TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) - Kansas legislators on Friday made an education funding plan more generous to programs for at-risk students after advancing a bill that would provide a modest amount of new revenue by closing a few tax exemptions.
A House committee tinkered with a bill that would phase in a $783 million increase in aid to public schools over five years. The increase would include an extra $21 million for programs for students at risk of failing, or $111 per student for the 2017-18 school year.
The committee hopes to vote on its entire plan Monday and send it to the House for debate. The measure responds to a Kansas Supreme Court ruling in March that the state’s education funding is inadequate and helping under-performing students is a key issue.
“This speaks to the heart of the challenge we were given by the court,” said moderate Republican Rep. Melissa Rooker, of Fairway.
The plan would set a new per-student formula for distributing state dollars among the state’s 286 local school districts. Kansas currently spends more than $4 billion a year on aid to its public schools.
The Supreme Court gave lawmakers until June 30 to pass a new school finance law.
Legislators have been debating proposals to roll back past income tax cuts championed by Republican Gov. Sam Brownback to close projected budget shortfalls totaling $887 million through June 2019. Some lawmakers are talking about raising other taxes to provide extra funding for schools.
The House gave first-round approval to a bill Friday that would raise about $115 million over two years by imposing the state’s 6.5 percent sales tax on a few services, including towing, security, pet boarding and non-residential cleaning. House members expected to take a final vote Monday to determine whether the measure goes to the Senate.
Kansas generally doesn’t impose its sales tax on services, and lawmakers have talked for several decades about rethinking that policy to raise new revenue. But past efforts have faltered - and even led to new exemptions - and House members had to include a promise in their latest bill to cut the sales tax on groceries to 5.5 percent in July 2020.
“In the short-term, it would help,” said House Majority Leader Don Hineman, a Dighton Republican.
Legislators have struggled to agree on a tax plan since Brownback vetoed a bill in February that would have raised income tax rates and eliminated an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners that he touts as a pro-growth policy. The Senate on Wednesday rejected a plan that would have raised income taxes to generate more than $1 billion over two years.
Democrats have argued that a plan must raise $1.4 billion or $1.5 billion over two years to provide additional funds for schools. GOP moderates had worked with them but some were rethinking the alliance after the failure of the income tax bill Wednesday.
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This story has been corrected to show that the House tax bill would cut sales tax on groceries to 5.5 percent, not 6.4 percent.
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