By Mike Shields and Dave Ranney, KHI News Service, May 06, 2010
TOPEKA — The Kansas Senate today voted, 23-17, for a 1 cent increase in the state sales tax in order to close a projected $300 million budget hole. But an effort to increase cigarette taxes $1 per pack was roundly rejected.
After about four and half hours of debate on Senate Substitute for House Bill 2630, members approved a plan that would raise about $295 million more for general state spending, about $19 million for highways, and which would come close to covering either the budget approved Wednesday by the Senate or an alternate spending proposal still before the House.
Conservative Republicans tried to derail the tax plan, saying it would hinder economic recovery and punish the poor by increasing the cost of food, clothing and other goods. But Democrats, moderate Republicans and a couple of rural conservatives worried about potential cuts to schools coalesced around the bill, earning quick praise from Gov. Mark Parkinson, a Democrat, who has pushed for more taxes since the beginning of the legislative session.
"I was stirred by the honesty, sincerity and passion with which senators spoke," Parkinson said in a statement released moments after the vote. "These leaders stood up and protected those things which make our state great: quality schools, safe communities and a society that does not turn its back on those most in need."
Though conservatives failed to stop the bill, they nearly succeeded in adding an amendment that would have created a sales tax holiday for gun sales surrounding the July Fourth holiday.
That provision was offered by Sen. Terry Bruce, R-Hutchinson, and was narrowly approved. But a later motion to reconsider the gun holiday was made by Sen. Jean Schodorf, R-Wichita, and the amendment failed the second time it was voted upon.
Also rejected was an amendment from Sen. Mary Pilcher Cook, R-Shawnee, that would have taxed abortions.
Sen. Roger Reitz, R-Manhattan, offered an amendment to increase the current 79 cents-per-pack cigarette tax to $1.79 and to raise the tax on other tobacco products from 10 percent of wholesale price to 70 percent. But he found only two other senators among 40 willing to agree with him.
The tax bill earlier included the governor's proposal to increase the cigarette tax by 55 cents, but that provision was stripped out in committee before the bill came to the floor for debate.
Removed from the plan during floor debate was a provision that would have eliminated a business deduction for food processors, aircraft and other manufacturers. That decreased by $17 million the amount the bill would raise in new taxes.
And Sen. Bob Marshall, R-Fort Scott, got votes for an amendment exempting from the sales tax increase construction contracts signed before May 1. That took another $15 million from the bill.
An amendment sought by Democrats to increase the earned income tax credit to help compensate low income people for the burden of greater sales taxes was added to the bill. That also brought down the total amount of money the measure would raise for the treasury.
Meanwhile, the House still has yet to approve a budget or a tax plan after members on Tuesday turned down the budget favored by the chamber's GOP leadership, which has steadily held out against any tax increases.
Debate on an alternate House budget plan developed by a coalition of Democrats and mostly moderate Republicans was stopped shortly after 5:30 p.m. today to give members time to attend funeral services for Rep. Jene Vickery’s mother in Louisburg.
The House reconvenes at 9 a.m. Friday.
Much of that two-and-a-half-hour debate focused on conservative Republican members’ concerns over the coalition assembling its plan outside the committee process.
“These were not open meetings,” said Rep. Peggy Mast, R-Emporia. “We don’t know who helped write this bill, we don’t know where it came from.”
House Ways and Means Committee Chairman Kevin Yoder, R-Overland Park, also complained.
“Gutting four months’ worth of product right here on the House floor, we all know, is the wrong way to make policy,” Yoder said, referring to the attempt to do a wholesale rewrite of the leadership plan.
That rewrite, the so-called, "Feuerborn amendent,” offered by Rep. Bill Feuerborn of Garnett, the ranking Democrat on the Appropriations Committee, would add $86 million more for K-12 education than was included in the rejected House GOP leadership plan.
It also would add dollars for some social service programs and fund reopening the state prison in Stockton.
“For the last two years, there’s been an ongoing clash in the House that’s pitted a majority that’s in support of education, public safety and social services against a minority that favors smaller government regardless of its impact on everyday Kansans,” said Rep. Jim Ward, D-Topeka. “What you saw today was another round in that clash.”