Voice For Liberty

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  • Wichita should reject the fads Portland has followed

    By Randal O’Toole. From February, 2010.

    Randal O'Toole speaking in WichitaRandal O’Toole in Wichita.

    Urban planners say they can make our cities more livable, our downtowns more vibrant, and our traffic calmer. The problem is that urban planners do not understand how cities work, so all of their plans often turn out disastrously wrong.

    Many urban planners are quite capable of planning a sewer line, a road, a bus route, or a school. But it is huge leap from “I can locate a water main” to “I should have the power to decide how every piece of land in your urban area should be used.”

    That is the power urban planners want. But cities are too complicated for anyone to plan, so giving anyone this power is asking for trouble.

    Take my former hometown of Portland, Oregon, whose planners say they are making streets “vibrant” and the city “livable” by encouraging walking and transit ridership and discouraging driving.

    To stop “sprawl,” planners told rural landowners around Portland that they cannot build a house on their own land unless they own at least 80 acres and earn $80,000 a year farming it. To promote “compact development,” planners rezoned many neighborhoods of single-family homes for multi-family housing with zoning so strict that, if someone’s house burns down, they can only replace it with an apartment.

    Planners believe your only property rights are the rights planning commissions decide to give you — subject to change any time.

    Portland has spent well over $2 billion building light-rail and streetcar lines. To encourage transit ridership, planners allowed rush-hour congestion on all major freeways and streets to increase to stop-and-go levels. Doing anything to relieve congestion, planners feared, “would eliminate transit ridership.”

    To further encourage transit and walking, planners zoned all the land near light-rail stations for high-density, mixed-use development, so people could walk from their apartment buildings to a cafe or grocery store. When nothing got built — developers said Portland already had a surplus of multi-family housing — the city started subsidizing it, and has so far given around $2 billion in public funds to developers.

    The results are attractive if you like the idea of dodging trolleys as you wander through canyons of four- and five-story apartment buildings. But the practical effects on Portland residents are mostly negative.

    Planners successfully increased congestion by more than six times since 1982, about the time most of these plans began. But that hasn’t gotten people out of their cars: the share of commuters taking transit to work declined from 9.8 percent in 1980 to 6.5 percent in 2007.

    Planners more than doubled housing prices, so a $150,000 home in Wichita would cost well over $300,000 in Portland. But that hasn’t made high-density housing particularly successful: many of these developments have high vacancy rates and several have gone bankrupt.

    High housing prices forced many families with children to move to distant suburbs, and the remaining childless households eat out a lot, so Portland has lots of restaurants. But it also has high taxes and urban services have deteriorated as funds once dedicated to fire, police, public health, and other programs have been diverted to subsidies to developers.

    Terrible traffic, unaffordable housing, high taxes, and reduced property rights: those are the legacies of Portland planning. That’s the future planners want to bring to Wichita. I recommend you just say no.

    Randal O’Toole (rot@cato.org) is senior fellow with the Cato Institute and author of The Best-Laid Plans: How Government Planning Harms Your Quality of Life, Your Pocketbook, and Your Future. He recently visited Wichita for a series of speaking engagements and meetings.

  • Kansas budget director on budget, fiscal reform

    By Paul Soutar, Kansas Watchdog.

    WICHITA — Budget Director Steven J. Anderson outlined how he and his boss, Gov. Sam Brownback, would like to improve the fiscal affairs and economic recovery in Kansas. But Anderson admitted the effort isn’t likely to win him many friends.

    His presentation to the Wichita Pachyderm Club Friday included much for fiscal conservatives to like, including efforts to reduced state spending, lower income tax rates and make state government more efficient. But some planned initiatives probably won’t sit too well with a portion of the Republican base.

    Anderson said he thinks the Fair Tax, a proposal that relies on a sales or consumption tax and eliminates virtually all other taxes and exemptions, would not work politically. “From a strictly numbers perspective it’s very viable,” he said.

    “When you talk about the Fair Tax you gore about everybody. Twenty percent of the GDP in this country is non-profits. Do we really want to take the charitable deduction away from your churches?” One audience member said yes as Anderson continued. “I think the hue and cry becomes really high and pitchfork and torch sales go up all over town when you talk fair or flat tax.”

    Anderson also said he prefers to keep the 19 percent sales tax increase, from 5.3 to 6.3 cents on the dollar) enacted by the 2010 Legislature. “That isn’t wildly popular among some members of my party,” Anderson said. Repealing the tax increase was high on the priority list for many freshmen legislators.

