Those shortfalls arose after the steep tax cuts of 1998 and rapid growth in spending since 1995 caught up with Kansas. To make ends meet, state officials diverted federal welfare money to foster care, used tobacco settlement money to wire schools with computers and shifted money from idle accounts and the state's pension fund. That year-end balance is 8.9 percent of expenditures, much higher than the national average of 6.2 percent. Goossen, too, expects the state's budget to grow over the next year. Still, he knows it isn't growing large enough to cover all the programs lawmakers want to see funded, particularly in education.
Legislators expect school finance to be next year's biggest issue.
Since the revenue pot isn't big enough to fund that request, the Legislature may have to shift money from some schools to benefit others or consolidate districts. At this point, raising taxes to pay for schools appears unlikely. Kansas lawmakers could avoid that hit by rewriting the tax law so it is no longer tied to the federal tax code, said Verenda Smith, spokeswoman for the Federation of Tax Administrators. But a discussion on what to do has yet to take place, Goossen said, as Bush's tax plan and its chances of passing are far from being finalized. Lori Lessner covers the Kansas congressional delegation.