Don’t forget Masterson’s role in Kansas’s failed tax experiment 

In the 2016 session, Masterson and his committee staged a final act of desperation. With state balances underwater, they enacted a budget in which spending exceeded revenues by $100 million in an attempt to force the governor to cut core services.

Kansans may remember the rise and spectacular fall of Gov. Sam Brownback’s disastrous tax experiment, which was designed to eliminate the state income tax. Less well known to Kansans is the key role that current gubernatorial candidate Ty Masterson played in the enactment and execution of the failed experiment.

The plan enacted by Republican lawmakers in 2012 gave Kansas four years of unbalanced budgets, unfair tax increases, and historic debt.

By 2016, Kansans had seen enough of the financial fiasco and elected a majority of moderate state lawmakers, Republicans and Democrats, to abandon the experiment and restore sanity to state finance. 

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