    Anderson would use the extra sales tax revenue to offset reductions in income tax rates. “I believe income tax is an economic inhibitor and sales tax is a measure of economic activity.”

    Senate Bill 1, which would cap state spending and use sales tax revenue to reduce income tax rates, passed the House and is likely to get another shot in the Senate next year. Opponents of SB1 argue that sales taxes place a greater burden on the poor who spend a higher percentage of their income on necessities.

    Recent experience shows that improving the state’s fiscal health and competitiveness will not be as simple as cutting one tax and increasing another.

    In August 2009 QuikTrip demolished a store in Kansas then built a new one on the same property just a few feet to the east so the store, cash registers, and gasoline tanks are on the other side of the state line in Kansas City, Mo. The company said it pays lower taxes, has a better regulatory environment and has more customers who save money on gasoline taxes, sales taxes and cigarette taxes. Kansas loses an estimated $1.4 million in tax revenue each year because of the move.

    Anderson said by keeping the state’s income tax rates where they are and cutting the state sales tax back to 5.3 percent the state would get more gas stations, but if the state has no income tax it would be more likely to lure businesses just as Texas and other states with no income tax have done. “I’d rather have the corporate headquarters.”

    Anderson said he advised Brownback to focus on the state’s customers in addressing fiscal reform. “We all know that a business doesn’t survive if it can’t keep its customers. What has happened in Kansas in the last decade? If you’ve seen the latest census you know. Our customers, our citizens, have voted with their feet and left the state. I am probably an example of that. I had greater opportunity moving to Oklahoma.”

    Anderson, a Kansas native and graduate of Fort Hays State University, has an accounting practice in Edmond and worked for Oklahoma Gov. Frank Keating from 1999 to 2002 in the Office of State Finance. He moved back to Kansas to work with Brownback.

    “When the state thinks they can raise taxes and outwit business they make a bad mistake,” Anderson said. “Business knows how to deal with that. They either leave the state or they adjust their operations.”

    Brownback wrote the foreword to “Rich States, Poor States,” an annual evaluation of economic competitiveness among the states published by the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC). “When you read it you will understand where we are going to go. He is very plain that we intend to cut income taxes and we intend to cut them a lot.”

    One of Brownback’s early initiatives was creation of Rural Opportunity Zones (ROZ). The program offers individuals income tax exemptions for up to five years and up to $15,000 in student loan forgiveness for moving into one of 50 rural counties.

    “Part of the reason why we did that was to show those that were on the fence that if you will move to what they consider the hinterlands — of course, being from Western Kansas, I don’t consider it that — for zero income tax, they certainly will jump across the Missouri border into Kansas. It’s been a real success so far and we aren’t a month into it yet.”

    Anderson’s presentation addressed complaints that Brownback’s team is doing too much or too little.

    Newly elected fiscal conservatives and their supporters have said Brownback didn’t move fast enough on reforms during the 2011 Legislative session. Anderson said Brownback’s team is continuing to explore data that was not available during the transition and is finding additional opportunities for reforms he expects to be unveiled soon.

    Anderson also said reforms must not be stalled by projections of economic improvement based on improving income tax revenue. He said about $100 million in recent income tax revenue is from capital gains tax paid by filers who chose to sell investments now rather than after a feared federal capital gains tax increase.

    As of publication time, the Kansas Department of Revenue has not replied to a KansasWatchdog request that they verify or deny Anderson’s claim.

    “We actually are running behind on every revenue source,” Anderson said. “I think that should trouble us when we look down to Oklahoma who just cut taxes again. They just put $219 million in their rainy day fund. I think the proof is in the pudding. Cutting taxes works.”

    Video of Anderson’s presentation is available on Kansas Watchdog TV at Kansas Budget Director Steve Anderson Part 1, part 2, and questions and answers.

  • Parents and teachers deceived about Kansas school funding

    By Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute.

    “Deceived” is a strong word but there’s no polite way to describe the way parents and teachers are being misled about the nature of school funding in Kansas. Some school boards, administrators, media and even some legislators are saying that state support of public schools is at 1992 levels; others are just saying state aid is declining next year. None of that is true.

    State support is increasing by $86 million next year, and that’s on top of a $261 million increase this year. Kansas Legislative Research reports that state spending on public schools was $2.710 billion last year; this year it is $2.971 billion and next year’s budget is $3.057 billion. And by the way, next year’s spending will be more than twice what it was in 1992.

