Kansas Lawmaker Takes Shot at Supreme Court, Funding Schools
February 3, 2010
Last week, Kansas state Sen. Dick Kelsey bravely took a stand against funding schools, introducing a nonbinding resolution saying the Kansas Supreme Court should not get to tell lawmakers how much to spend on education and the schools should not be allowed to use taxpayer dollars to sue for more tax dollars. After introducing this meaningless resolution, how does Kelsey walk the Capitol with those grapefruits swinging between his legs?
Kelsey’s Senate Concurrent Resolution 1621 (read it after the jump) says he’s tired of courts telling him and his buddies that they need to adequately pay for education. Like the state of Kansas needs smarter kids. And who’s the Kansas Supreme Court to tell lawmakers what’s constitutional?
"It is wrong to use taxpayer money to sue the Legislature to get more taxpayer money," Kelsey told The Topeka Capital-Journal.
This scored Kelsey, a Goddard Republican running for the 4th district’s congressional seat, points with the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and Americans for Prosperity, who don’t like paying for things like education.
"I think it just shows a profound misunderstanding of the roles of the three branches of government," awesomely mustached Schools for Fair Funding attorney John Robb told The Pitch in a recent interview. Robb ticked off lawsuit after lawsuit in which taxpayers sued taxpayers, including the state suing itself to determine whether the lottery was legal.
"Taxpayers suing taxpayers happens every day," Robb said. "It’s how disputes are settled. And Sen. Kelsey apparently doesn’t like this one because of the topic of the lawsuit: school finance."
Robb said media coverage of the taxpayer-versus-taxpayer angle erroneously suggests "that this is somehow some unusual deal and school districts are to be vilified because they’re enforcing their constitutional rights. Well, it happens all the time. It’s what the court system does. They solve disputes."
The school finance case rested five years ago, when the Kansas Supreme Court ruled in favor of the school districts, agreeing that lawmakers weren’t fulfilling their constitutional obligation to fund education. The decisions directed hundreds of millions of dollars towards public schools and left lawmakers hrrumphing.
After the school-funding system was deemed unconstitutional, Robb said, the legislature "took several swings" at trying to fix it. "Their last attempt was Senate bill 549, which was a three-year plan to fix the system. And now what they’ve done is pulled back from the three-year plan."
Last year, Gov. Mark Parkinson and lawmakers hacked about $241 million from the schools’ budgets, blaming the recession for the cuts.
Robb said lawmakers aren’t trying to figure out what education really costs and then trying to pay for it accordingly. Instead, he said, "They’re simply looking at what the balance is in the checkbook and deciding, ‘Gosh, the checkbook’s empty. We must have the authority to cut back school funding.’ Well, they weren’t voluntary increases to begin with. The Constitution required the increases. So it’s not something we feel that they had carte blanche authority to cut back when they ran the checkbook into the ground."
When lawmakers passed the three-year plan, they knew they were going to be $426 million in the hole in 2009, Robb added.
"Their own projection showed that they were going to spend the state’s surplus and drive the checkbook into the ground within three years," Robb said. "Yet, instead of trying to raise the revenue to fund the system they came up with, they ran the thing into the ground and are now claiming poverty. That doesn’t make sense to me."
The slashing led the districts to again threaten legislation under the Schools for Fair Funding banner and request the state’s high court to reopen the school funding case.
Schools for Fair Funding is waiting on the Kansas Supreme Court to decide whether the finance case will be reopened. If not, then the coalition of school districts will file a new lawsuit.