Voice For Liberty

Tag: Kansas state government

Articles about Kansas, its government, and public policy in Kansas.

  • Kansas Judiciary Gets National Criticism

    Kansas Judiciary Gets National Criticism
    Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

    The school finance litigation began in the 1980’s in Kansas and has continued and expanded in the 21st Century. The first lawsuit was tragic, but now Kansas is becoming a judicial joke, albeit a very expensive demonstration of judicial activism and contempt for the democratic principles that are the foundation for not only this state, but for this republic.

    Kansas is now getting negative national attention created by the judicial activism coming from the Kansas Supreme Court. Kansas is not alone in judicial activism but the attention focused upon the Sunflower state by the Wall Street Journal April 8, 2006 is a national recognition of a fundamental problem facing Kansas. The negative judicial impact is already hurting Kansas firms as business costs and risks grow. Any out-of-state firm looking to relocate into this region won’t come anywhere near us.

    Here, the judges are setting budgets and legislatures have been relegated to an elected advisory board. Litigious school district lawyers publicly whine about “inadequate school funding” despite an increase of over $650 per pupil last year alone. Governor Sebelius and her liberal legislative allies in both parties want this spending to be doubled again to a total of roughly $2,000 more per pupil per year. That would be an additional $40,000 per twenty student classroom in Kansas if the legislature approves this spending when they return to Topeka April 26.

    When this gubernatorial backed spending spree was approved in the Kansas house all 42 Democrats joined 22 liberal Republicans led by Garden City lawyer, Representative Ward Loyd in narrowly passing this bill on a 64-to-61 vote in March. In a spasm of caution, the senate deadlocked and passed nothing so far this year.

    Now New York Law School professors Ross Sandler and David Schoenbrod bluntly stated in the Wall Street Journal, ” …courts have no power to force a state legislature to appropriate money.” Most people assume that the legislature must cough up the cash because courts have the power of contempt, which allows them to punish those who disobey their orders. In the school case, however, the courts can’t punish anyone. State legislators are not defendants in this case, and even if they were, they can’t be pushed because they are immune from suit. The state’s treasury is immune because the court lacks authority to appropriate more funds and can’t fine the state for the legislature’s unwillingness to do so.

    These professors go on to warn that courts have tried to close schools until the legislature responded to the court’s demands. In some cases the threat succeeds. They said, “…when the Kansas court raised the question of whether it should close the schools, the threat was enough to pry more money from the legislature.” This leads to an outrageous situation, “When courts claim that they have power to make legislatures spend more to vindicate a constitutional right to basic education, they tamper with a basic tenet of our democracy — no taxation without representation.”

    The judicial activists among Kansas lawyers, the Kansas Bar, the judicial nominating and “ethics” committees meeting behind closed doors, and the Kansas judges from the liberal Terry Bullock to the Democrat dominated, activist Kansas Supreme Court control the interpretation of Kansas state law. Democratic principles are no match for Democrat and liberal judges. What the judges cannot control are the consequences from this usurpation of elected officials’ power by this ascendant judicial oligarchy.

    The Wall Street Journal’s editorial clearly indicates that businesses are entering a risky legal environment once they step into Kansas. The word is out. Other recent Alice in Wonderland rulings, like the Kansas Supreme Court’s eminent domain edict, add to the problems and risks of conducting business in this state. As the court grabs spending power and weakens property rights this state is being economically as well as politically damaged by judicial activism.

    The bizarre nature of the Kansas school finance case is increased by several facts. First, the legislature was never even a defendant in the school finance lawsuit, the state school board was. The Kansas Supreme Court denied the legislators’ right to appear before the court because of this fact, but then the appointed judges on this court turned around and issued a ruling against the elected legislators.

    Second, the other states pursuing these public school spending cases refuse to manufacture some specious dollar amount to be constitutionally authorized like Kansas. The Texas Supreme Court specifically rejected this claim. In New York, their highest court said in its March, 2006 ruling that it had, “neither the authority, nor the ability, nor the will, to micromanage education financing.”

    Dissenting judges in this case warned that the New York school finance lawsuit will create endless litigation and perpetual legal second-guessing by their courts. That description of the legal environment sounds like Kansas beginning with Judge Bullock’s infamous Mock decision in 1992.

    Who supported this school finance lawsuit in New York? Besides the usual school spending lobbies there were the two “expert” professors from New York whose work is the foundation for the Kansas Legislative Post Audit report issued last January. These are Syracuse University professors and left wing school spending advocates William Duncombe and John Yinger.

    There are many lessons for the Kansas citizens paying these tax bills to fund this legal circus. Taxpayers are funding both sides of this expensive, multi-million dollar lawsuit. Kansas ranks low in the percentage of tax dollars that gets into classrooms, but there is unlimited tax funds for lawsuits, statehouse school district lobbyists, raising top administrators’ salaries, and despite all the spending there are lax fiscal controls. Lax controls have created several recent public school financial scandals that included, in one case, shipping over $500,000 in school district tax funds to a bunch of crooks in Kazakstan. This financial scandal indicates that money is the excuse, not the problem, for Kansas public schools.

