Cutting spending for higher education, holding K through 12 public school spending steady, sweeping highway money to the general fund, reducing aid to local governments, spending down state reserves, and a huge projected budget gap. Who and when is the following newspaper report referencing?
Under _____ budget for fiscal _____, public schools would continue to receive $3,863 per student in state aid, and higher education would lose only $5 million in general tax dollars, mostly in the central Board of Regents office.
But _____ would take $165 million from highway projects and eliminate $86 million in aid to local governments — on top of the $95 million _____ withheld from highway projects and $48 million _____ kept from cities and counties.
_____ also made a campaign promise to build all projects promised under the state’s 10-year, $13.5 billion transportation program. _____ proposals didn’t say how the Department of Transportation would deal with the loss of funds.
_____ budget also would allow the Kansas Highway Patrol to hire 70 new troopers, give state employees a 1.5 percent pay raise, and prevent the closings of four minimum-security prison units and two inmate boot camps.
Under _____ proposals, total spending in fiscal _____ would decrease about $31 million, or 0.4 percent.
But that figure didn’t convey the seriousness of the state’s budget problems, which some officials have said are the worst since the Great Depression. The gap between expected general tax revenues and spending commitments during the next 18 months is more than $1 billion.
_____ also proposed to help eliminate the gap by spending some $313 million — all but $500,000 — that otherwise would be set aside as emergency cash reserves.
This is coverage from John Hanna of the State of the State Address from Governor Kathleen Sebelius in 2003, where she revealed plans for the fiscal 2004 budget. (Except the blank in “on top of the $95 million _____ withheld from highway projects” refers to her predecessor Bill Graves.) The original article is here.