The $2.3 billion property, sales, and income tax reduction bill is a five-year plan, but Topeka Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly announced on the KCUR radio show “Up To Date” that she would veto it because it would be too expensive and produce budgetary issues in the near future.
She said that a call for a special session of the Legislature to work on an alternative tax scheme would accompany the veto.
Kelly stated that after calling a special session of the Legislature to evaluate an alternative plan, discussion regarding significant tax reform would go back up at the statehouse.
She committed to presenting a new tax proposal for House and Senate members to consider in an interview with Steve Kraske on KCUR’s “Up To Date” news program.
“I have made it very clear from the get-go that I will veto any bill that came to me that would put Kansas in financial jeopardy. The bill the Legislature passed would do exactly that,” the Democratic governor stated. “There is absolutely no way that I would sign it. I’ll call the Legislature back into a special session to pass a good tax cut bill.”
Despite the current multibillion-dollar revenue excess, Kelly predicted that the flurry of tax-reduction laws voted by the 2024 Legislature will cause financial troubles for the state government within a few years.
She claimed that the proposals’ combined annual loss of more than $500 million would be unsupportable.
She warned that it might result in budgetary issues such to those experienced by Gov. Sam Brownback’s administration, which plunged the state into debt by sharply lowering the state income tax without correspondingly cutting spending.
“We do have enough money to do a very robust tax cut, just not as much as the Legislature proposed,” Kelly stated. “There’s no way in the world that I would put my signature on a bill that I think will take us back to those (Brownback) days of four-day school weeks, crumbling roads and bridges, a foster care system that was totally broken. I can’t do that. I promised the people of Kansas that I would fix things. I did and I’m not going to now break them.”