  • Is Kansas Competitive?

    Is Kansas Competitive?
    Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network

    Is the Kansas economy competitive? State revenues are growing and Governor Sebelius and other state spending proponents are promoting a consultant’s report that ranks Kansas as 10th for “Pro Business States for 2006,” according to Pollina Corporate Real Estate, Inc. consulting service. This was a big jump for Kansas in this rating due to the state scoring a middling 23rd in the first survey released in 2004. This is an important issue as Kansas spending and ultimately tax issues remain unresolved and the blacked robed legislators on the Kansas Supreme Court await an opportunity to issue more spending edicts.

    Free market and conservative legislators have been complaining that Kansas is not economically competitive or business friendly. The uncertainty and enhanced risk created by judicial spending edicts certainly hurts this state but is one important criteria that was not considered in the Pollina report.

    The conservative legislators have tried to pass a much larger package of tax cuts that go well beyond what the liberal Governor Sebelius wants. April 7 the governor expressed her preference for another dramatic hike in state school expenditures over any tax cuts when she met with statehouse reporters.

    However, the key question remains. Does Kansas has a competitive fiscal climate or not? The Tax Foundation’s State Business Tax Climate Index ranked Kansas as 34th in their 2006 report, down two places from last year. Kansas is getting marginally worse here and lags behind all of our neighbors except Nebraska. The Council of State Taxation’s 2006 report issued in March ranked Kansas business taxes at the top of our five state region and well above the U.S. national average.

    The Pollina consulting report ranked Kansas on a number of criteria and in only one was Kansas in the top ten. The business tax ranking in this report scored Kansas at 45th (with one being best and 50th worst). Job losses between 2002-04 in this report has Kansas scoring 47th which ironically probably explains one of Kansas’ best scores of 13th on their workforce. This means that Kansas has lots of qualified workers trying to find jobs. Sadly, many of these folks will move to states with more competitive tax climates where the job growth is located. Kansas also scored badly on our unitary taxation of business but that was offset by Kansas not taxing inventories.

    Dr. Pollina explained that Kansas scored well because we are one of 22 Right to Work states but that does not explain how Kansas moved up from 2004. “Its not always that the state is doing that much better but that others are doing worse,” Dr. Pollina suggested.

    Dr. Pollina also cited the state’s programs for incentives for business as another reason. The more incentives and state programs the higher his rating. Critics of these programs have described many of these special benefits as corporate welfare. However, Dr. Pollina could not explain how Kansas, which was ranked on this criteria as 6th this year, would improve significantly overall when we also ranked 6th on this same criteria in 2004. While having a strong economic development department with programs was an important part of this study’s rating, this cannot explain how Kansas moved up. If you ignored the state incentive programs, Dr. Pollina did say that Kansas would not have moved up to 10th in his survey.

    The irony about the variance in these reports is buried in the details. The Pollina survey actually relies upon some of the Tax Foundation data. The Pollina report ranked Kansas as scoring 23rd on infrastructure, including roads, despite this state spending more than our neighbors on a per capita basis for roads and highways. So like school spending, Kansas spends more, taxes more, but gets less bang for the buck. Effectiveness of state spending was not measured.

    The Pollina survey actually measured a number of different criteria from the tax and competitiveness comparisons performed by the Tax Foundation and the Council of State Taxation. Pro business when it comes to state subsidies is sometimes in conflict with free market and limited government. Small businesses that are ineligible for many state development programs are ignored in the state Commerce Department’s “elephant hunt” that is focused primarily upon the Fortune 500 corporations.

    The Pollina survey actually contains a lot of disturbing data about how poorly Kansas competes that will sadly be ignored by the 10th place rating. These details matter. Lots of state Department of Commerce programs and a glitzy web site will only be a case of putting “lipstick on the pig.” The fact that state revenues in 2005 grew at half the national rate is a warning signal that is being ignored by liberal elected officials in both parties, Governor Sebelius, and her judicial allies wearing the black robes in the Kansas “House of Lords,” who are preparing their next expensive edict within the Kansas Supreme Court.

  • Consider carefully all costs of gambling in Wichita

    Writing from Miami, Florida

    In a free society dedicated to personal liberty, people should be able to gamble. But that’s not what we have, as in a free society dedicated to personal liberty, people wouldn’t be taxed to pay for the problems that others cause in the pursuit of their happiness.

    How does this relate to the issue of casino gambling in Wichita and Kansas?

    There is a document titled “Economic & Social Impact Anlaysis [sic] For A Proposed Casino & Hotel” created by GVA Marquette Advisors for the Wichita Downtown Development Corporation and the Greater Wichita Convention and Visitors Bureau, dated April 2004. This document presents a lot of information about the benefits and the costs of gambling in the Wichita area. One of their presentations of data concludes that the average cost per pathological gambler is $13,586 per year. Quoting from the study in the section titled Social Impact VII-9:

    Most studies conclude that nationally between 1.0 and 1.5 percent of adults are susceptible to becoming a pathological gambler. Applying this statistic to the 521,000 adults projected to live within 50 miles of Wichita in 2008, the community could eventually have between 5,200 and 7,800 pathological gamblers. At a cost of $13,586 in social costs for each, the annual burden on the community could range between $71 and $106 million.

