Before last year’s legislative session, any talk about a flat tax in Kansas went exactly nowhere. Instead, a flat tax bill made its way to the Governor’s desk, where it was vetoed; attempts to override the veto fell short by a couple of votes. Votes seemingly motivated more out of political spite than substantive policy. A flat tax proposal is likely to return for the 2024 legislative session, so taking a look at Iowa’s own flat tax reform journey in 2022 illustrates much about what Kansas can expect from the legislation. Iowa joined several other states – many economically, demographically, a ..read more

Kansas House Democrats are proposing a constitutional amendment that would shift $308 million in property taxes from homeowners to all other classes of property, resulting in a statewide average 11% increase on motor vehicles, farms, and all other businesses.  It may sound tempting to homeowners writing bigger property tax checks to have some of the burden shifted to business property, but it would have a very negative impact on the state’s economy. Rep. Vic Miller (D-Topeka) House Minority Leader Vic Miller (D-Topeka), speaking on behalf of his caucus, is proposing a constitutional amen ..read more

Reforming regulations is something easy to talk about on a macro level: most people would agree that removing obsolete, obtuse, or obstructive rules should be a goal of government. However, the conversation often ends with questions like “So where do we start?” Regulatory reform shouldn’t be a slash-and-burn across Kansas’s thousands of regulations. It may be cathartic to talk like that and it certainly sounds good on the stump. But any realistic effort of regulatory reform will be a methodical approach to consistently review, question, revise, or even revoke so much of the Kansas code. Kansas ..read more

Nestor Weigand was one of the most-gracious men I’ve had the privilege to meet, let alone interact with. KPI lost a trustee and dear friend with his passing last week. It would have been easy for someone of his standing in life to be aloof. To have known Nestor was to experience firsthand how that couldn’t have been further from the truth. Even still, it wasn’t just me or my colleagues at Kansas Policy Institute who felt this graciousness. Arguably, as a long-time KPI trustee, he had an incentive to treat our team well. His warmth and charm extended to everyone with whom I saw him interact. Ev ..read more

In February of this year, Integra Technologies – a Wichita-based semiconductor producer – announced the development of a new facility in Bel Aire, Kansas. The megaproject is the second in Kansas’s much-ballyhooed APEX program that initially provided $1.27 billion for a new Panasonic facility in Desoto. But just like the Panasonic project, there are serious concerns about the economic return and transparency in giving billions of taxpayer dollars to a private company. While the Panasonic deal has gotten much of the publicity the “APEX” subsidy itself was never a one-time deal. It created an ent ..read more

Kansas is middle in the pack of the Tax Foundation’s recently released State Business Tax Climate Index rankings of all 50 states in the country. Based on measures such as corporate and individual income tax, sales tax, and property tax, Kansas ranked #26 for how well the state’s tax structure stands to promote long-term growth. Combined with a continuing malaise of job growth, Kansas should start thinking bigger about how to restructure its own tax climate to better promote economic growth. Compared to the 2023 State Business Tax Climate Index, Kansas slipped down one spot from #25 to #26. T ..read more

Legislative Post Audit (LPA) just released their latest research on public education funding entitled Estimating the Cost of K-12 Education. The audit is pursuant to legislation that requires LPA to conduct a study to determine the cost “to educate all students to meet performance outcome standards set by the Board of Education.” (p. 2) This effort is completely misguided because it incorrectly assumes that there is an identifiable, if only estimated, amount of funding/spending necessary to achieve that goal. There are two underlying issues that question the value of the study: If anything wa ..read more

Listings for school payrolls equaling $2.3 billion across 33 districts are available on KansasOpenGov.org, including 1,269 employees who made more than $100,000. Similar information is available for six community colleges in the state as well. The gross pay in the school payrolls represents an employee’s salary, overtime, and other pay, but not benefits. Numerous school districts had high increases in total pay this year despite having fewer employees. Gardner-Edgerton had a 12% increase, but 2% fewer employees. Similarly, Topeka’s gross pay went up 10% with an increase in the number of total ..read more

Minorities and low-income students are falling further behind despite Kansas taxpayers giving school districts $3.8 billion in at-risk funding since 2015 to improve outcomes and close achievement gaps on the state assessment. At the same time, many school districts implemented diversity, equity, and inclusion (DEI) training, theoretically, to improve minority outcomes and close achievement gaps.  Sadly, those gaps also expanded. There are four levels of state assessment scores.  Level 1 is below grade level, Level 2 is at grade level but needs remedial training, and Levels 3 and 4 ar ..read more

Kansas Commissioner of Education Randy Watson, thinks that low test scores are cause for celebration. They say truth is stranger than fiction. But sometimes truth is spun into fiction. Take state education commissioner Randy Watson’s presentation of 2023 state assessment results at the October state board of education meeting last week. Watson gave an animated, however short, summary of the state assessment test scores which Kansas students took last spring. The commissioner imparted results that should be of serious concern and twisted them into a cause for celebration. Watson’s brief address ..read more