    Some pieces of state funding are slightly declining next year because others are growing more than the overall funding increase. According to the school finance formula, amounts required for Special Education, pension payments and the state’s portion of local bond payments are deducted from total aid; the remaining balance is then distributed according to the formula on a weighted per-pupil basis. Since the increases in those “off the top” items are greater than the $86 million increase in total state aid, a reduction in base state aid was necessary. Still, total aid from state, federal and local sources will still be about $12,000 per pupil next year, which would be a 5 percent reduction since FY 2009. (Federal aid is returning to pre-stimulus levels but local aid should be slightly higher.)

    This minor reduction over the last three years is caused by the worst recession this state has seen in decades. We’ve lost over 70,000 private sector jobs in the last three years and average annual employment in 2010 was less than in 1998. Based on the change in income tax receipts, corporate earnings plummeted 49 percent between 2007 and 2010. The resources to insulate public schools from economic reality simply aren’t available.

    Schools have a number of alternatives to avoid changes that impact classrooms. Inflation increased 10.4 percent between 2005 and 2010 but per-pupil operating costs outside the classroom jumped 17.7 percent. That’s $112 million above inflation.

    Also, most districts didn’t spend all of the revenue they received over the last five years; cash reserves in current operating funds (not counting capital and bond payments) increased by $317 million and most of that money is state and local tax dollars that were intended to operate schools. Many districts claimed they couldn’t use those unspent aid dollars because some of it was restricted.

    But there’s no question now that they can spend the money. A new law permits the transfer of unencumbered carryover cash balances from a group of twelve funds to be used for any operating purpose. There are no restrictions on how the money can be used and most districts have three or four times the amount needed to offset the change in base state aid per pupil.

    Parents and teachers deserve the truth. State support of public schools is rising next year and districts have options to avoid direct classroom impacts. We hope they choose to do so.

    Dave Trabert is president of the Kansas Policy Institute.

  • What’s really the matter with Kansas

    By Dave Trabert, Kansas Policy Institute.

    A May 22 story in the Wichita Eagle about the Kansas Legislature’s lack of focus on job creation in the just-concluded legislative session provides great insight into the economic stagnation the Sunflower State has suffered over the last decade.

    According to the Kansas Department of Labor, between April 2008 and April 2011 the state lost 73,200 private sector jobs, 500 state government jobs and 500 local government jobs. Last year, despite warnings from two academic studies that a sales tax increase would cost thousands of jobs, legislators did it anyway — and sure enough, between July 1, 2010 and April 30, 2011 we lost 5,000 private sector jobs (seasonally adjusted according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics for comparability). State government employment didn’t change over that time frame.

    So what was the focus of that lengthy article? The loss of government jobs. Private sector jobs were barely mentioned.

    The Eagle article spoke of a large number of state job cuts without mentioning that the majority were vacant positions. But there was no mention of last year’s legislative action that destroyed private sector jobs by raising the sales tax so government could spend more money.

    That pretty much sums up the job problem in Kansas for the last decade: lots of concern about protecting government and not much more than lip service for the private sector.

    The article painted a dire picture for education but failed to mention that total state spending on K-12 will increase by more than $100 million next year. Mandatory spending increases on school employee retirement benefits, special education programs and school bond payments prompted a reduction in the starting point of the funding formula (base state aid), but legislators also passed a law allowing districts to make up the difference in base state aid. Districts are allowed to transfer carryover cash balances from a variety of funds for operational purposes — and all but one district started this year with enough money in those funds to do so. Most, in fact, have more than $1,000 per pupil in those funds. Districts have the ability to avoid the layoffs mentioned in this article, so why did the reporter and the people he interviewed fail to mention it?

    The reporter also didn’t provide readers with the context of the education job cuts. Statewide, there are 4.6% more teachers in the wake of the cuts than there were in 2005, and all other school employment is up by 8.6%, while enrollment is up just 3.1%. It’s a shame that those people lost their jobs but it would be nice to see just as much concern for unemployed private sector workers.

    The Rural Opportunity Zones created by the Kansas Legislature are a good step forward, but the change that would create more jobs than any other effort — eventually eliminating the income tax — was killed in the Senate. The Senate wouldn’t even allow it to be discussed.

    Kansas will continue to suffer the economic stagnation we’ve seen over the last decade until we stop valuing government jobs over private sector jobs. That’s what is really the matter with Kansas.