    If all we had to do was to pay that amount each year in money that would be bad enough. But the components of the cost of pathological gamblers include, according to the same study, increased crime and family costs. In other words, people are hurt, physically and emotionally, by pathological gamblers. Often the people who are harmed are those who have no option to leave the gambler, such as children.

    Quoting again from the study: “While this community social burden could be significant, its quantified estimate is still surpassed by the positive economic impacts measured in this study.” The authors are saying that the amount of money the casino generates will more than pay for the increased social costs. While it is likely true that the amount of money the casino generates is greater than the increased social costs, whether this analysis makes sense depends on what you mean by “generate.”

    The largest components of the positive economic impacts are employee wages, additional earnings in the county, and state casino revenue share, along with some minor elements. Together these total $142 million, which is, as the authors point out, larger than the projected costs shown above. But this analysis is flawed. It assumes that salaries paid to employees somehow compensate for increased social costs. Employee wages don’t go towards paying the costs of treating pathological gamblers, as employees probably want to spend their wages on other things. Furthermore, the state casino revenue share is supposed to go towards schools. It is a huge mistake to treat employee wages as compensating for increased social costs.

    The absurdity mounts as we realize that gambling is promoted by none other than Governor Kathleen Sebelius (and many others) as a way to raise money for schools. Often the figure quoted for the amount of money gambling would generate for the state is $150 million per year. But here is a study concluding that the monetary costs to the Wichita area alone would be a large fraction of that, and when you add the human misery, it just doesn’t make sense to fund schools with revenue from gambling.

  • Senate spending spree blows roof off Kansas capitol

    Thank you to Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network, for this fine article containing information we don’t see in our state’s newspapers.

    Why is information like this important to our liberty? It’s because much of what our state spends consists of simply taking the property of one person and giving it to someone else. Add to that the fact that much of this spending is on public schools, that our government leaders firmly refuse to allow us choice in schools (vouchers), this spending (and resultant taxation) amounts to a huge assault on liberty, our freedoms, and our wealth.

    Senate spending spree blows roof off Kansas capitol
    March 30, 2006 @ 11:30 AM

    The government school spending spree is erupting in the Kansas senate today. The senate took up the horrific house passed HB 2986 this morning. Over three years Sen. Karin Brownlee said this bill would cost a total of $1.38 billion.

    Two amendments to lower the spending increases failed. The first would have limited spending growth to $670 million failed on a 17-to-20 vote with three legislators showing their profile in courage and passing! Then the original house spending plan that would raise school spending over $1 billion over three years was taken up and failed 17-to-23.

    Once again unified Democrats and their big spending GOP allies headed up by school district attorney Sen. John Vratil and Wichita school district specialist Sen. Jean Schodorf (they are vice chair and chair of the education committees, does anyone see a special interest there?) easily defeated these slightly smaller spending bills with the votes of their liberal allies.

    Sen. Karin Brownlee warned the senate that the house passed H 2986 would “…spend the roof off the dome…,” if this passed. So far, the smallest spending increase amendment to this bill came from Sen. Jim Barnett who had a four-year spending hike plan. Barnett’s proposal did not receive a single Democrat vote and the most “moderate,” ie. liberal Republicans voted against it: Allen, Brungardt, Emler, Morris, Reitz, D. Schmidt, V. Schmidt, Teichman, Umbarger, Vratil, & Wysong. The three passing were McGinn and two Democrats: Haley and Lee.

    Barnett warned the senate that continuing the spending spree that began in the 2005 regular legislative session and was compounded by the court mandated special session was going to lead this state into major financial mess. He was not alone in these concerns. He was joined by a majority of senate Republicans including excellent comments from senators Brownlee and Wagle.

    Sen. Les Donovan joined warned the senate that there are, “… built in (spending) escalators and they are not going away,” and that the cumulative impact is to put the state in a $600 million fiscal hole two years from now.

    The left wing and all too bipartisan senate leaders on both sides of the aisle Steve Morris, Tony Hensley, Derek Schmidt, and John Vratil do not care. As I write this, the debate continues and more amendments are being offered. The sausage mill continues to grind.

    From this taxpayer advocate’s perspective it is hard to see who is more irresponsible: the usurping Kansas Supreme Court that created the fiscal environment with the lawsuit that continues to fester over the entire state, Governor Sebelius who proposes nothing but controls through her legislative leadership allies Morris/Hensley everything, or left-wing Republicans and Democrats in the legislature. The house plan was increased with the Loyd-McKinney amendment but a more accurate name for this spending spree bill would begin with Governor Sebelius, add the four senate leaders, and then the two house members: Loyd/McKinney. Then the seven members of the black robed legislature/Supreme Court’s names should be included too. All these folks’ fingerprints dominate this spending spree bill.

