TABOR bill about to be considered by Kansas Legislature

I lifted this message from the Kansas Progressives list, in hopes that they don't mind my spreading it around....


Members and Friends of the Coalition for a Prosperous Kansas –

The Speaker of the House today removed HCR 5043, aka “TABOR Lite” or the

“Supermajority Bill” out of the Appropriations Committee and placed it

directly in the Committee of the Whole. For those of you less familiar with

the legislative process, this was a virtually unheard of move that will

allow the whole House of Representatives to vote on the bill even though it

did not have the votes to pass out of committee.

Most observers do not think that the bill will receive the 2/3 majority that

it needs as a constitutional amendment to pass. However, there will almost

surely be a recorded vote that will be used against legislators who don’t

support the measure during the primaries and general elections this summer

and fall.

For this reason it is VERY important that we all contact our representatives

and any other House members with whom we have a relationship to urge them to

vote against HCR 5043 and reassure them of our support for this position.

We anticipate that the bill will come up for debate tomorrow (Wednesday)

afternoon, but it could be at any time.

You can find your Kansas legislators using this tool: http://www.ku.edu/pri/ksdata/vote/

Reasons to Oppose HCR 5043

Under the Kansas Constitution, enactment of state legislation normally requires approval by a majority vote in each house of the legislature plus the governor’s signature. HCR 5043 would amend the Constitution to require a two-thirds supermajority vote of each house of the state legislature plus the governor’s signature in order to enact any bill that includes a tax increase.

Requiring a supermajority to enact tax increases would result in a number of unanticipated and unwanted consequences, including the following:

• A supermajority requirement would increase the power of a small minority of legislators. In years in which a tax increase is necessary to balance the budget – for example, because of a recession, natural disaster, or other unforeseen circumstance—a small number of Kansas legislators in either house (42 of 125 representatives, or 14 of 40 senators) could prevent the majority from enacting a balanced budget.

• A supermajority requirement would have its largest impact during economic downturns. Kansas is required to balance its budget each year. During a recession, when state budget deficits must be closed, the most evenhanded way to do so usually involves a mix of expenditure cuts and tax increases. Excluding revenue increases as a budget-balancing strategy would make the task of balancing the budget much more difficult, and would necessitate even larger service reductions than would otherwise be required.

• A supermajority amendment would increase uncertainty, and perhaps judicial intervention in state budget decisions. For instance, the dividing line between “tax” increases and “fee” increases is not always clear. The legislature might, for example, balance the budget with what it considered a fee increase not subject to the supermajority rule, only to have a judge disallow the fee increase because it is determined to be a tax that should have required a two-thirds majority – and thereby throw the budget out of balance mid-year.


• A supermajority amendment could make it difficult to finance transportation projects. In Kansas, most highway and other transportation projects are funded through the State Highway Fund , which in turn is funded largely by state gasoline taxes. Kansas gasoline tax rates are not indexed for inflation, but highway-construction costs inevitably rise over time. As a result, gasoline tax rates must be periodically increased just to keep up with construction costs.

• Kansas policymakers have historically shown great reluctance to raise state taxes, suggesting a supermajority requirement is quite unnecessary. Tax burdens relative to income in Kansas have changed little in the last 30 years. Like most other states, Kansas cut taxes in the late 1990s and raised them in the early 2000s, but it remains an average-tax state.

To defund help for those who need it.