21 April 2005

Governor Sebelius Signs Fiscal Year ’06 Budget
Governor releases statement with signing

TOPEKA – “Today I have signed into law SB225, the Fiscal Year 2006 Budget. This bill closely tracks the proposed budget I introduced in January, and I have exercised no line-item vetoes.

“With the exception of this year’s school finance legislation, the budget bill represents the third consecutive year that the Legislature has essentially agreed with the priorities I have laid out in my initial budget message.

“Kansas will end this fiscal year on June 30 with a projected $286.5 million balance. The state is currently on firm fiscal footing – a far different situation from the one I inherited in early 2003, when there was just $12 million in the bank. The past three budgets have made progress in to moving state finances back toward our goal of maintaining the prudent 7.5 percent ending balance that the Legislature first called for more than a decade ago.

“I commend the Legislature for working with me to restore fiscal order to state government. Unfortunately, we may well be at the high water mark of this restoration.

“The Fiscal Year 2006 budget, as passed, does largely mirror my initial numbers, but there is one major and highly disturbing revision. The Legislature has chosen to pay for a long overdue, Court-mandated increase in K-12 education funding by spending down the state’s reserve. Indeed, the $127 million reduction in this balance, to $169.6 million, almost exactly equals the estimates for growth in K-12 education spending.

“A single year’s reduction in the state’s ending balance, especially within a growing economy, might be justifiable, but the Legislature’s FY 2006 budget places Kansas back on the road to fiscal irresponsibility. The Legislature is knowingly spending far more than the revenues the state is receiving.

“With several new obligations to be met in 2007, our reserves will be depleted in just 14 months. All our hard-won gains over the past three years will have disappeared. This is a recipe for financial disaster.

“Although the constitutionality of the Legislature’s school finance plan will be decided by the Supreme Court in the weeks and months to come, I once again call upon lawmakers to provide for a consistent revenue stream to fund K-12 education. We simply must keep the state from revisiting its unhappy legacy of requiring painful cuts to avoid large deficits.”