Tagged: Sam Brownback

On Friday, Republican leaders in the Kansas House there's little support in their chamber for Gov. Sam Brownback's proposal to raise additional sales tax revenue.

House Speaker Ray Merrick of Stilwell and Majority Leader Jene Vickrey of Louisberg said the measure proposed by Gov. Brownback does not seem viable.

Brownback wants to cancel a decrease in the sales tax scheduled for July. The 6.3% tax is set to drop to 5.7%. The governor would use that added revenue to stabilize the state budget, so that he could eliminate individual income taxes over the next four years.

Transcripts of interviews with a prosecutor’s office show that Kansas legislators didn’t know the state’s Open Meetings Act when they were questioned about private dinners with Governor Sam Brownback at his official residence.

The transcripts show that hardly any of the legislators had read the law.  Most reported receiving no formal training on how to avoid violating it.

Governor Sam Brownback touted the state’s fiscal health Wednesday during a press briefing at the Statehouse. Brownback announced that Kansas will pay off bonds early for a variety of projects. He says the state’s finances are now solid enough to handle a large income tax cut lawmakers approved last session.

“We will be in a solid fiscal position, and we’re going to do everything we can here to continue to reduce the cost of state government while protecting K-12, Medicaid, public safety,” Brownback said.

Of all the many lines in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” that are regularly quoted by us cartoonist and commentary types, the one that is probably most often used is spoken by Dorothy. Looking around in amazement at Munchkinland, she says, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

We’re in the throes of a kind of “March madness” that most likely will not be going away come April. It is a sort of madness that has a much more profound impact any than basketball game could ever have.

I’m talking about the kind of madness that could leave thousands of Kansas Medicaid recipients stuck in that crazy-making, Alice-in-Wonderland place of having to deal with for-profit companies who will make decisions about those folks’ health care.