Today Kansas Governor Kathleen Sebelius held a press conference at 4:30 pm.
She said she submitted a budget to the legislature five weeks ago, and that the bill just reached her desk today. But the budget she submitted back then, while meeting the requirements of law, didn’t meet the requirements of the situation. It was not a responsible budget. The legislature had to make the hard cuts. See Sebelius’ Proposed Cuts Not Likely Enough and Kansas Governor Not Facing Reality of Budget Crisis.
Today, after the Governor’s action, there is less reduction in K-12 education that what was in the bill sent to her. She said the cuts to K-12 education that the legislature made are unacceptable.
The problem going forward is that the 2010 budget will require even more cutting — more than twice as much — than what took five weeks of this session to accomplish.