Kansas Center for Economic Growth
In 2012, Kansas lawmakers cut income taxes in a bigger, faster, more dramatic way than any other state had done. And revenue from tax collections dropped like a rock, causing Kansas to enter a multi-year period of serious financial trouble.
In 2016, Kansans voted for a new Legislature. One-third of Kansas House and Senate seats turned over, and a supermajority of the newly minted Legislature, Republicans and Democrats alike, voted to reverse much of the 2012 tax cuts in a stunning rebuke to a sitting governor. Income tax receipts then returned to more normal levels and Kansas began to emerge from crisis mode.
Whats next? Will we go forward, or will we go back? Thats the fundamental question at the heart of the upcoming election contests for the governors office and every Kansas House seat. (Kansas Senate seats are not up for election until 2020.) How Kansans decide those races will determine whether our state has hope to adequately fund education, maintain high-quality roads, and invest in the future.