    The scuttlebutt among some lobbyists is that there aren’t 21 votes in the senate to adopt any school finance bill. I don’t buy it. It looks like there are 21 votes to go on a spending spree that when fully implemented will place this state in such a deep financial hole that it will be decades before Kansans will see any sunlight. This is what Governor Sebelius’ father did when he was governor in Ohio for one term in the 1970’s and created that state’s debilitating income tax. Its deja vu all over again.

    The big lie is that gambling is a fiscal solution. It is only a solution if you think that the $323 million of spending from 2005 when combined with $660 million in additional spending (and assuming that the state doesn’t increase spending anywhere else, fat chance) can be funded by the gambling proponents most optimistic guess of $200 million in new money (that a gross not net figure). I guess this is called “Government Math.” Even an increase in state revenues of a couple of hundred million this year will not balance this spending spree.

    The government school establishment does not know how to spend this money fast enough. Full day kindergarten is already becoming universal statewide. Then the school districts will begin to expand their pre-kindergarten programs. They still will have truckloads of cash to spend.

    The size of the spending spree is demonstrated by the 2005-06 increase that if nothing were added, would increase state spending per pupil by $725 per FTE pupil statewide. That’s almost chump change when the spending in HB 2986 is added to the total. That should add roughly $1,500 more per pupil and assumes that local and federal spending is not increased—which is highly unlikely. That would take average spending from about $10,000 per pupil per year (or $200,000 for a classroom with 20 kids in it) to $12,000 per pupil (or $240,000 per classroom) a year.

    The legislature has been warned that financing HB 2986 would require draconian hikes in any one of the state’s major revenue sources: 22% hike in state personal income tax rates (taking us close to a max rate of 8 percent), more than doubling by over 21 mills in the statewide property tax, or at least a 38% hike in the state sales tax rate. What would be most likely is a combination of all three and perhaps adding some other excise tax hikes to the mix.

    Kansas’ already obscenely high tax rates would be made even higher. The departure of businesses and productive people will grow. The governor has a key supporter, Phil Ruffin, who is already a billionaire according to Forbes Magazine’s billionaire issue. To help fund this spending spree with slots/casino’s at his racetracks he would be able to move a good ways up the Forbes list into the multiple billionaire category. Forbes reports that Ruffin lives in Nevada where the sales tax is a fraction of Kansas; there is no statewide property or personal income taxes.

    The irony is that a large chunk of this new spending will not be used to raise the salaries of Kansas’ best public school teachers. The government school spending lobbies plan is to expand the number of employees (see the Augenblick and Myer report that is the basis for the court’s school finance edicts).

    This is a political play for more power. More employees means more union dues and that means more political power. Ultimately, the state grows and dependency upon government will grow. Kansas union leaders will soon be getting the same mid-six figure pay that national union heads like the National Education Association currently enjoy.

    This spending hike is a negative productivity plan since it will take more people to perform the same schooling that has occurred in the past. Don’t get me wrong; school employees will certainly get paid more. Superintendents will be able to trade in their Jaguars for Rolls-Royces (this is not hyperbole, there already is a superintendent driving her Jag). If teachers get 10 percent hikes principals will get a bigger percentage as will their bosses. More staff will be needed. Kansas will follow the build the government school bureaucracy model.

    If the Kansas City (MO) school lawsuit experience in the 1980’s was a tragedy that cost taxpayers a couple of billion the school spending debacle in 2006 should be called a farce. Except Kansas is larger so it will be a lot more expensive. All additional efforts to provide more performance and school accountability for state spending were removed on the house floor and the efforts to re-insert these provisions on the senate floor were terminated by the liberal senators.

    Since Kansas is already spending a higher percentage of its state budget for the public school establishment, the idea that taxpayers are short-changing any public school is absurd. Over 50 percent of the state’s $5.2 billion plus Gen. Fund budget already goes for public schools. When colleges are added in the figure is now approaching 70 percent. This new spending is likely to make the former figure close to 60 percent and the latter percentage around 75 percent.

    Since the efforts to stop the school finance lawsuits have largely been sidetracked in the legislature the future for Kansas enterprise is high in uncertainty, increasing risk, and more automatic tax hikes. There are enough state reserves due to the 2003 Bush tax cuts that have helped grow state revenues so that no tax hike (besides the automatic property tax appraisal/income tax inflation) will be necessary in this election year of 2006 but wait till after November.

    The property appraisal notices went out this month and Kansas property owners will be paying large increases. Again. This is now an annual event. One mill of the statewide property tax has now grown to over $30 million per year. In the 1990’s this figure was in the just over half this amount.

    None of the statewide property tax collections for schools show up in the state’s official revenue figures. I’ll let you do the math and multiply the $30 million by the 21.5 mill statewide mill levy and add this to a 2007 state budget that will soon be pushing $6 billion for the General Fund and blow by $12 billion for the All Funds budget (Medicaid costs are soaring at double digit rates too). In 2002 the state budget reached $10 billion for the first time.