    Dave Trabert is the President of the Kansas Policy Institute.

  • In Kansas schools, follow the money

    When the Kansas Policy Institute found that Kansas schools were sitting on large unspent fund balances, the initial reaction of school bureaucrats is that these balances were an illusion — they didn’t exist. Then the schools admitted that the balances existed, but contended that they couldn’t be spent in a way that would help schools make it through a few tough budget years. Now it’s apparent that Kansas public schools simply don’t want to spend the money they’ve saved — money that was given to schools for educating children but wasn’t spent for that purpose. Instead, they’d rather ask for tax increases and sue the state’s taxpayers. KPI’s Dave Trabert explains and asks “How much cash does your school district have?” (You can find the answer to that question at KansasOpenGov.)

    In Kansas schools, follow the money

    Kansas public schools hold cash while threatening cuts
    By Dave Trabert, President, Kansas Policy Institute

    If someone told you public school districts are talking about closing schools and firing teachers because of funding challenges, but aren’t using millions in cash they built up over the last few years, you’d probably say “that can’t be true.” But it’s happening in Kansas.

    Districts began this year with $1.6 billion in unencumbered carryover cash reserves. “Unencumbered” means the cash is not subject to any lien, encumbrance or other creditor claims. Some cash comes from property tax levies and must be spent accordingly, such as for capital projects and debt service. But even subtracting that money plus federal funds and a few small amounts that can’t be touched according to state legal authorities, Kansas school districts still had $742 million in other operating funds.

    That’s an average of $1,633 per-pupil in cash. Governor Brownback’s proposed 2012 budget increases state aid but non-returning federal stimulus aid would result in a net loss per-pupil of about $232, or 1.9% of combined state, federal and local funding. With the average district having seven times that amount in carryover reserves, one would think most districts would say they could cover the difference and still be able to increase spending by using a portion of their reserves. Some plan to do so. Many others, with more than adequate reserves, say they will be “forced” to lay off teachers and take other drastic steps.

    The cash is held in dozens of funds, some of which have statutory restrictions on how fund balances can be used. Still, the state department of education says districts can access some restricted reserve balances by simply not transferring as much in as needs to be spent. Legislators could and should lift transfer restrictions so schools can use their reserves as needed.

    The vast majority of that $742 million represents state and local tax dollars given to schools in prior years for education purposes that instead were used to increase cash reserves. The total increased by $306 over the last five years, going from $436 million to $742 million.

    School funds operate on a cash basis just like your personal checkbook; the balances only increase if more is deposited than is spent. Since Kansas school districts added $306 million to their cash reserves over the last five years, one might ask if this would be a good time to use some of that money as originally intended.

    The projected decline in total aid next year is about $106 million, so schools would only have to use about 14 percent of their carryover cash to hold funding steady. Using cash reserves isn’t a long term solution but there’s plenty there to allow time to find other solutions, including operating more efficiently. Independent audits have disclosed tremendous savings opportunities. Kansas public schools spent an average of $12,330 per-pupil last year. That was down 2.6 percent from the previous year but still a 27 percent increase over the previous five years.

    One legitimate reason schools give for holding cash is that Kansas has not always made school aid payments on time as a result of recession-driven revenue declines. The state is working to resolve that problem by trying to reduce spending.

    Another reason is likely related to a new lawsuit filed by a group of school districts, contending the state is not meeting its constitutional funding obligation. A 2005 Kansas Supreme Court ruling in Montoy vs. State of Kansas ordered the Legislature to spend an additional $853 million on K-12 education. The Legislature complied with the court’s ruling and that case was closed. But the recession forced state aid to decline in 2010. Total state aid has since increased but is not back to previously-scheduled levels. So now some districts are using taxpayer money intended for educational purposes to sue the state again.

    Here’s the conundrum districts face regarding the use of their carryover cash reserves. How can they contend they are under-funded if $306 million of the aid received since the last lawsuit was used to increase cash reserves? Holding on to their cash build-up might help their lawsuit, but it certainly doesn’t help students or the teachers who are being laid off.

    School districts need some degree of carryover reserves but it should be determined how much can be made available and take whatever steps are necessary to put it to work in schools. It makes no sense to raise taxes or let teachers go when there are tax dollars sitting the bank.

    How much cash does your school district have?

  • Kansas judicial selection should be reformed

    By Karl Peterjohn.

