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- Topeka Buzz: Tuesday, February 18
Topeka Buzz: Tuesday, February 18
Both the House and Senate appear to be moving faster than their ability to report on what they're doing. Polite minds might call this "disorderly."
Jason Anderson
February 18, 2025 • Estimated Reading Time: 11 minutes
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Daily Legislative Update 🐝
Tuesday, February 18, 2025
Below is today’s morning update on published activities in the Kansas Legislature.
Table of Contents
Top Stories of the Day
Republican Supermajority steamrolling begins
With only two days remaining before Turnaround Day (the deadline for each chamber to pass proposed bills if they are to be sent to the other chamber for a vote), the action in Topeka is getting a bit wily. Dozens of bills were thrust from Senate committees to the full Senate, leaving Democrats barely a moment to caucus and discuss them before they began being presented for floor votes.
The Republican supermajority is moving faster than the chambers’ ability to even document and publish their daily activities. For example, SB 75 (the private school voucher bill) was actually passed out of the Education committee last Thursday. As of this writing, there remains no published record of this actually taking place–and the rules of the committee explicitly block them from any recordings or transcripts of the committee’s activities (or any votes taken).
This information asymmetry1 is by design. It makes it harder for the press to cover activities in realtime, and it makes it harder for the minority party to participate and organize. Topeka Buzz will continue to do its best to seek out the most accurate information available, but be prepared for some turbulence in the days ahead.
Brownback redux: Vouchers + tax cuts = $1.4B
Assuming the proposed property tax reductions, mill rate adjustments, school voucher programs, and spending cap rules all pass as intended, Kansas will have solidly returned to the Brownback economic plan. We don’t yet see a return to 0% corporate tax rates, but only because of time constraints.
The net effect of these changes will be most severe in Johnson County, where outsized property values generate healthy operating budgets for the county’s schools and infrastructure. Thus far, school districts have been quiet as to the specific budget changes that would be needed in response, but we can make some reasonable projections:
SB 75 (school vouchers) doesn’t directly take money from schools, but it does aggressively deplete the general fund reserves. Without adjustments elsewhere to pay for the tax credits, this bill on its own would consume all of the rainy day fund by 2030 (~$1.4B in dispersed tax credits).
SB 35 (passed 38-2) eliminates $60M/year in property tax and shifts that expense to…the general fund. Estimate: $320M over 5 years.
HB 2011 reduces the state base property tax mill rate from 20 mills to 18.5 mills, which translates into $830M in reduced revenue over 5 years.
In total, these three proposals alone will cost over $2.5 billion over the next 5 years. But, not to worry: SB 103 would allow counties to pass…earnings taxes. And SCR 1612 will allow the legislature to sell bonds to fund deficits without voter approval.
All other things being equal, Kansas would run out of money just in time for the 2030 elections.
New BillBee resource: Committees
We’ve introduced another useful resource on BillBee: Committee monitoring! You can now quickly drill into any of the standing committees, review their leadership, and click directly into your email program to begin writing to the right person.
The chambers often substitute members, so the rosters of these committees aren’t always stable. We automatically retrieve the current published roster and update with new information as soon as that’s reflected.
Later this week, we’ll be adding the full committee members lists and begin adding published documents within each committee. Our hope is that this becomes an actively useful resource after Turnaround, when the progressing bills return to committees for further debate.
Bills and Resolutions
🐝 SR 1709: Commending Senator Moran's support for Kansas farmers.