    The fiscal decline of Kansas will lead to an overall decline for this state. We are a spending model for the rest of country: watch Kansas and do the opposite. Please feel free to forward this to anyone with an interest in the fiscal health of this state.

  • State of Kansas vs. Students

    Thank you to Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network, for this fine article.

    It would be a different matter if all this spending produced results. There is no reason to believe that increased spending on schools will do much to improve the lot of the average Kansas child. Sadly, this increased spending lets politicians, education bureaucrats, and school boards claim victory “for the children.” The needed reforms are put off for another year. Alan Rupe, have you no shame? Do you really believe you are doing the right thing for Kansas children, or are you only looking to earn a legal fee?

    Taxpayers have had to pay over millions to fund both the school districts suing the state for additional state spending, for the state’s defense of this lawsuit, and this does not include the costs for the judicial system. Instead of chasing ambulances it has now become much more remunerative for lawyers in Kansas to chase taxpayers. You as a taxpayer will have to pay a lot more in taxes due to this odious environment. Kansas is the economic loser as school district lawyers Alan Rupe and John Robb made their case for another statehouse spending spree March 5, 2006 in the Wichita Eagle.

    Kansas has been spending more per pupil in total tax funds for K-12 than all of the states in our region, more than the average in the entire United States, and does so with lower than average income. This is the 2004-05 data from the 2004-05 U.S. Statistical Abstract (chart 241, data is from 2002-03).

    StateAvg. $ per pupil
    Kansas$8,687
    U.S. average$8,428
    Colorado$8,010
    Missouri$7,674
    Nebraska$7,671
    Oklahoma$6,577


    This data does NOT include the almost $300 million increase in state spending last year, as well as additional federal, and local spending hikes that will increase this total government school spending. This increase is over $675 per pupil in state taxes alone.

    Now the school district lawyers prevaricate that this double-digit hike in state spending is somehow falling behind inflation. It would be a delirious day for Kansas workers if the average Kansas wage grew at the same rate that spending on public schools has grown last year or even since the last time school district lawyers won a lawsuit against the state for more spending in 1992. Kansans income already lags well below the national average. In 1992 the last year before Judge Bullock’s Mock decision state school spending was $1.028 billion. For 2006 state spending is $2.587 billion. This 152 percent increase in state public school spending far exceeds inflation.

    It is sad to see these school district lawyers claiming inadequate state funding when national survey’s show that Kansas not only spends more, but the state spending is among the highest percentage of all 50 states. When the school lawyers say, … “constitutionally suitable education..,” they should actually quote the Kansas Constitution which says in Article 6 Section 6(b), “The legislature shall make suitable provision for finance of the educational interests of the state.” The phrase “suitable education” is not used let alone defined in the Kansas Constitution. Sadly, the seven activist, left-wing judges on the Sebelius and Democrat dominated Kansas Supreme Court have ignored this clear sentence for some judicial legislating from the bench.

    The Supreme Court’s ludicrous 2005 school finance ruling that claims that a specific dollar amount of additional spending is some how contained in an un-named segment the Kansas Constitution has placed all Kansas government at risk. Article IV. Section 4 of the U.S. Constitution guarantees this state a republican form of government. These judges have put our republic in jeopardy with their usurpation in this case. Appropriation by appointed judicial fiat is abhorrent to this republican guarantee in the U.S. Constitution.

    The court’s spending edict has dramatically raised the risk and uncertainty of the fiscal and business climate in this state. This is hurting our state’s economy and will provide another reason for this state to be bypassed by business and growth. Jobs and income will lag even more as long as our appointed judicial oligarchy continues to reign over spending.

    The legislature must rein in this activist court, resume control over this state’s fiscal matters, and penalize school districts who are putting their lawsuits ahead of educational spending. If school districts lost $10 in state aid for every dollar spent on suing the state these lawsuits would cease. Ironically, the post audit report that these lawyers praise, would actually widen the disparity in state funding between the mid-sized school districts suing the state and the larger urban districts that are not. After this lawsuit ends another will be filed.

    The post audit report is based upon the dubious research of William Duncombe and John Yinger, two liberal New York professors who are also backing the school finance lawsuit in New York over that state’s supposedly “inadequate” public school funding. New York’s school spending is already among the highest level of all 50 states so higher is never enough there, or here. As long as the legal gravy train supporting these lawsuits continues to prosper, Kansans will suffer. Kansas high school and college graduates will receive their diplomas but many will not find jobs in this oligarchic, risky, and litigious environment of legal edicts that trash many of the principles of limited government that we fought a revolution over in 1776.

  • Report From the Kansas Statehouse, March 9, 2006

    Thank you to Karl Peterjohn, Kansas Taxpayers Network, for this report on happenings in Topeka.