    Removing politics from the Kansas judiciary is about as likely as removing the moo from a cow. In Kansas the there is no transparency and a great deal of discrimination in this back room judicial selection process. Judge Ricard D. Greene’s defense of appellate judge selection (February 24, 2011 Wichita Eagle) in Kansas neglected these odious features in his defense of this terribly flawed system.

    I write this as a second-class Kansan who has been disenfranchised in the process of selecting a majority of this powerful governmental committee that is dominated by the members of the Kansas bar and the group that picks who will become its appellate judges. There is no other government panel in Kansas that empowers one small class of special citizens at the expense of the rest of us. I recently asked the Secretary of State’s office for the election results for selecting this powerful state committee’s lawyer members. I was told that information is not available.

    Five of the nine members of this powerful committee are elected solely by the members of the Kansas bar. The other four are appointed by the governor. While this committee selection process is used in a number of other states, none of them provide for making a majority of its members are lawyers.

    This type of closed door selection process which occurs outside the public’s view is a reason why a few years ago, six of the seven members of the Kansas Supreme Court who had been selected using this process were members of one political party while the seventh who wasn’t, was a friend of the governor (see kansasmeadowlark.com). The latter was judicially reprimanded but that admonishment and the underlying egregious misbehavior that led to this punishment did not keep Lawton Nuss from his current promotion to be the Chief Justice of the Kansas Supreme Court.

    Yeah, there aren’t any politics here. Yeah, only the best and the brightest are being added to the court according to Judge Greene. I must note that none of the Eagle’s news coverage of Nuss during his retention election last year mentioned his reprimand or kept the Eagle’s editorial page from endorsing him despite his ex parte abuse with litigants in the Montoy case.

    Judicial selection is important and decisions will impact state policy. Must the state spend $853 million more for K-12 schooling to comply with the KS Constitution? Yes says the unanimous supreme court in overruling its own earlier decision. Are state owned casinos constitutional? Yes again, despite the fact that there never was a statewide vote on legalized casinos. Was the Kansas death penalty constitutional? The Kansas Supreme Court overruled itself from an earlier case and said no, but then Attorney General Kline took this case to the US Supreme Court. Kline won in Washington and that decision was reversed.

    Today, the politics of the Kansas judiciary are now occurring behind the closed door-back rooms of the bar association. Transparency is non existent when the meetings of the government committee occur behind closed doors and without any public records being recorded from these meetings.

    KU law professor Stephen J. Ware has written that this is an inequality that goes against the “one person, one vote” principle of democracies. The power of a vote of a member of the bar is “infinitely more powerful” than the votes of non-lawyers.

    When comparing the method of judicial selection in Kansas to other states, Ware said that “Kansas is the only state that gives its bar the power to select the majority of its supreme court nominating commission.”

    The Kansas House majority supporting HB 2101 should be praised for eliminating this vestige of elite discrimination by one class of specially empowered citizens. The attorneys and their hand picked judges won’t like this bill, but the politics of judicial selection should be out in public where everyone has a say as well as a clear view, instead of hidden in back rooms. I hope that a majority of the Kansas senate as well as Governor Sam Brownback agree and HB 2101 becomes law as a first step in reforming appellate judicial selection in Kansas.

  • Brinkmanship with jobs

    By H. Edward Flentje.

    Most Wichita-area residents breathed a sigh of relief last December when former Governor Mark Parkinson, along with city and county officials, inked a $45 million deal for aviation manufacturer Hawker Beechcraft to maintain 4,000 jobs in Wichita.

    The deal was cut after months of community drama in which company officials threatened to uproot the 75-year-old Wichita company and move it, lock, stock, and barrel, to Louisiana. The company had also demanded that union contracts be set aside and vowed to send pieces of the company to Mexico. These threats came after Hawker Beechcraft had cut its Kansas workforce by one-third over the prior two years in response to the economic downturn.

    Welcome to the new world of economic development — playing brinkmanship with jobs. This tactic is led by a new breed of hired guns, mostly outsiders and consultants who have little or no attachment to the targeted community. On behalf of corporate clients, they specialize in playing states and communities off against each other — threatening state and local officials with plant closures or moves to another state. In the process taxpayers, employees, and anyone else available are squeezed for all they are worth.

