DALLAS - Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback announced about $72 million in spending cuts for fiscal year 2016 after new projections showed a deficit of $400 million in the upcoming budget.
Budget officials had expected the deficit to be about a fourth as large after an earlier round of budget adjustments.
The new outlook issued April 20 lowers projected tax collections by $187 million for the current and coming fiscal years. The previous forecast in November also lowered projections made in April 2014.
Forecasters reduced the estimate for total tax collections for the current fiscal year by nearly $88 million, or 1.5%, to about $5.7 billion. They also cut the tax estimate for the next fiscal year by nearly $100 million, or 1.7%, also making it almost $5.9 billion.
Kansas Legislative Research Department director Raney Gilliland said the latest forecast reflects a state economy that is growing more slowly than the national economy. Corporate income taxes, sales taxes and oil and natural gas severance taxes accounted for most of the reductions.
The legislature will return to Topeka on April 29 to take up adjustments in the budget, given the new numbers.
Brownback's office reported that lower debt service costs from a March bond pricing will help resolve the shortfall.
In January, Brownback proposed about $210 million in tax revenue increases, including large increases in the state liquor and cigarette taxes, to offset lost revenue from income tax cuts. Brownback favors heavier taxation on consumption to operate state government, which analysts say shifts more of the burden to lower income groups while lightening the load on the wealthy and middle class.
Duane Goosen, former Kansas director of the budget and now a senior fellow at the Kansas Center for Economic Growth, said that the theory that tax cuts would revive the Kansas economy is not proving true.
"If tax policy had been left alone three years ago, Kansas would now have enough income to fund the budget being considered," he wrote on his blog. "Instead, deep tax cuts have reduced the state's revenue stream far below the amount needed to responsibly fund education and other key programs."