    The Kansas senate surrendered their ability to rein the activist Sebelius and leftist dominated Kansas Supreme Court Thursday afternoon. A constitutional amendment to require senate confirmation of judges barely received a majority vote Thursday afternoon as a coalition of most senate Democrats and the Senate GOP leadership of Senate President Steve Morris and Vice President John Vratil succeeded in killing this constitutional amendment that needed a 2/3 or 27 votes to pass and move to the house.

    The odious nature of this defeat was that the proposal had 28 co-sponsors including Morris, Wysong, Barone and several others who voted against their own proposal. Fortunately, many senators had their reasons for voting for or against this measure in the journal so you can see why they voted the way they did. An effort to improve this constitutional amendment by eliminating the nominating commission failed during the debate on Wednesday on a 15-to-25 vote with the Democrats joining with the liberal Republicans to kill this amendment.

    The profile in pusillanimous pontification goes to Sen. Ruth Teichman who ended up passing on the bill. He equivocation “passing” serves as an effective “no” vote but allows her to state that she did not against reining in the court. The voters in her south central district need to know how weasily this behavior is on this crucial issue. Passing on difficult votes has become a common form of trying to hide their position in the Kansas senate in the last couple of years.

    In all likelihood, this looks like the senate won’t even bother to pass any other constitutional amendments to reassert their own fiscal authority or rein in the court during the rest of the 2006 session. Last summer the senate passed two constitutional amendments on almost party line, 30-to-9 votes last summer. The senators passed these provisions with some cynicism on the part of some of the senators voting yes with the full knowledge from the Democrats that there were not enough votes in the Kansas House Of Representatives to have anything reining in the courts get to the voters for a constitutional referendum vote.

    In sense, this is not surprising. Spending and spending measures are proliferating. Eminent domain reform and the Taxpayers Bill Of Rights are being throttled in committee, the government lobbyists are dominating the legislative process, and local units are likely to get more taxing authority in the form of additional sales taxes in the desire for “uniformity” that will help make the misnamed “streamline” sales tax more uniform during this year’s legislature.

    It is sad to hear that so much of the “leadership” agenda seems to be driven by liberals in both parties setting out their goals for growing Kansas government.

    By contrast, the Arizona, Florida, and Michigan legislatures are all looking at serious tax cutting legislation. Arizona is looking at $400 million in income and property tax cuts. In Topeka, the appraisal notices are going out this month and significant hikes in property that has not been improved are now being reported with double-digit percentage increases. Raising property taxes by the appraiser in an on-going process. The decline of Kansas continues.

    Two excellent quotes from the senate debate over reining in the court was Sen. Kay O’Connor’s point that only about 25% of Kansans are Democrats but the closed process in Kansas has given us a Supreme Court where 5-out-of-7 judges are registered Democrats. This is the Sebelius court. Sen. Susan Wagle pointed out that a “cloud” of uncertainty created by the court’s spending edicts hangs over this state.

    Sen. Terry Bruce pointed out that there are over 9,000 lawyers who get three votes on selecting the members who pick the three nominees for the Kansas Supreme Court. The other 2.7 million of us who are NOT lawyers only get our vote for governor. The governor selects four of the nine members of this commission that meets behind closed doors. Lawyers get to vote for one member in each congressional district that makes up four more members of this commission as well as the one member who is elected statewide. Lawyers make up 5 of the 9 members and in effect this branch is government by the lawyers, of the lawyers, and for the lawyers. Non lawyers in Kansas are officially second class citizens under this outrageous system.

  • Eminent domain testimony

    Thank you to John Todd for this testimony on this threat to liberty, and for traveling to Topeka to deliver it.

    To: Members of the House Federal and State Committee, March 6, 2006 hearing.
    Subject: Testimony in Support for the passage of House Concurrent Resolution No. 5025;
    conditional Support for the passage of House Concurrent Resolution No. 5040;
    and unconditional Support for the passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1616;
    all involving Eminent Domain reform.

    I am a real estate broker and land developer in Sedgwick County, and a Volunteer Coordinator for Americans For Prosperity, and a member of the Wichita Independent Business Association. I am not here to speak for these groups, but as a real estate practitioner and private citizen.

    You should not allow cities, counties and state agencies the power through eminent domain to force someone to involuntarily sell their home, their business, or their farm so they can give it to other private owners for their own private use. Under redevelopment law, city councils can essentially become the agent for the powerful, politically connected developers that tell city councils, “condemn this persons home, business, or farm, and through our development process, the tax revenue for the city will go up, and in the process you can look like visionaries.” (See attached testimony presented by Tim Sandefur, attorney for the “Pacific Legal Foundation” to a California legislative committee) Until the recent Kelo decision, the Fifth Amendment to our Constitution has allowed government to take private property for “public use” only, but now “public use” means anything a governmental unit decides will “benefit” the public, including increased tax revenues. That is why Steven Greenhut in his book, “Abuse of Power: How Government Misuses Eminent Domain” explains why cities in some parts of the country are taking non-taxed church properties through the eminent domain process and turning them over to tax-paying private developers in order to increase tax revenues. A chapter in his book entitled, “God Doesn’t Pay Taxes” explains that abuse in detail.

