A little more than a month ago, I wrote about a scheme by Kansas legislative leaders to wrest budget- making power from Gov. Laura Kelly.
You might hope that they had second thoughts in recent weeks, but lawmakers meeting Wednesday gave no indication they had rethought the plan. If anything, they wanted Kansans to know they would not only start building the state’s budget earlier than ever before, but they would probably do a poor job of it as well.
“It’s gonna be probably a little rocky, but we’re gonna get through it, and we’re gonna learn,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins said.
And Kansans are supposed to support this?
Let’s back up just a moment. Traditionally, the Kansas budget process begins with the governor submitting recommendations in January. The House and Senate then build the final budget based on that document. Sometimes they follow it more closely than other times, but the governor has an entire department in the executive branch dedicated to building such documents and tracking cash flow.
Kelly, as you might have heard, is a Democrat. Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson are Republicans. They want more control of the budget process, so the Special Committee on Budget Process and Development has been looking at changes.
Republican leaders loudly proclaim their plans have nothing to do with political bias.
But Masterson said this back in August: “You’ll have a Republican governor, for example, or somebody you trust, and you trust the administration to build the budgets, and then you kind of rubber stamp stuff,” Masterson said. “And, then, you switch, and you have (the) opposition party and then there’s all that same power.”
On Wednesday, committee chairman Rep. Troy Waymaster, R-Bunker Hill, claimed that his unhappiness with the process began during the administration of former Republican Gov. Sam Brownback.
So why didn’t they take these steps back then? I think we all know know the answer, and it can be summarized in the little “D” that follows Kelly’s name on a ballot. As I have often written, Kelly has been ruthlessly disrespected by Republican leaders for both her terms as governor, continuing to advocate for good government while hopping over political landmines set on her path.
And yes, I acknowledge the Legislature holds ultimate budgetary authority. Governors — or presidents, for that matter — cannot pass bills. As chief executives, they execute the laws passed by the people’s representatives. Legislators have every right to throw Kelly’s proposed budget in the closest wastebasket and craft their own document from scratch. They haven’t been shy about making changes before.
All of which leads to the point I made in August and the point I make again today: This committee’s only apparent motive is stripping the governor of her prominent voice in budgeting. It envisions a process that could start before elections are held or new lawmakers sworn in, silencing voters.
Rep. Henry Helgerson, D-Eastborough, sounded the alarm: “The budget process should not be a partisan effort by one side or the other. It should be based on good public policy.”
Publicly predicting a “rocky” process and barreling ahead anyway sounds like the exact opposite. Perhaps Hawkins, Masterson and Waymaster should work out a smoother plan — one that they don’t describe as a learning process.
If we had seen example after example of misguided government spending and deficits as far as the eye could see, I might understand why lawmakers would push back against the governor. If we had seen schools and roads crumbling, a foster care system in crisis and riots in prisons, I might understand the need for better oversight.
But the last chief executive to leave us with those dire outcomes was Brownback, who stuck with his misguided tax “experiment” until the bitterest of bitter ends.
He was a Republican, though. That’s apparently all that matters these days.
Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor.
