.

    The existence of this leftover cash hasn’t been shared with most legislators and the public. Can anyone think of a good reason for this to be a closely held secret?

    Trabert says he’s available anytime to answer questions on the study but he prefers that specific accounting questions be directed to Steve Anderson, the CPA who wrote the analysis or another CPA who works with government accounting. Steve can be reached at stevea@aracpas.com or 405-923-8875. Contact Trabert at dave.trabert@flinthills.org or 316-634-0218.

  • Kansas funds have large, unneeded balances

    Yesterday the Flint Hills Center for Public Policy released research that shows that the state of Kansas has large unencumbered balances, representing excess funds needlessly collected from Kansans in the form of taxes and fees.

    The numbers are staggering, with over 1,600 state funds holding between $2 billion and $3 billion in excess balances, depending on the method used to determine reasonable balances.

    The report, titled “Analysis of State Unencumbered Fund Balances in Kansas” was prepared by the accounting firm Anderson, Reichert & Anderson. The author, Steven J. Anderson, has extensive experience in government and its accounting. The report may be read by clicking on Analysis of State Unencumbered Fund Balances in Kansas.

    Investigative journalist Paul Soutar’s reporting on this report may be read at Buried Treasure.

    I spoke with Dave Trabert, president of the Flint Hills Center a few days ago about this research. He said that many state agencies have collected more fees than they have spent. These funds are considered “unencumbered.” That is, there is no claim on them. This doesn’t mean, however, that the state or agency can transfer or spend these funds in any way they want.

    Trabert said that often money is held in funds that, by law, can’t be transferred into other funds and used, perhaps resulting in lower taxes for Kansans. But, he said “the same result can be accomplished by simply reducing the amount going into the fund and forcing the agency to spend down their surplus.”

    The effect of this would be a reduction in taxes and fees that Kansans must pay. The amount of money involved is huge.

    The Flint Hills Center used two methods to calculate how much money could have been returned to taxpayers since fiscal year 2003, a period of six years. One method estimated about $2 billion in excess funds that could have been returned. The other estimated about $3 billion. Both methods leave sufficient balances in these funds for the state to conduct its business.

    In context, for a state that has a population of 2.8 million, these balances that could have been returned over this period amount to $1,071 per person, using the $3 billion figures. Or, for every household in Kansas, $2,890.

    Where is this money, I asked Trabert. It’s in bank accounts, he said. Who is aware of this? Trabert said that some legislators have been stunned to learn of these balances.

    There are people who know this money exists, Trabert said. But not everyone believes. In a KAKE television news story, Kansas senator Jean Schodorf, who is considering a run for the U.S. Congress, said she didn’t believe these numbers.

    In the same report an official from Wichita State University gave the example of a student housing fund. Fees collected for that fund, she said, can be used only for student housing.

    But if funds are accumulating in this fund and not being spent, this is strong evidence that too much money is being collected. The fees are too high.

    What are the implications of this report, I asked Trabert. “As shocking as it is, it’s really good news. … We can get away from this either/or situation: Either we raise taxes, or we have to give up a lot of services. … We just need to figure out how to make better use of what we have. We can have lower taxes and good services.”

    This analysis doesn’t include school districts, counties, or municipalities, except for a handful of cities that participate in a state-administered investment fund.

    Kansas lawmakers and the governor, as well as the press, primarily focus on the state’s general fund. There’s a reason for that, as it is the single largest fund, and the fund over which the legislature and governor have the most immediate control. In contrast, the “All funds” budget — that’s where the funds that are the subject of this research are held — is often treated as something over which we have no control.

    The general fund is about half the state’s total spending. This analysis by the Flint Hills Center shows that we need to pay more attention to the other half, and to the balances that are accumulating there.

  • Schodorf introduced bill to reduce notice of some bond sales

    Kansas Senator Jean Schodorf, who is considering a run for the United States Congress, doesn’t have much regard for citizens’ right to know of impending sales of municipal bonds.

    A bill, Senate bill 154 from the 2007 session and introduced by Schodorf, is cast in the usual legislative language, and therefore is difficult to understand. So I will quote from the Supplemental Note for Senate Bill 154 as follows:

    “SB 154, as amended, would amend a provision of the general bond law governing the sale of municipal bonds by providing that a city would be allowed to issue up to $2.0 million in certain municipal bond sales before a published notice of sale would be required. … Under current law, a public notice of sale is required for municipal bond sales greater than $100,000.”

    The effect of this proposed legislation introduced by Schodorf would be to let more bonds be sold without publication of notice. The bill died in the Kansas House of Representatives and did not become law.

    The rationale given for allowing bonds to be sold without publication is that publication increases the cost of the bonds.

    Publication also increases the ability of citizens to know what’s going on, too. I think that’s more important.

    In the end, this legislation, if it had become law, might not have made much of a difference. The quaint practice of publishing legal notices in newspapers is likely to come to an end someday, replaced by email and websites.

    On Facebook, the City of Wichita’s Government Relations Director Dale Goter left this comment to this article:

    Bob, allow me to offer some corrections to your report. The bill, as earlier noted, was requested by the City of Wichita. As enacted, it provides for public notice. The purpose of the legislation was to LOWER special assessment costs, saving property owners money by creating a more competitve environment for certain bond issues. It was ultimately passed with overwhelming support in both houses. The final version also had the blessing of the Kansas Press Association. It is a great example of how cities work with the legislature to SAVE money for taxpayers and property owners.

  • Jean Schodorf a candidate for Congress?

    I just received a tweet from Jean Schodorf, a Republican member of the Kansas Senate from northwest Wichita:

    “JeanSchodorf Special announcement regarding 4th Congressional District, 2day from 12-1 @ the Midtown Resource Center. 1150 N. Broadway. Lunch Provided”

    Schodorf’s record in the senate is one of taxing and spending. In 2008, her rating by the Kansas Taxpayers Network was 29%. Several senate Democrats did better.

    She’s also voted against legislation allowing the coal plant, although she did vote for the compromise bill.

    So a question I have — seriously, sort of — is in which party she’ll choose to run.

    What’s interesting to me is this question: Does this foreshadow an entrance by television newsman and producer Bill Kurtis (her brother) into the race for Kansas governor? He’s said no, he’s not interested.

    Update: Wichita Eagle coverage is at Schodorf explores Congress run.

  • Josh Svaty named Secretary of Agriculture

    Today Kansas Governor Mark Parkinson appointed Josh Svaty, a member of the Kansas House of Representatives as acting agriculture secretary. Svaty is a Democrat from Ellsworth.

    His record as a legislator is clear: he’s in favor of big government taxation and spending.

    In 2003, Svaty earned a rating of 10% from the Kansas Taxpayers Network. He voted to raise income and sales tax by $230 million. He also voted to raise a number of fees for various licenses.

    In 2004, he voted for income, sales, and property tax hikes. He also voted against efforts to limit spending growth. This earned him a KTN rating of 0% for that year.

    In 2005, his KTN rating was 25%. he voted against protecting taxpayers from judicial spending edicts stemming from the Montoy school finance decision.

    2006, his rating from KTN was 30%. He voted in favor of protection from eminent domain seizure of property — a good vote for those concerned with individual liberties.

    In 2007, his KTN rating was 25%.

    His overall lifetime rating is 19%, making Josh Svaty not a friend of the Kansas taxpayer.