By NICK GOSNELL
Hutch Post
HUTCHINSON, Kan. — There are those who argue that between funding for KPERS and the incentives promised to a mystery company in the APEX bill in the Kansas Legislature, that tax relief, even reducing the food sales tax, may not be affordable. Democrat Rep. Jason Probst disagrees.
"In my view, it can still absolutely happen," Probst said. "We have a good, healthy budget. We'll see, in April, additional revenue numbers come in, I think all indications are that those will be strong. We're sitting at close to $3 billion in excess revenue. The APEX issue hasn't been decided. From what I can gather, they are down there courting Oklahoma, trying to get a sweeter deal out of them."
It's not as if legislators can't make the decision on how to reprioritize if they want to, that's their function.
"If they have the will to do something, they can find a way," Probst said. "We've cut taxes before on the upper income brackets and corporations. We've done that without too much concern for the future of the budget. I think we can do that on the other end of the spectrum and provide some relief for food sales tax."
Everyone eats, which makes taxing food or not one of the biggest ways to have an effect on all pocketbooks.
"Food sales tax is something that hits every single person in the state," Probst said. "It's very broad based. I think it's been something we've talked about for a long time, but we haven't done it. I think, when we have this sort of flexibility in our budget, we owe it to people to do it. I think there's a conversation about where to do that, but we've tried the income tax thing on the upper brackets before. That didn't yield the results that we thought it would."
The concern, as always, is politics. Republicans may not want to give Gov. Laura Kelly the issue to potentially run on in the fall, even though Republican Derek Schmidt, here expected challenger, also supports the idea.