    The work of economic development used to be simpler: applying a limited set of incentives to attract new businesses and new jobs or encourage existing businesses to add jobs. In my short stint as Wichita’s interim city manager in 2008 I had no difficulty recommending to the city council and state officials a substantial package of incentives for Cessna to build a complete new airplane in Wichita and create 1,000 new jobs. The joint initiative of the State of Kansas, Hutchinson, Reno County, and South Hutchinson to land global giant Siemens in Hutchinson with 400 new jobs in a completely new industry of wind energy applied this approach.

    But the Hawker Beechcraft deal is different, focused on saving existing jobs, not creating new jobs, and the result diverts millions in limited taxpayer funds, primarily state income tax revenues, from state coffers to a company’s benefit, simply to have an existing business stay put.

    State lawmakers first opened the door for applying income tax revenues to “job retention” in 2000 under a program called IMPACT (an acronym for “investment in major projects and comprehensive training” act), set a high threshold for eligibility, and placed strict limitations on the use of funds.

    Since then, lawmakers have repeatedly loosened requirements and given more encouragement to this game of brinkmanship. Originally, the law required an eligible company to make a capital investment of at least $250 million and maintain 1,000 jobs in the state. Today, no capital investment is required, and the job bar has been slashed to 250 jobs in metropolitan areas and 100 in nonmetropolitan areas.

    The Kansas Secretary of Commerce has to sign off on these deals, and to date has approved only nine according to Commerce officials. The winners are large corporate organizations with familiar names—Learjet, Sprint, Applebee’s Services, Boeing, Goodyear, and Black & Veatch, in addition to Hawker Beechcraft—all located in one of three Kansas counties, Johnson, Sedgwick, and Shawnee.

    But word gets around in the world of economic development, and demands will escalate. The barn door has been flung open as well over 500 Kansas businesses are now eligible for state assistance, a tenfold increase over the year 2000, thanks to lawmakers. The expanding game of brinkmanship with jobs leaves state and local officials more vulnerable and can be expected to divert millions more in state tax revenues from state government’s primary obligations in response to the demands of companies that choose to play.

    Flentje is a professor at Wichita State University and co-author of the new book on Kansas politics Kansas Politics and Government: The Clash of Political Cultures.

  • In Kansas, prosperity is achievable — if we’re willing to change

    The health of the Kansas economy — past and future — is the subject of some debate, with supporters of big government like the Wichita Eagle’s Rhonda Holman thanking outgoing Governor Mark Parkinson for his promotion of the increase in the statewide sales tax and other forms of economic interventionism. These policies, with the exception of the approval of the expansion of a coal-fired electrical plant, largely carried forward the programs of his predecessor Kathleen Sebelius. As a result, Kansas is in the situation that Dave Trabert of the Kansas Policy Institute describes below.

    Prosperity Is Achievable — If We’re Willing To Change

    By Dave Trabert, President, Kansas Policy Institute

    “The first lesson of economics is scarcity: there is never enough of anything to fully satisfy all those who want it. The first lesson of politics is to disregard the first lesson of economics.” — Thomas Sowell, The Hoover Institution, Stanford University

    Sowell’s point about the scarcity of resources is essential to understanding economics, which may be as much about human behavior as supply, demand and other commonly-associated factors. Taxpayers have finite resources, so the more they must pay in taxes, the less they have to spend on goods and services. Accordingly, raising taxes always has a negative impact and especially so when taxes rise faster than the ability to pay.

    Unfortunately, the last ten years were defined by Sowell’s first law of politics. State and local governments in Kansas ignored the implications of finite resources and significantly increased the tax burden. From 2000 to 2009, state and local taxes increased 59 percent but personal income available to pay taxes only rose 44 percent. (The 2010 figures aren’t yet published but last year’s increase in sales, unemployment and property taxes certainly didn’t ease the burden.)

    Predictably, we suffered the consequences.

    Kansas had 18,800 fewer private sector jobs in 2009 than in 2000, a reduction of 1.7 percent. There was job growth prior to the recession but it was well below the national average. From 1998 to 2008 (Kansas employment peaked in April, 2008) private sector jobs increased 7.9 percent nationwide but only 5.2 percent in Kansas. And comparing the performance of low-burden and high-burden states (as ranked by the non-partisan Tax Foundation) makes the implications of defying Sowell’s first law of economics even more clear. The ten states with the highest combined state and local tax burden averaged 6.1 percent private sector job growth, whereas the ten states with the lowest burdens averaged a remarkable 16.5 percent gain.

