The Senate Ways and Means Committee this morning tentatively approved its rescission bill intended to solve the 2017 budget hole. They plan to move the bill out to the full Senate tomorrow. A vote on the floor is expected on Wednesday or more likely Thursday of this week.

The bill does not contain a 2% cut to education as was rumored. However, Senator Jim Denning (R-Overland Park) has indicated in press reports that he fully expects there to be an attempt to amend cuts into the bill once it gets to the floor for debate.

The House plan to get out of the 2017 mess created by the reckless Brownback tax cuts would delay a KPERS payment this year and not repay the lost payment from last year. In addition, it would borrow $317 million from the pooled money investment board (PMIB) and repay that loan over seven years.

The Senate version would repay the KPERS money taken from last year and take another $150 million this year to be paid back over 20 years. It would also borrow about $100 million from the PMIB instead of the full $317 million in the House plan.

Of course, any repayment plans depend on both chambers passing a comprehensive tax reform package that ends the Brownback experiment.

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House K-12 Budget Committee Begins Writing a Plan

Today the House education budget committee began to piece together ideas for a new school funding formula. In an interesting twist, Chairman Larry Campbell (R-Olathe) turned over the Committee to Rep. Clay Aurand (R-Belleville) to handle the discussion.

In the early discussions, it would appear that the new formula would be very similar to the old formula and based perhaps on the ideas in HB 2270 (the Rooker bill) and HB 2324 (the Trimmer bill). There was consensus that they would not use the census based at-risk funding proposal but might go with a blend of poverty and “direct certification” (students certified by DCF for services). There was no consensus on a non-proficient at-risk weighting.

Bilingual weighting was discussed and there seemed to be some interest in another blend – basing funding on contact hours with certified bilingual staff and an FTE headcount. On CTE weighting, there is significant interest in looking at actual costs of individual programs and funding them accordingly.

At the end of the meeting today, Aurand brought up one of his old ideas (one that has never passed). Ever since the Montoy decision, Aurand has been proposing that the state “take credit” for more funding by calling a large portion of locally raised LOB money “foundation funding” and requiring it to be levied. Aurand told the committee he wanted this proposal in the bill.

Discussion will continue tomorrow.