The calendar on the wall is saying “day 67" and Friday is the last day for non-exempt committees to meet. You will remember we are authorized a 90 day legislative session. The week of March 23 will be spent on the house floor all day and sometimes into the evening debating all the myriad of bills that have passed out of committees.
After the floor debate a bill is; killed, passed as presented, or passed as amended. In the case of passed as amended the bill will return to the house of origin (senate) for their approval of our amendment. Typically if the amendment is not too significant they could concur and pass the legislation on to the Governor,
If either house thinks the amendments are too much or unclear of their intent we could have a conference committee appointed. This committee consists of the Chairman, vice-chairman and the ranking minority member from each chamber’s appropriate committee.
This small group of six represent each chamber and will make the compromise necessary to allow the bill to be approved by the respective body. This should make for an interesting week as my committee on commerce and labor did pass out the increase in state minimum wage (SB 160) authorization and we did add a couple of significant amendments.
We still have to present it on the floor of the house where I will get to debate the issue on behalf of the committee. I look forward to this opportunity as I have had many discussions about the pro and con of the state following the federal minimum wage guidelines. I will keep you posted.
Another issue we are currently dealing with in the same committee is whether or not to accept all or part of the Federal stimulus for additional money for our unemployment insurance (UI) fund. HB 2374 authorizes $68,970,143 to be sent to help us meet unemployment benefits requests.
Kansas is actually in pretty good shape with a surplus in the UI fund, currently around $600 million. We normally spend $3-$5 million a week to pay benefits, however we are currently paying out close to $15 million a week. You will recall a few years ago we gave the businesses about 300 million in tax savings when we decreases the amount of UI payments required. Businesses cut their UI expense from 40% to 100% based on their experience.
Our friends in Missouri currently are borrowing from the federal government to pay out their UI benefit. We are fortunate we have a much better UI financial picture than a majority of the states.
HB 2374 bill has just been introduced to us and there are several strings attached that we are investigating the wisdom of accepting the money. We would be required to change some policy that some do not think would be wise. We will see, I will keep you posted on this as well.
HB 2373 is the FY 2010 mega-budget bill and according to the Appropriations Committee Chairman the state has accepted all federal stimulus funds for Medicaid and public education as proposed by Governor Sebelius. This brings the total reductions in state spending to $260,000 less than FY 09 approved budget cuts (including those already passed in SB 23 which was our recission effort to reduce FY 09 budget deficits).
The reductions in state general fund spending is as follows:
General Government spending 9.9%
Poor and Disabled spending (SRS) is 4.2%
Public Safety spending 9.4%
Agriculture and Natural Resources, includes Department of Commerce 22.7%
Higher Education funding 3.5%
K-12 Education Spending by 0.6%
K-12 spending is reduced less than any other major area of the budget, in terms of state general fund spending. Total state spending for K-12 education continues to be $150,315,178 higher than state spending for education in FY 08 or 4.9%. All other major budgets are at a negative, or only slightly positive.
The Wichita School District, receives a $2,629,081 reduction off the Governor’s proposed increase under this bill, but receives $7,742,499 in new Title 1 spending under the stimulus program for a net increase of $5,113,368 greater than the Governor’s proposed increase. Title 1 money can only be spent for programs for the handicapped or special needs children. This additional money will allow reallocation of unrestricted funds within their budget.
I will get the budget numbers for all the school districts in my 75th legislative area later today and will post them on my website and include those figures in future updates. There is a proposed scenario that allows us to end the year with a positive cash balance, unfortunately there are several scenarios that allow us to end the year with a negative cash balance.
Lets all work together to see that our economy rebounds and consumer confidence returns. I consider it an honor and privilege to represent you in Topeka and I do want to know what you think. I can be contacted at work, 785-296-7655, john.grange@house.ks.gov, you can see previous updates at www.johngrange.net. Thanks, John.
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