NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Hutchinson Democrat State Rep. Jason Probst is glad to see new jobs in Kansas as a result of the announcement Wednesday of the new Panasonic battery plant in DeSoto, but it does show where the priorities of legislators lie, in a time when the state of Kansas is on as solid a fiscal footing as it has been in years.
"This investment is good," Probst said. "As we all know, this is the game we play. Incentives are part of the makeup. If you dig in and say, I'm not going to give incentives and I'm not going to be creative in the delivery of these incentives, then every other state is going to be and they will get the projects and Kansas will be a wasteland of disinvestment. We have to be honest about that. That's the game that's being played. My issue is, we never have money for programs that will help people. We don't have money for Medicaid expansion. We don't have money to pay for the full repeal of the food sales tax. We don't have money to invest in child care. We don't have money to put in people's pockets in the ways that will actually help them. We couldn't get this incentive package together fast enough for this company."
How flush is Kansas right now? Governor Kelly's office sent out a release touting that for the first time in 23 years, Kansas government ended the fiscal year without having to take out a short-term loan to cover expenses.
"We've had such steady and higher than normal tax collections over the past fiscal year that we didn't have to do what we normally do, which is say, we're going to loan ourselves money and we know that we're going to pay it back with tax revenue that comes in later in the year, we just don't have the money right now," Probst said. "That's pretty remarkable."
It's easy to say no to everything when government is broke, but deciding who gets what when you have money to spend is a real reflection of what representatives believe is important.
"We have been outpacing expectations on tax revenue, we had money to put in to a rainy day fund," Probst said. "We put a lot of money into KPERS to pay that, the liability down on that. We've had the money. Every budget is a reflection of priorities. If we prioritize people, we spend money on people. If we prioritize investment in private industry, then we spend money there. It's reflected every budget year and we make decisions about how to spend that money. If you ever want to know how the legislature feels about you as a person, go through the budget and see where they have made investments. That will tell you quite a bit."
New types of manufacturing and new jobs are good, but whether or not such incentives are the best way to spend government dollars, even in a good budget time for them, remains to be seen.