A new visitor center will be built in the basement of the Kansas Statehouse and additional work will be done on the Capitol grounds at a total cost of about $17.4 million, the AP reported Saturday.
Where will that money come from?
The good news is that $5 million is on hand from savings realized in the renovation project, which has already cost $320 million and won’t be completed until next year. The other $12.5 million will come from stealing another $7.5 million from Kansas Department of Transportation funds and $5.4 million from new state bonds, which will be retired over the next 10 years or more with tax funds.
This three-part finance plan was proposed by the Brownback administration.
Earlier this year, Gov. Sam Brownback said it was time to stop stealing money from KDOT and using it in lieu of general fund appropriations. This case is different, for reasons thus far unexplained.
Well, it isn’t really different. There would be plenty of money in next year’s general fund to pay for such a small project if the Legislature hadn’t slashed the state’s income tax by a record amount and made other revenue-reducing decisions.
Issuing bonds is borrowing the money. Interest will be owed. The interest cost will be many thousands more than paying cash. Stealing the money from KDOT is taking money that motorists paid as fuel taxes with the understanding that it would go to maintain and construct highways. This is, as the governor has tacitly agreed, a kind of legal fraud. Using KDOT funds as a piggy bank may allow the Legislature to slash taxes on the rich and still keep the budget in balance, but the practice will have the long-term effect of turning the first-rate highways of Kansas into a second-class system.
Welcome to tomorrow’s pothole network.
WHEN THE STATE’S lawmakers assemble for the 2013 session in January, their first assignment should be to make certain that the state’s books really balance: That there is enough money coming in from taxes to pay what they intend to spend. Dedicated taxes, such as the tax on highway fuels, should only be spent on highways, airports and other KDOT budget items. Money needed for the rest of the state budget should be collected through other taxes, without fudging.
Lawmakers also should amend tax cuts the legislature approved this winter and insert reforms that will provide enough revenue to fund K-12 schools as they were funded before the recession and allow the state universities to operate without a tuition increase, as well as fund the rest of the budget adequately.
These are modest goals which seek only to return to a level of excellence in education that was agreed upon by lawmakers and administration alike five short years ago.
Kansas is not an impoverished state. It is not a high-tax state. The cry of poverty heard from the administration is not based on facts, but on ill-founded, untested ideology.
The Brownback administration has pinned a poor-boy label on the Sunflower State that it does not deserve and should loudly reject.
— Emerson Lynn, jr.
