By Mike Shields, KHI News Service, March 11, 2010
TOPEKA — Members of the Senate subcommittee that writes budgets for the Kansas Health Policy Authority and the Kansas Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services completed their budget cutting work Wednesday.
But their hearts clearly weren't in it and the report they will submit to the full Ways and Means Committee calls for reconsideration of most of the spending reductions when lawmakers craft the session's final major budget bill sometime in the next few weeks.
The subcommittee includes some of the Legislature's strongest supporters of early childhood development programs, yet members agreed to $17 million in cuts to children's programs.
When the committee talked Tuesday about making those cuts, children's advocates quickly spread the word resulting in a flood of alarmed emails to legislators by Wednesday morning.
Some observers said they thought that was the point of the subcommittee's exercise, getting the word out to as many people as possible of the state's dire budget situation and the need to raise taxes, if popular state services aren't to wither or be eliminated entirely.
"I think what we've talked about in this subcommittee has really brought home the message," said Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-WIchita. "Organizations need to talk to their Chambers of Commerce and others who are opposed to tax increases."
Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat, and Senate GOP leaders have concluded that significant tax increases are a must after two years of budget cutting that reduced state spending by $1.3 billion. But House Republican leaders keep insisting the problem isn't too little taxes but too much spending.
This week the Senate budget committees have been crafting spending plans as if new revenues won't be coming.
In the subcommittee headed by Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, that meant axing General Assistance, an SRS program that helps some of the state's neediest and most distressed individuals, many of whom are mentally ill and homeless.
The subcommittee also produced a directive for the Children's Cabinet to come up with $17 million in cuts to children's programs.
It also recommended more cuts in state aid for community mental health programs and for those that serve the developmentally disabled.
Those who run the mental health system say it already is stretched to the breaking point from previous spending cuts. The state mental hospitals are overcrowded and understaffed and the community mental health centers are turning away those they consider least sick or putting them on waiting lists.
All told, McGinn's panel came up with more than $30 million in additional cuts to the SRS budget.
For the health policy authority, the subcommittee agreed to about $20 million in cuts, including a $200,000 subtraction from the agency's operating budget to be absorbed as salary reductions, layoffs or whatever options agency managers can find.
Included as part of the cuts meted the agency was an increase in the basic premium paid by families enrolled in HealthWave from $10 a month to $20. Agency officials said if that plan survives the Legislature's final budget work that would result in $1.4 million in savings for the state, mostly because of the 3,200 children expected to drop off the program rolls when their parents decide they can't pay the $20.
They also agreed to reducing the hospice program by almost $3 million, which would mean limiting dying, poor people to no more than 60 days of services. Agency officials reported about a third of the 3,300 program beneficiaries take more than 90 days to die.