Guns, schools, taxes: How Kansas lawmakers could change your life in 2018
This is an election year, and campaigns for governor are already under way. Gov.
After that, the 2018 session begins in earnest. Here's five ways the Legislature and the governor could affect you and the people in your life this year.
1. Your taxes
Lawmakers raised income taxes last spring, overriding a veto from Brownback and rolling back much of the tax cuts he championed in 2012. The increase is expected to generate about
But the
Where lawmakers would turn for any added revenue isn't clear. Some Republican leaders have ruled out tax increases, however.
Bottom line: Your taxes could go up if lawmakers need significantly more funding for schools.
2. Your schools
The
The funding formula is complex and changes to funding levels at specific schools are hard to predict. All indications from the court are that funding cannot go down, however. Most predict funding will increase.
The
Some Republican lawmakers have said they want to pursue a constitutional amendment that could either stop the
Bottom line: Your child's or grandchild's school will probably get at least the same amount of money, and possibly more.
3. Your elderly parents and people you know with disabilities
The Brownback administration wants to overhaul the state's Medicaid program, called KanCare. Medicaid provides health insurance coverage to disabled and low-income people. It also pays for the care of low-income elderly people who are in nursing homes.
Launching the next version of KanCare, which officials call KanCare 2.0, will not require legislative action. But lawmakers could step in and place additional oversight requirements on the program, which has sparked complaints of problematic service and application backlogs.
Officials say the next version will include a work requirement they estimate will affect a few thousand out of the more than 400,000 people in the program. Pregnant women, people with disabilities, those in long-term care and those caring for children under six would be exempt.
The Brownback administration also says it wants to use KanCare 2.0 to increase access to community-based services that allow people to stay out of institutions.
Lawmakers supportive of Medicaid expansion will likely try again to gain approval for that. Expansion passed the Legislature in 2017, but was vetoed by Brownback. An attempt to override his veto failed.
Expansion would make more people eligible to join Medicaid. The federal government would pay for 90 percent of the additional costs, but opponents argue
Bottom line:
4. Your guns
Two bills already filed would affect what kind of gun accessories you can have and might cause you to keep a closer eye on your firearms.
House Bill 2442 would prohibit bump stocks and similar devices. Bump stocks can turn semi-automatic weapons effectively into automatic weapons. A shooter in an October mass shooting in
In the wake of the shooting, some members of
Another bill, House Bill 2443, would make unlawfully abandoning your firearm either a class C misdemeanor or a felony if someone is hurt or killed.
The bill comes after Rep.
Bottom line: Lawmakers could ban a gun accessory that allows weapons to fire automatically, and toughen penalties for leaving your weapon in a public place.
5. Your roads
For years,
While some transfers are typical, in recent years the Brownback administration relied more heavily on transfers to help stabilize the state budget.
After lawmakers passed tax increases into law last year, the budget has stabilized. But
Bottom line: Lawmakers want more money intended for highway projects to actually be used on highway projects.
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