Representative Vickrey, Assistant Majority Leader

Week Three January 28^th- February 1st

It’s week three of the legislative session and a lot of things are starting to get underway. Monday the House undertook Final Action for the first time this session, with the votes tallied on the new voting boards. This set the tone for the week that saw a new Attorney General sworn in, a bill introduced to facilitate a compromise on the Holcomb power plant, and an expanded gaming decision by the Shawnee Country District Court. With the start of the session behind us, the House Republicans are buckling down in anticipation of the work ahead. I’m Shanna Caldwell, a Washburn University student, that will be interning all session for Representative Vickrey. We will be working together to follow many of the issues that are important to all of us.

Four members of the House and Senate utility committees have proposed a bipartisan bill that was introduced in both chambers.  The bill, which will be debated simultaneously, works to set limits on carbon dioxide production and paves the way for a new coal powered plant to be built in SW Kansas.  Here is very brief overview of the measure:

• Requires increased energy efficiency in new state and public school buildings as well as in state vehicles.
• Prohibits construction or expansion of merchant, fossil-fuel burning electricity generating plants.
• A merchant power plant is defined as an electricity generating plant with a nameplate rating of at least 300 megawatts and which sells less than 50% of its output to retail customers or to “load serving entities.”
• Creates the Kansas Electric Generation, Transmission and Efficiency Study Commission to look at issues related to electric service in Kansas.
• Establishes CO2 emissions limitations for new electricity generation facilities using fossil fuels.
• Creates a mechanism for offsetting CO2 emissions that exceed the statutory limitation.
• Enacts the net metering and easy connection act.
• This deals with solar powered units that are interconnected with a retail electricity supplier.
• Customers will be billed for any electricity provided by the retail supplier in excess of the amount generated by the customer’s solar generation.
• Enacts regulatory requirements
• This would authorize the Secretary of Health and Environment to implement the federal Clean Air Act and would prohibit the Secretary, absent from statutory authority, from adopting rules and regulations under the Kansas Act that are more stringent than required by the federal act or rules and regulations authorized in that act.

Legislators are hopeful that the fine details of this bill will be worked out and that it will make it to the House floor for a vote in the next week or two.

The Kansas Health Policy Authority Board issued new health reform recommendations yesterday, January 30, 2008. There are twenty-one new points dealing with personal health care. Bills for these new points are now being drafted. This, as it stands, is a rather complex issue, but Representative Vickrey and I will be following this and keeping everybody informed of the progress being made.

More details have come out regarding the State budget that only emphasizes the urgency that is facing us this year.  House Appropriations Chair Sharon Schwartz put together a State General Fund Outlook for FY 2009.  The outlook reflects what many were expecting, that this will be a tight fiscal year.

Using the revised FY 2008 budget as a base and then adding 5% we have come up with a cap for FY 2009 expenditures.  This cap leaves us with $306.5 million additional dollars as compared with the FY 2008 budget.  However, this is before required expenditures such as: 

• The FY 09 school finance increase ($179.1 million)
• The human services caseload increase ($43.3 million)
• The KPERS non-school employer increase ($14.9 million)
• The KPERS bond payment increase ($10.0 million)
• The Regents deferred maintenance increase ($7.8 million)
• The estimated additional disaster assistance ($40 million). 
• There is a one time savings due to the adjustment of the FY 2008 state employee salary bonus of $19.4 million.  
• The total for mandated expenditures is $275.7 million. 

This leaves us with very little, just $30.8 million in discretionary spending.  If we include the State Employee Pay Plan Initiative ($35.6 million), the SGF will be at a negative $4.8 million.

This doesn’t take into account any other requested enhancements such as health care (KHPA recommendations), tax reductions, proposed K-12 funding and supplemental higher education requests.  The budget enhancement requests by state agencies total an increase of $397 million.

Unless we can find a way to get $397 million out of a negative $4.8 million we’re going to have to make some tough decisions this year.  The State debt, as of June 30, 2009, will be $3.85 billion.  This makes borrowing money to pay for projects irresponsible, unsustainable and a very poor representation of our constituency. 

The Governor’s budget relies on assumed gaming revenue to help make ends meet.   The gaming issue is far from resolved.  A court decision could come by the end of February.  However, this decision will just be a formality on the way to the Kansas Supreme Court.  It is hard to imagine that this money will materialize any time soon and anywhere close to the amounts in the Governor’s budget.  Even if the money from gaming does materialize, it would be inappropriate to use it to pay our debt service.  This should be a priority and should be funded first from a stable revenue source.