Gov. Sam Brownback’s leadership of Kansas came to be synonymous with a single, unyielding philosophy: Cut taxes, cut the size of government, and the state will thrive.
But this week, Mr. Brownback’s deeply conservative state turned on him and his austere approach. Fed up with gaping budget shortfalls, inadequate education funding and insufficient revenue, the Republican-controlled Legislature capped months of turmoil by overriding the governor’s veto of a bill that would undo some of his tax cuts and raise $1.2 billion over two years.
.. “Email after email after email I get from constituents, say, ‘Please, let’s stop this experiment,’” she said.
.. First elected governor of Kansas seven years ago by a wide margin, Mr. Brownback wasted no time steering the Republican Party on a hard-right turn. In his first term, he helped push out moderate Republicans from the Legislature. Under his leadership, Kansas loosened restrictions on guns, made it harder for women to get abortions and passed some of the strictest voting laws in the country.
Most famously, he instituted the largest income tax cuts in Kansas history, a move that he promised would act “like a shot of adrenaline in the heart of the Kansas economy.”
.. In 2014, Kansans paid $700 million less in state taxes than the previous fiscal year
.. And in March, the Kansas Supreme Court found that the state’s spending on public education was unconstitutionally low
.. Democrats, like Senator Tom Holland, of Baldwin City, cheered the end of “Sam’s march to zero.”
.. [Kris Kobach] .. “Kansas does not have a taxation problem; it has a spending problem,”