| Budget Cuts A Challenge At State Level |
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| Opinion | |||
| Written by Mark Parkinson | |||
| Wednesday, 17 June 2009 07:00 | |||
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I’ve had a lot of people that have asked me over the last month or two about how we’re going to go about cutting the budgets over the next few months, and it’s a real challenge. The challenge, as you know, is that our economy is really facing one of the most difficult times since the 1930s, and that means we have high unemployment rates, that means that many of you out there are concerned about your jobs, your health insurance, and all the things that we’re all worried about. It also means that state government receives less revenue. As we headed into the veto session this year we had to make about a billion dollars in cuts in a budget that is only $6.5 billion itself. We were able to pull everybody together and get that very difficult assignment accomplished, and I’m proud to say that we not only were able to balance the budget, we were able to do it without a tax increase, and we actually ended the legislative session early. Well, wouldn’t you know that right after the session ended we got some news in May that our revenue in May was over $100 million less than we thought it would be, and I will tell you that is a very bad report, a normally bad report would be 20 to 30 million dollars short we were over 100 million dollars short in May. So we’ve got some tough decisions ahead of us. Let me tell you what my approach will be as we make those decisions. The first is that we won’t panic. We will be calm, and we will make responsible budget cuts to the areas that can be cut. Now, there is a lot of panic out there, there’s a lot of fear out there and I’ve been around long enough and faced enough situations to know that decisions that you make when you are afraid or when you’re panicking are usually not good ones. We won’t panic. We will be responsible. I will consult with legislative leaders, with folks from Kansas all across the state with our leadership team and with our cabinet, and we will make responsible decisions. There are folks that are out there panicking right now that are saying that we should make very deep cuts right now. I think that would be a mistake. We have critical state services that are provided whether they’re our prisons, whether they’re folks that teach our kids, whether the people that take care of the disabled, all sorts of very important state programs that we need to give a chance to be funded at the best levels that they can before we cut. So, I will make the cuts when we need to, but I won’t make the cuts until we absolutely have to. Now, I know that all of this sounds like bad news, and it certainly is challenging news, but the good news is that there are things out there in the state that are happening that are quite good. We just broke ground on a new pharmacy school in Kansas, we just received news that a new wind turbine factory will be built in Hutchinson creating over 400 jobs, we’re starting to build new roads with the Recovery Act money, and the unemployment rate in Kansas, although its over 6 percent is much lower than in many other states. So, I know it’s a difficult time out there I know that all of us are concerned about our own jobs, about our friends’ jobs, about you know every one in our family. But let me assure you of this, we’ve been through rougher times before and we’ve come out, and as tough as times are right now I’m 100% sure that we will come out of these tough times and when we come out we’ll be better and stronger than we were before. — Mark Parkinson is the governor of Kansas.
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