Kansas lawmakers made progress balancing the budget for the current fiscal year before leaving Topeka, but there’s still a lot on their plates when when they return to the Statehouse in May. They're looking at tax increases to help erase budget deficits totaling around $1 billion by the middle of 2019.
Governor Sam Brownback says the work done during the first part of the session was a good opening discussion, but he admits there could be a lot of work ahead.
“When you’re dealing with tax policy, you’ll go through 100 iterations to come up with something that can get through the entire process,” says Brownback.
Lawmakers did approved a tax plan that would have rolled back much of the state's 2012 tax cuts to balance the budget, but Brownback vetoed it.
Legislative leaders have already decided to extend the session from the normal 90 days to 100.