Taxes a key topic at annual legislative forum

How Kansas legislators are spending their constituents’ tax money — and how the state is generating that money — were topics for the four legislators representing different parts of Jackson County at a legislative forum held Saturday at the Jackson County Courthouse.

About 40 area residents were present to hear updates from Kansas Reps. Francis Awerkamp, Ron Ellis and Randy Garber and Sen. Dennis Pyle during the forum, hosted by The Holton Recorder and lasting about an hour and 45 minutes. Local government officials were also on hand to add their input during the forum, which was heavily focused on tax policies but also touched on such topics as Medicaid expansion, prescription drugs and law enforcement.

Sen. Pyle, a Hiawatha resident who has served in the Kansas Senate since 2005, starting as a Republican but switching to independent to run in the 2022 gubernatorial election, opened the forum by stating his opposition to the recent tax package that included a “flat tax” endorsed by Republican lawmakers and was recently vetoed by Kansas Gov. Laura Kelly.

“When I saw this, I said, I can’t vote for it. It’s the same old, same old stuff,” Pyle said of the “flat tax,” which proposed eliminating the state’s progressive income tax in favor of a single rate that he said would result in “a big cut” for those in higher income tax brackets and “a little bitty cut” for middle-class earners.

That proposal, Pyle said, reminded him of the efforts of former Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback to eliminate the top tax bracket in what has since been referred to as “the great Kansas tax experiment” that many deemed a failure since it did not produce the economic prosperity that Brownback had intended through those efforts.

Pyle said the “flat tax” has been pushed by the American Legislative Exchange Council, a “private think tank” that has been trying to get such a tax implemented in 12 states and is currently led by Kansas Senate President Ty Masterson, who “worked close to Brownback” in the former governor’s efforts to eliminate the top tax bracket.

Instead, Pyle said he preferred to work with Gov. Kelly on a tax proposal that would increase the standard deduction on Kansas income tax forms and eliminate income taxes on Social Security disbursements while rejecting “top-down tax cuts.”

“Right now, the governor’s plan is the best plan,” Pyle said. “If you decide to give up here and go to a single rate, you’re going to have a far larger amount of money going to a lot smaller pool of people.”

Rep. Awerkamp, a St. Marys resident who has served Kansas District 61 in the Kansas House of Representatives since 2017, agreed with Pyle on the need to raise the standard deduction on income taxes and noted that Social Security income is not taxed unless it exceeds $75,000 in adjusted gross income, but criticized the state’s progressive income tax as having its origins in “Marxism.”

“We need to make a better tax bill,” Awerkamp said.

Awerkamp also stated his opposition to Kelly’s call for Medicare expansion in Kansas, echoing the likes of Masterson and House Speaker Dan Hawkins in stating that “I don’t believe that government should be in the health care industry” and providing low-cost medical services to “able-bodied adults who are on government welfare programs.”

Rep. Ellis, who has represented the 47th District in the House since 2017, said that as a member of the House Committee on Health, that committee will hear more testimony for and against Medicaid expansion in the state in the near future, but as far as he was concerned, what’s more important is getting people off the waiting list for Medicaid.

For more on this and other stories, please log in to your holtonrecorder.net account and select “Feb. 14, 2024” under “E-Editions.”