    “Government is instituted to protect property of every sort,” wrote James Madison, and for this reason, “that alone is a just government, which impartially secures to every man, whatever is his own.”

    Our opponents argue that eminent domain is used only as a last resort, and that it isn’t used very often. Tell that to the small business owner who now has local government involved in his business as an “unwanted” partner with no financial interest in the business demanding that he vacate the location he has spent a lifetime building up to a larger competitor. Is there really any amount of money that will satisfy the “just compensation” argument for such a forced involuntary move that it has taken this business owner decades to build?
    Another argument we hear is that eminent domain is a valuable tool for economic development. I believe just the opposite is true. Eminent domain abuse damages people’s faith in their own government, and people who are not secure in their own possessions cannot plan for their own future. A healthy economy is best achieved when individuals are free to use their own resources as they see fit. When government decides how the individual uses his property, the resultant system works poorly because it necessitates the use of coercion. The protection of private property rights is therefore essential to a healthy economy.

    Nobel Prize winning economists Milton Friedman says, “In an economically free society, the fundamental function of government is the protection of private property and the provision of a stable infrastructure for a voluntary exchange system. When a government fails to protect private property, takes property itself without full compensation, or establishes restrictions (and follows policies) that limit voluntary exchange, it violates the economic freedom of its citizens.”

    We need a Constitutional amendment in Kansas to protect private property rights from eminent domain abuse. I support the eminent domain reform contained in House Concurrent Resolution No. 5025, with conditional support for House Concurrent Resolution No. 5040. However, I believe you can best serve the citizens and property owners of this state by setting the goal for eminent domain reform higher through the passage of Senate Concurrent Resolution No. 1616. A poll commissioned by Americans For Prosperity shows that a resounding 90% of the Kansans polled favored eminent domain reform. I would ask you to give the people what they want!

  • The “Free” Kansas Lottery Proceeds

    An article titled “Nothing’s Free” by Russell Roberts, published in The Freeman: Ideas on Liberty
    http://www.fee.org/publications/the-freeman/article.asp?aid=4419 explains that even though we might be accustomed to thinking that the state’s proceeds from taxes like those on the Kansas Lottery are “free,” this is not at all the case. As Mr. Roberts explains:

    About 55 percent of the receipts go to prizes, 10 percent to expenses, and 35 percent to education or some similar unimpeachable cause. Because 35 percent goes to neither winners nor losers, the real cost of the lottery is that you win less often and the prizes are smaller than would be the case without a government monopoly. If government allowed competition or made gambling legal, people who like to gamble would have a higher chance of winning and there would be more money distributed to winners.

    So lottery-funded education is not free after all. Subsidizing education out of lottery proceeds punishes people who like to gamble. Those turn out on average to be people who are relatively poor with less education. Can you think of a more immoral solution for funding education than to take the money from those with the least education?

    (I checked the Kansas Lottery’s website. Our state’s figures are close to the figures Mr. Roberts gives: “In fiscal year 2005 (July 1, 2004 through June 30, 2005), the Kansas Lottery paid out 54 percent in prizes. The State Gaming Revenues Fund received 31 percent of ticket sales; cost of sales was 5 percent (which covers online vendor fees, telecommunications costs and instant ticket printing); 6 percent was transferred to retailer earnings and 4 percent covered administrative expenses (salaries, advertising, depreciation, professional services and other administrative expenses.)”)

    (By the way, for Kansas in fiscal year 2005, a year in which $65,400,000 was transferred to the state, a whopping $80,000 went to the Problem Gambling Grant Fund.)

    What’s ironic is that gamblers are worse off playing against the State of Kansas than the mob-run numbers rackets. As a letter-writer in the New York Times wrote: “They [organized crime] paid out about 85 percent of the amounts that were bet, retaining 15 percent or less for profits and expenses like payoffs.”

    If we want to let people gamble, let’s at least have a lottery where players have a decent chance of winning. From Mr. Roberts again: “Under a private, competitive lottery system, the prizes would be bigger and the odds of winning would be higher. It would be a better world than the one we now live in, where people in search of hope are forced to pay a 35 percent tax to finance the college education of mostly upper-class children.”

  • Kansas Families United for Public Education (KFUPE) on state aid to schools

    As of today (February 2, 2006), the website for Kansas Families United for Public Education (KFUPE) (located at http://fundourpublicschools.com) states, under the heading “The Crisis”: “State aid has failed to keep pace with inflation.”

    I was puzzled by this statement, as I thought we were spending more and more on education each year. So I decided to investigate.

    The Kansas State Department of Education has a table of recent education expenditures in Kansas. The data is located at http://www.ksde.org/leaf/data_warehouse/total_expenditures/d0Stateexp.pdf.