    Domestic migration (U.S. residents moving in and out of states) is another good measure. Between 2000 and 2009, the ten states with the lowest tax burdens averaged a 3.8 percent population increase from domestic migration; the ten states with the highest burdens lost an average of 3.3 percent. Kansas lost 2.5 percent population from domestic migration.

    Jobs and people naturally gravitate toward low-burden states where they get to keep more of their hard-earned, finite resources. The next ten years must therefore be defined by Sowell’s first law of economics or Kansas will continue to suffer the consequences. In order to compete for jobs and attract new residents, the state and local tax burden must be reduced — and that means government must spend less.

    Fortunately, there are many ways to reduce spending and still provide essential services. Ineffective and unnecessary programs have to go and government must operate much more efficiently.

    Change won’t be easy but the choice is simple — reduce the tax burden and create an environment that attracts jobs and new taxpayers or preserve big government and continue to suffer the consequences.

  • In Kansas, everything is okay — not

    A few weeks ago Kansas University political science professor Burdett Loomis had an opinion piece in The Wichita Eagle. Commenting on it at the time, I wrote “Overall, Loomis presents an argument for the status quo in Kansas government, and the potential for change in the direction of restraining its growth has Loomis — in his own words — ‘concerned — worried, even.’” Now Alan Cobb of Topeka, who is vice president of state operations at Americans for Prosperity Foundation, comments. Following is the unabridged version of Cobb’s op-ed that appeared in today’s Wichita Eagle.

    A few weeks ago, noted KU political science professor and nice guy, Burdett Loomis, commented that everything is fine here in Kansas, so why would anyone want to lower taxes or change anything?

    Where to start? If you compare Kansas to much of the world, yes, we are okay. Hot water comes out of the hot water tap, you can watch your favorite college team on TV, and you have about two dozen different road combinations to make it to Grandma’s house for the Holidays. (We don’t need that many options, but that is another editorial.)

    If you compare Kansas to places more similar to Kansas than Bhutan or Belarus, we have a bit different story.

    One of the simplest ways to measure economic growth is population growth. People go where there is economic opportunity.

    Over the last decade, Kansas’ population increased 6.1 percent while Colorado increased 16.9 percent, (remember tax and spending limits decimating Colorado?) Missouri 7 percent, Oklahoma 8.7 percent, and Nebraska 6.7 percent. Maybe the most sobering statistic is South Dakota’s growth of 7.86 percent, an astonishing rate of nearly 30 percent higher than Kansas. South Dakota has a lot of fine attributes. But there is no reason that Kansas can’t at least equal that, is there? Or maybe come closer? Or if we really put on our thinking caps, maybe even we can beat South Dakota.

    Kansas’ population growth is because our birth rate exceeds our mortality rate. We aren’t attracting folks from out of state. We still have more people moving out of Kansas than moving in. And the folks moving out have a higher annual income than those moving in and they are leaving Kansas on some of the best roads in America. Oh, South Dakota is a net importer of residents and South Dakota doesn’t have an income tax.

    One can think about this stuff until the cows come home, or until one tries to do Chinese math with a liberal arts mind, but it is really pretty simple. People live in and move to where they think they can improve their lives.

    There are a few parts of Kansas that are growing, though I can’t say that is improvement, at least not with a straight face. During the last decade, the number of Kansas government employees has increased by 15,000 jobs while private sector employment has decreased by 35,000. The size of today’s private sector workforce in Kansas smaller than it was in 2000. Oh, but everything is fine, really.

    To make the dwindling private sector worker feel even better, the average annual salary for a State government worker in Kansas is $46,000 while the private sector is $38,500. Of course that doesn’t include the generous health and retirement benefits rarely seen in the private sector.

    Though some are satisfied with the status quo, I and the 40,000 members of AFP are not.

    The final point to address is Bird’s kind of lame back handed swipe at AFP as if we represent only wealthy interests. I’ve been with AFP-Kansas since the beginning. I’ve attended hundreds and hundreds of AFP events and meetings. I’ve been to Pittsburg, Liberal, Leavenworth, Goodland and many towns in between. Bird would have been awed by the vast amounts of wealth present at the Big Cheese Pizza in Independence, at Spears Cafeteria in Wichita, the Liberal Train Depot or the Topeka Public Library.

    But, I’ve never seen Bird attend any of those meetings.

    I am sure that among that 40,000 members of AFP in Kansas there are some rich folks. But their interests are the same as all AFP members: personal liberty, economic freedom and growth, and debate based on facts.