The Kansas House and Senate are coming close to passing the 2009 budget and are looking ahead to work on the budget for 2010.
The House passed its final version of the ‘09 budget last week, and the Senate is meeting early this week to finalize its version.
“The final version has not been reached, but the structure for a final budget is in place,” Sen. Jim Barnett said late last week. “There will be some teeth-grinding and positioning occur, but the budget will go through eventually, either this week or the next.”
Rep. Don Hill said he was pleased with the House version of the ‘09 budget, especially because it lowers cuts in K-12 education from 1.5 percent to 1 percent.
“That’s something we worked on and came to an agreement about that became part of the House budget,” Hill said. “I worked on an amendment that added about $16 million back into K-12, which will be easier for our school districts to manage, especially given the fact that we’re so late in the year and most of their expenditures are in the form of personnel that they’re committed to.”
Looking ahead to the 2010 budget, legislators will be watching how the federal stimulus package will work out.
“The unknown is such a big part of the picture,” Hill said. “Part of the unknown is we don’t know what the economy is going to do by the first of May. It could get significantly worse. The other unknown is just exactly what benefit we’re going to get from the stimulus package, and we’ve started to study what that might mean.”
Regardless how the federal stimulus works out, lawmakers are eager to get to work on next year’s budget.
“That’s the $1 billion gorilla we have to deal with,” Barnett said. “I’ve been looking in particular how the probable federal stimulus package will impact Medicaid, education and the highway program.”
Barnett said the stimulus package will have to be blended with further spending cuts and structural changes to the 2010 budget.
Hill is working on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee’s budget for 2010. The committee has 17 separate agency budgets to define, and Hill says the committee will be working hard on that this week and next week.
A bill to ban smoking statewide was moved out of its Senate committee last Tuesday. Sen. Barnett said the bill may come up for debate in the full Senate this week, although that has not been finalized. At the moment, the House is waiting to see what happens in the Senate regarding a statewide smoking ban.
The Lyon County sales tax will be heard in the Senate Tax Committee on Wednesday morning. Barnett has spoken to Senate leadership to try to bring the bill before the full Senate on Thursday.
Barnett also is working on a bill dealing with liability issues for automatic external defibrillators that are being placed throughout the community. A bill is being passed through the Senate to remove liability for the use of the devices.
“That way, someone can come along in a Good Samaritan fashion and help with an AED and not be liable for trying to help someone in need,” Barnett said.
Hill said his Aging and Long Term Care Committee is looking at state laws regarding financial abuse of senior citizens.
“We’ve got a vulnerable population that has been abused and we want to be sure that Kansas has laws that offer the best possible protection,” Hill said.