    Here is the table of spending data:

    Spending in Nominal Dollars
    Total SpendingPer Student
    SchoolFTE*StateFederalLocalTotalStateFederalLocalTotalTotal
    YearEnrollmentAidAidRevenueExpenditures**AidAidRevenueExpendituresIncrease
    1993-1994437,210.11,468,606,823137,260,1141,011,858,0242,617,724,9613,3593142,3145,9873.44
    1994-1995440,684.21,558,335,916140,485,2961,012,554,5702,711,375,7823,5363192,2986,1532.77
    1995-1996442,465.91,604,933,171150,316,6231,061,918,7932,817,168,5873,6273402,4006,3673.48
    1996-1997445,767.31,618,449,030181,533,3201,121,816,1832,921,798,5333,6314072,5176,5552.95
    1997-1998448,609.01,815,684,144189,120,4621,058,428,6633,063,233,2694,0474222,3596,8284.16
    1998-1999448,925.72,035,194,082202,565,7251,004,736,6393,242,496,4464,5334512,2387,2235.79
    1999-2000448,610.32,110,484,390220,780,3501,071,444,1323,402,708,8724,7044922,3887,5855.01
    2000-2001446,969.92,152,622,486261,038,1531,172,918,4803,586,579,1194,8165842,6248,0245.79
    2001-2002445,376.62,200,529,799310,104,6781,269,928,1133,780,562,5904,9416962,8518,4885.78
    2002-2003444,541.42,277,804,680340,728,6481,335,185,5463,953,718,8745,1247663,0048,8944.78
    2003-2004443,301.82,124,578,761376,908,1211,592,564,7284,094,051,6104,7938503,5939,2353.83
    2004-2005441,867.62,362,223,172398,667,0401,528,524,3314,289,414,5435,3469023,4599,7075.11

    Here is the Consumer Price Index for the relevant years:

    CPI
    (1982-84 = 100)
    YearCPIInflation
    1993144.5
    1994148.22.6%
    1995152.42.8%
    1996156.93.0%
    1997160.52.3%
    1998163.01.6%
    1999166.62.2%
    2000172.23.4%
    2001177.12.8%
    2002179.91.6%
    2003184.02.3%
    2004188.92.7%

    Applying some arithmetic to the figures in the spending table produces this table of inflation-adjusted spending:

    Spending Change Year to Year, Real Dollars
    Total SpendingPer Student
    SchoolFTE*StateFederalLocalTotalStateFederalLocalTotal
    YearEnrollmentAidAidRevenueExpenditures**AidAidRevenueExpenditures
    1993-1994
    1994-19950.8%3.5%-0.2%-2.4%1.0%2.6%-0.9%-3.2%0.2%
    1995-19960.4%0.2%4.0%2.0%1.0%-0.3%3.6%1.6%0.6%
    1996-19970.7%-2.1%17.3%2.6%0.7%-2.8%16.3%1.9%0.0%
    1997-19980.6%9.7%1.8%-7.8%2.5%9.0%1.4%-8.4%1.8%
    1998-19990.1%10.4%5.5%-6.5%4.2%10.3%5.2%-6.6%4.2%
    1999-2000-0.1%1.5%6.6%4.3%2.7%1.5%6.7%4.4%2.7%
    2000-2001-0.4%-1.3%14.4%5.9%2.0%-0.9%14.8%6.3%2.3%
    2001-2002-0.4%-0.6%15.5%5.3%2.5%-0.2%15.9%5.6%2.9%
    2002-2003-0.2%1.9%8.2%3.5%3.0%2.1%8.3%3.7%3.2%
    2003-2004-0.3%-8.8%8.2%16.6%1.2%-8.5%8.5%16.9%1.5%
    2004-2005-0.3%8.3%3.0%-6.5%2.1%8.6%3.4%-6.2%2.4%

    As you can see, there are some years, most notably 2000 to 2004, where the “State Aid” figures, adjusted for inflation, are mostly decreasing. The statement on the Kansas Families United for Public Education website, therefore, could be construed as true. But over the period 1994 to 2005, “State Aid” increased by 61%, while inflation increased by 41%. So to make that statement true, you have to be looking at only recent history.

    Also, to make that statement true, you have to be looking at only a small part of the total picture. “State Aid” is only part of the total source of funds that schools have. Schools also receive money from “Federal Aid” and “Local Revenue.” For 2004-2005, “State Aid” was 55% of the total spent on schools in Kansas, and for the period in the tables above, “State Aid” was 57.6% of total spending. When you consider the total amount spent, there is no year in which the increase in total spending was less than the rate of inflation for that year.

    Then, there is even the larger picture. In recent years the number of students in Kansas has been declining. This means that the total spent per student increases at a faster rate than total spending.

    Does it matter that “State Aid” might not be increasing as fast as total school spending? I don’t think the schoolchildren in Kansas can tell. But I should not make such a hasty conclusion. Given the mountain of regulations that public schools must comply with, there may be restrictions on how funds from certain sources may be spent, and those regulations might mean that the total available for schools to spend can’t be allocated optimally.

    But I think I can safely conclude this: when advocates for school spending make the case that “State aid has failed to keep pace with inflation,” we should examine the total picture.