By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt officially announced Tuesday his run for Governor in 2022.
"I'm running for Governor because I believe our state can do better," Schmidt said. "I think our overarching goal has to be to foster a climate of opportunity in this state where, if people can dream it, they can do it. That means we have to reward entrepreneurship and hard work and we have to keep our eyes on that objective, always."
Schmidt says the state has to start with its own house.
"We have to have an efficient and effective state government, which means we have to go out and proactively find and fix problems, those things that don't work and fix them before they become crises like the unemployment compensation system has," Schmidt said. "It was neglected for a decade, then became a crisis when it was most needed, then left unfixed for nearly a year, losing hundreds of millions of tax dollars and at the same time, not providing the help to those Kansans who needed it the most."
Schmidt understands that government can't continue to grow unchecked.
"I think the objective has to be to slow the rate of growth of state government, to give a growing economy time to catch up," Schmidt said. "One of the untold stories is that, a decade ago, when I left the Legislature, the total state budget, all spending was about $15 billion. Over the last decade, that's grown by about a third, with the governor's budget this year at about $21 billion. That is an unsustainable rate of growth, particularly at the current, much slower rate of growth in our state economy. We have to reconcile those two numbers."
Schmidt spoke further about government growth and the role of an executive and also about education policy.
The full interview with him is below...