Sam Brownback

On Friday, Republican leaders in the Kansas House there's little support in their chamber for Gov. Sam Brownback's proposal to raise additional sales tax revenue.

House Speaker Ray Merrick of Stilwell and Majority Leader Jene Vickrey of Louisberg said the measure proposed by Gov. Brownback does not seem viable.

Brownback wants to cancel a decrease in the sales tax scheduled for July. The 6.3% tax is set to drop to 5.7%. The governor would use that added revenue to stabilize the state budget, so that he could eliminate individual income taxes over the next four years.

Transcripts of interviews with a prosecutor’s office show that Kansas legislators didn’t know the state’s Open Meetings Act when they were questioned about private dinners with Governor Sam Brownback at his official residence.

The transcripts show that hardly any of the legislators had read the law.  Most reported receiving no formal training on how to avoid violating it.

Governor Sam Brownback touted the state’s fiscal health Wednesday during a press briefing at the Statehouse. Brownback announced that Kansas will pay off bonds early for a variety of projects. He says the state’s finances are now solid enough to handle a large income tax cut lawmakers approved last session.

“We will be in a solid fiscal position, and we’re going to do everything we can here to continue to reduce the cost of state government while protecting K-12, Medicaid, public safety,” Brownback said.

Of all the many lines in the movie “The Wizard of Oz” that are regularly quoted by us cartoonist and commentary types, the one that is probably most often used is spoken by Dorothy. Looking around in amazement at Munchkinland, she says, “Toto, I have a feeling we’re not in Kansas anymore!”

We’re in the throes of a kind of “March madness” that most likely will not be going away come April. It is a sort of madness that has a much more profound impact any than basketball game could ever have.

I’m talking about the kind of madness that could leave thousands of Kansas Medicaid recipients stuck in that crazy-making, Alice-in-Wonderland place of having to deal with for-profit companies who will make decisions about those folks’ health care.

It’s not always easy to figure out exactly what a prophet is telling us. Sometimes, we have to piece together their perplexing words and actions in order to understand their true intent, as the prophet instructs us on how to behave. So it is with the Prophet Samuel.

Samuel Brownback would, on the surface of things, seem to be contradicting himself a bit lately. But I think I’ve figured out his master plan for us Kansans. Perhaps it was revealed to him when he went to pray loudly and publicly, Pharisees-style, with Texas Governor Rick Perry.

If Governor Sam Brownback is really serious about attacking our state’s 492 million dollar deficit, why is he messing around with teensy little amounts like the $600,000 that the state will “save” by obliterating the Kansas Arts Commission?

It struck me that the best way I could respond to the Governor’s call for discontinuing all state funding of arts and music in Kansas is with a piece of music. So here goes:

Oh give me a home where we cut to the bone
All the arts funding here in our state
We see folks as heretics if they value aesthetics 
And the artwork that artists create

Who needs theater and ballet? Why should symphonies play?
Museums are a nuisance at best
Why expose kids to arts when we know in our hearts
Art and music are not on the test