Kansas House of Representatives - District 28

E-Mail, March 14, 2002

Yesterday was a difficult time for taxes dedicated to education, but I can tell you that your Johnson County delegation generally voted in favor of a sales tax dedicated to the K-12 and Regents budget. Here’s what happened. As you will recall, the chairman of the House Tax Committee, Rep. John Edmonds, is committed to reporting out of his committee no tax increases for anything. He is not so affectionately known as the tax "Terminator". Therefore, we need to find a bill germane to the issue of taxes and amend that bill to include am increased revenue source for education. Yesterday, we began a floor debate on House Bill 2265, a bill which would exempt from sales taxes all sales of hearing aid batteries and replacement parts so long as such sales are pursuant to a properly written prescription. Here was a tax bill which we could amend to include an educational funding mechanism. Rep. Bob Tomlinson (R.- Roeland Park) offered an amendment to House Bill 2265, which would increase state sales taxes from 4.9 to 5.5% with all incremental sales taxes generated dedicated to K-12 and the Regents institutions (colleges and community colleges). A motion was made to divide the amendment into it’s two parts,ie., (A) the tax increase, and (B) the dedication of such increase to schools. This measure would have generated $224M earmarked for education. After 2 hours of debate, the dedication part A of the amendment passed, however, the tax increase did not pass. By my count, all but three representatives from Johnson County supported this amendment. The vote on this amendment went down by a vote of 24/94. I certainly voted in favor of this amendment.

I had prepared an amendment which Rep. Bob Tomlinson had also anticipated, to offer the same amendment to House Bill 2265, with however, a two year sunset. Since Bob already had the floor, he carried this amendment. Our thought was that those representatives dedicated to defeating any tax increase, would see that this .6% increase in sales taxes for education during a period of only two years as an emergency education funding mechanism. Not so. This amendment went down 34/80. Again a large majority of Johnson County representatives voted in favor of this amendment, including myself.

Next, we ran an amendment of identical to the two-year sunset amendment, however we've reduced the sales tax increase from .6 to .3, ie., 4.9% to 5.2%. This would still raise $132M. I am sad to report that this amendment also failed on a vote of 29/86. I certainly supported the amendment as did a large majority of Johnson County representatives.

So, we were left with a tax bill concerning sales taxes on prescription hearing aid batteries, any incremental revenues on which were dedicated to schools, so we decided to put the poor thing out of it misery and killed it.

As you can see, the anti-tax increase for anything (especially education) prevails. I do not think the reality of the currently projected revenue shortfall of $680M (and it will climb to over $750M next week) has set yet. THIS IS GOING TO BE VERY BAD. But the impact of the shortfall has not manifested itself yet. We still have good roads, we rely upon law enforcement, our courts are open, we take our libraries and parks as a given. However, without an emergency funding for all State services, not only education, basic and essential State services will shut down. For example, in order to continue funding K-12 and the Regents on a hold-harmless basis so schools do not loose money (forget about the increase) we will not have the Kansas Highway Patrol. The KBI and it’s crime labs will shut down. Our courts will close. Libraries will not be function. The social services offered by SRS will no longer function. Road repair funding will cease and don’t even think about new road construction. Demand transfers to cities such as to Leawood to help fund parks will cease. It goes on and on.

I need your help. Now is the time for you to get busy too. I would ask you to e-mail and write all state senators and representatives on a daily basis urging even a 2 year increase in taxes for all elements of government, especially education. Ask all of your Kansas friend and family to do the same. EVERY DAY! You can get the e-mail addresses and mail addresses at:

House: http://www.accesskansas.org/legislative/houseroster/

Senate: http://www.kslegislature.org/senateroster/index.html

[just click on these addresses when you are on line and you will go there]

Today, we deal with sin taxes (tobacco and alcohol) , which are certainly a source of revenue, but are of questionable reliability and are things we really do not want to encourage as a matter of public policy. Nonetheless, such sin taxes will generate additional revenue and I will also support these too. Today probably will not involve gaming, such as slots at existing dog and horse tracks. These measures will show up at the gate next week.

Please foreword this e-mail to anyone you wish, and send me more e-mail addresses of Leawood constituents. This e-mail address book contains over 700 recipients, and is a free way to communicate with you. But, I am not a good typist, especially on a notebook at my floor desk between votes, so pardon the errors.

By the way, I now have a Web Site: http://www.kslegislature.org/house/doug_patterson/HOME.html

This address is too long, and I am going to fix that, but in the meantime, just click on the above to go into the page and then save it as a "Favorite" or as a "BookMark".

Respectfully,

Rep. Doug Patterson, District 28, Leawood

Paid for by the Committee to Elect Doug Patterson, Dave Imhoff, Treasurer