By Gene Meyer
December 15, 2009

(KansasReporter) TOPEKA, Kan. - Kansas budget cuts mean state highways will stay snowpacked longer and wear out faster, the state's transportation secretary, Deb Miller, told state Senate Ways and Means Committee members Tuesday.

Some $80 million in budget cuts since July, along with a recession-caused drop in motor-fuel and sales-tax revenues and related budget pressures have cost the Kansas Department of Transportation $229 million, or more than 28 percent of the fiscal 2010 funding officials expected last July 1, Miller told the panel.

Even with a partial freeze on new highway construction, the elimination of 160 KDOT jobs, a nearly 9 percent reduction in operating costs and other cost cutting, what's left won't cover an estimated $375 million of construction work needed to preserve Kansas roadways as they are now and even the costs of clearing ice and snow as much as taxpayers currently expect, she said.

Miller was one of 10 state executives or other officials who spoke to the Senate's top budget writing panel about some of the challenges that an estimated $5.3 billion in Kansas tax revenues this year will present to their departments.

Prospects for breaking what is expected to be an unprecedented string of four consecutive years of declining revenues appear slim, said Alan Conroy, director of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, which prepares the official economic projections used to make state budget calculations.

"A good deal of uncertainty remains for the Kansas economy," Conroy told panel members, adding that a recent study by the Federal Reserve indicates that Kansas, since at least 1956, has exited every recession later than the nation as a whole.

Kansas incomes fell 2.7 percent in 2009, but are projected to grow by a modest 0.7 percent in 2010 and 2.7 percent in 2011 despite an uncertain farm economy and volatile energy market, Conroy said.

Legislative researchers calculate that fiscal 2010 tax revenues will drop 5.9 percent below the year earlier, to $5.3 billion, and another 2.3 percent, to $5.179 billion in fiscal 2011, Conroy told legislators.

The reductions continue to ripple widely through Kansas state budgets. Falling tax revenues are on track to cut spending for elementary and secondary education, the state's largest single budget obigation, by 5.3 percent, or $170 million, from year ago levels, according to the research department's latest projections. Budget cuts that Gov. Mark Parkinson ordered in May and November, will drop per pupil support from local, state and federal sources by 2.87 percent, to $12,324, the legislative research report said.

The state's Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services cut its payroll by 400 out of about 5,000 workers following a $147.2 million, or 15.7 percent cut in its budget, in an attempt to minimize the impact on the clients its program serves, Don Jordan , the agency's secretary, told lawmakers.

"Unfortunately, the effect of some reductions could not be minimized," Jordan said.

About 2.000 Kansans with severe physical or mental impairments are finding it harder to get or keep help and another more than 4,500 will lose some access to community mental health centers and developmental disablity programs, he said.

Even comparatively small cuts can have big effects, said Jim Garner, the state's labor secretary. Much of the funding for the unemployment and job counseling programs run by the department comes from either the federal government or from fees paid by participants in its programs.

The Labor Department is losing about $73,000 in state money, however, he said. That will slow down some lesser known programs, such as a public employee relations panel that works to resolve disputes between government workers and their employers.

As for panel workers, "We'll probably just move them over to the unemployment (operations) side," Garner said. "There's a lot of work there."