The House & Senate reached the first major deadline of the year Friday, the deadline for working bills in the house of origin. We’re off today and tomorrow to allow staff time to catch up with the bills worked last week and Wednesday we’ll start hearings in our House committees on Senate bills that have come over. Two bills of local interest will be heard in my Judiciary Committee this week. One would provide additional operating and capital improvement funds for the Kansas Law Enforcement Training Center near Yoder and the other would allow for the display and sale of Kansas wines during the State Fair.
Speaking of wine, the Senate has passed legislation that would allow patrons to leave restaurants with unfinished wine bottles provided they are properly sealed, an effort to reduce the temptation to finish off the rest of a bottle before driving home. And for those caught drinking and driving, the House has passed legislation beefing up the enforcement of ignition interlock installations on the cars of those convicted of drunk driving. The House and Senate have now both passed tougher sex offender crime legislation and both houses are poised to strengthen the criminal penalties for those who torture and kill domestic animals. With legislation passed by the House all those arrested for felony crimes will have DNA samples collected for the state and national crime databases. Our House Judiciary Committee will hold hearings this week on legislation dealing with terrorists and gang members. The Senate passed an anti-funeral picketing bill aimed at the infamous Fred Phelps and family and has also passed over to the House important pro-business reform legislation in the area of workers compensation and estate taxation.
The biggest news of last week was undoubtedly the announcement in the House of a proposed school finance plan that was introduced in the House Select Committee on School Finance on Thursday. The product of discussions between Republican and Democrat leaders in the House and Governor Sebelius, the plan calls for a multiyear increase in school funding in areas identified by the Court and the Legislative Division of Post Audit in its recently released cost study.
The 3-year plan calls for a total of about $500M in additional funds, with $175M coming on line this year. In addition, almost $222M in current state funding would be targeted to foundation-level spending, bringing the total amount of credited state funding to nearly $400M, or the amount suggested in the Post Audit study. The base plan calls for an increase in the base state aid per pupil of $50, an increase in at-risk weighting worth an additional $47M, a $30M increase in special education, an increase in funding for all non-low enrollment schools of a little over $14M, and a little over $22M toward a new density at-risk factor that addresses the unique needs of districts with a high density of students in the free lunch/at-risk category. Under the proposed plan, Hutchinson’s USD #308 would qualify for nearly $1M from this new funding category. Look for the number of qualifying districts to increase, however, as the bill is worked, which might reduce funding in this category to the 6 who qualify under the bill as introduced. Also, $500K would be available annually in bi-lingual teacher scholarships under the plan.
The base plan would also result in increased local option budget authority of nearly $20M plus nearly $13M more in supplemental state aid. Policy changes under the proposed plan include a more restrictive definition of vocational education with a higher weight to apply to those more expensive vocational programs that meet the new definition. Schools would enjoy more flexibility in their budgets provided the schools report accurately actual expenditure per category. There would be an increased level of state monitoring of schools found to be deficient in any area by the state, with affected schools being required to reallocate existing funds to address the areas of deficiency.
The question now becomes one of whether we can find sufficient existing resources to fund the plan, given the fact that the Governor and legislature have agreed that there will be no tax increases to fund schools this year. The House School Finance Committee, of which I am a member, will begin hearings on the plan Wednesday.
