Straight Talk from Rep. Knox

April 30, 2007

Wrapping up the 2007 Legislative Session.

Finishing the legislative session is often difficult. We spent four days last week and failed to find a way to please enough legislators to get anything agreed to on state spending. I personally find it hard to be enthusiastic about voting to spend another $500 million this year in the omnibus budget bill, though it includes many worthy items. I was enticed last week to support legislation appropriating deferred maintenance money for the regent’s schools when the House came up with a reasonable amount of money to spend and added in some help for our community colleges and technical schools.

For the last three years the state’s economy has been growing rapidly and revenue to state government has outpaced projections almost every quarter. We are seeing record income to the state and record increases in revenue, and yet we are outspending revenue. The budget we are attempting to pass, $12.5 billion, will be twenty percent higher than just two years ago and will spend $500 million more than is received. The required 7.5% ending balance will not be achieved and our massive state debt is not being paid down. Any down turn of the economy may well bring a catastrophe.

At the beginning of this session the Board of Regents added up close to a billion dollars that they wanted for “deferred maintenance.” Soon they reduced the figure to just over half a billion. However, the question should be asked. Who deferred work on these maintenance needs? It wasn’t the legislature. You must understand that the Board of Regents is basically another branch of state government. The legislature appropriates them money in a block grant. They spend that money as they choose. In the past, money was appropriated for “crumbling classrooms.” They spent that money as they chose, and they chose to spend much of that money on building new structures, rather than fixing the crumbling classrooms. Also, they have not planned ahead and budgeted their money for regular maintenance as any other organization must do. Our local public school districts budget their money and plan ahead, doing a great job of managing their available financial resources to care for their physical needs. Our community colleges do the same. In truth, the smaller state universities do a pretty good job of this also. It seems it is mainly the two large state universities that are abusing the system. They raise private money to build new facilities and neglect setting aside money for maintenance. This whole scheme seems to me to be yet another way to get more money from the state.

We have been making progress on other needed legislation. I’ll list here some information, which may be of interest, from other conference committee reports that we passed during wrap-up and will become law with the Governor’s signature:

SB 35 – If you are caught speeding in a zone with speed limits between 30 and 54 mph, and were traveling less that 6 mph over the limit, it will no longer go on your driving record.

SB 166 – A loop hole in the law has been closed. If you host 18 through 20 year olds, serving them alcohol, you will now be breaking the law and subject to severe penalties. It is, of course, already illegal for them to consume alcohol.

HB 2004 – This legislation will add some needed dollars for the support of the enterprise facilitation organizations in the state such as QUAD which is doing a great job in our area.

HB 2140 – Establishes English as the official language of the state of Kansas.

Thank you for the privilege of representing you in Topeka.