THE UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
TUESDAY, JANUARY 17, 2012
GOVERNMENT
PAGE 7A
Brownback outlines reformations in speech
ADAM STRUNK
astrunk@kansan.com
Big changes are coming to Kansas. At least that's what Gov. Brownback had to say in his State of the State address Wednesday night.
Gov. Brownback outlined the elimination of income tax, reformation of the education funding formula and Medicaid reform in a 30-minute speech he made to the Kansas legislature.
"We're a state in transition from a high tax state to a low tax state," he said. "This state in transition will look less for what Washington can do for Kansas and more for what we can do for ourselves."
Flanked by Senate President Steven Morris, right, R-Hugeton, and House Speaker Michael O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback addresses the legislature during the annual State of the State address at the Statehouse in Topeka Wednesday.
What Kansans can do for themselves, Brownback asserted during his speech, is to slowly phase out the state income tax in order to draw more businesses to Kansas.
TAXES
Brownback proposed a 24 percent income tax cut for those making $30,000 or more per year, cutting their tax rate down to 4.9 percent. Under his plan, single Kansas residents making $15,000 or less would pay 3 percent in income taxes, a 14 percent income tax cut. He added that small businesses would, for the most part, pay no income tax.
Along with income tax cuts, Brownback said he would eliminate most income tax exemptions, making "fairer, flatter" tax system. This elimination would include income tax credits for those below the poverty level, as well as tax exemptions for charitable donations and college savings plans.
"Taxes are one area that we do control," he said. "When it comes
to taxes, we have some of the highest in the region."
ASSOCIATED PRESS
According to the U.S. Census Bureau, Kansans pay more taxes per capita than citizens in Missouri, Oklahoma and Nebraska. Kansas ranked thirtieth nationally in taxes paid per capita.
University economics professor Ronald Caldwell said lowering income taxes could be a positive for the Kansas economy.
"Do I think it would improve things? Yes, I think you would draw in more businesses and a higher skill work force," he said. "I know I looked at it when I came here."
Brownback's speech did not stop at lowering income taxes. The governor called on state legislature to dedicate this year's $100 million budget surplus to help lower income taxes. He also asked them to dedicate future surpluses, such as the $465 million surplus of his proposed 2013 budget, to eliminating income taxes in the future. Caldwell was much more skeptical about these plans.
"It's volatile right now to make permanent tax cuts on the basis of a one year change," he said.
Caldwell also didn't believe that eliminating the income tax and tax exemptions would draw enough businesses to increase property value revenue and offset the loss of funding that comes with eliminating the income tax.
To offset the cost of some of the proposed income tax cuts, Brownback's tax plan calls to make the temporary sales tax set to expire in July permanent, keeping state sales tax at 6.3 percent.
"Not to be cynical, but I think the point is to find a way to reduce spending," he said. "You decrease revenue, you decrease spending."
Caldwell said that a higher sales tax could shift the tax burden more to the working class.
"If you are raising sales tax to make up for things, yes, you are shifting things around," he said. He added the alternative of lowering spending to make up for the shortfall would also negatively affect those of lower income who receive many of the services the state provides.
While Brownback's tax plan would be ambitious, KU political science professor Burdett Loomis believes he would get some form of an income tax decrease passed.
"It is going to be very hard to resist the income tax cuts," he said. "A lot of moderate republicans support it. I don't think this is a defining issue."
EDUCATION
Brownback may face more contention with education. Some believe that state surplus money should not be spent on tax relief after the school funding cuts over the last decade.
"Before new corporate tax breaks are signed into law, excess state revenue should be used to restore funding to our schools first," Rep. Paul Davis said in the Democratic response to the Governor's speech.
Brownback continued to champion his proposed reworking of the school finance formula in the education portion of his speech. The new formula would preserve this year's level of state funding per student, but the plan would allow "unlimited local control of property taxes for the education process."
"It is past time to get education dollars out of the courtroom and into the classroom," he said.
The plan would also take 20 mills out each school district's mill levy and put the money — $20 for every $1,000 of appraised property value - into a fund to be redistributed to school districts with lower property tax evaluations per student. Brownback said that this would act as a mechanism to ensure that districts with lower property values do not fall behind those with much higher property values.
Loomis thought that the new system might be a hard sell.
"You are going to see lots of cities and school boards really wrigling here," he said. "They know if income taxes are cut, they are going to have to continue to raise
Also on Brownback's reform list is Medicaid. Brownback said the multiple offices that handled Medicaid for the state would be consolidated under the Department of Aging and Disability Services.
property taxes, which they don't want to do."
MEDICAID
He also hinted at a push to get more people on the disability list working.
"I propose Kansas be a national leader in helping the disabled find meaningful jobs," he said "With jobs providing an off ramp from
reduce our waiting list."
Medicaid, we will be able help those in need of services and
Any references to the Governor's social agenda were missing from the speech. Loomis said that the Governor might not have to support a social conservative agenda this session because a mostly conservative Kansas house of representatives would champion the agenda, which could include abortion restrictions and immigration laws, for him.
Brownback's speech ended on an optimistic note. "Together we will succeed for we must."
Edited by Christine Curtim
CHANGES TO LAWRENCE AREA INCLUDED IN PROPOSED BUDGET
If Gov. Brownback's proposed budget passes, it would increase state funding for the University of Kansas by $3.25 million or 2 percent. The University will now receive $141,161,000 from the state.
Making up the lion's share of the state funding increase is a $3 million Elite Professors initiative aimed at attracting high quality professors to the University.
Total funding for the University will likely decrease by 1.8 percent from
approximately $671 million to $659 million as outlined in the budget.
Other notable parts of Brownback's proposed budget for the Lawrence area include the restoration of state funding to the Lawrence SRS office as well as the partial restoration of the Kansas Arts Commission.
In the proposed budget, Brownback set aside $315,182 to be paid to the five SRS offices, including the Lawrence office, that the state had scheduled to close but continued "to operate under agreements with local governments and a private lessor."
The budget also proposes the combination of the previously abolished Kansas Arts Commission with the Kansas Film Commission to create Kansas Creative Industries Commission under the department of commerce.
The commission would receive $200,000 of funding. This funding how- ever is far from the nearly $700,000 the KAC received before Brownback decided to eliminate state funding for the commission last year.
RELIGION
Catholic church's internal legal system resolves disputes
ASSOCIATED PRESS
NEW YORK — Parents upset by the admission policy at a parochial school. Clergy and parishioners at odds over use of their building. A priest resisting a transfer to another parish.
It was once assumed that disagreements like these in the Roman Catholic Church would end one way: with the highest-ranking cleric getting the last word.
In one example cited by veteran canon lawyers, parishioners wanted to bar musical performances in their church that weren't liturgical. Their priest had been renting space to a local band. In another case, a nun filed a petition after a religious superior disclosed the nun's medical information to others — a potential violation of privacy. Regarding bishops' often contentious decisions to close parishes, the liberal reform group FutureChurch posts a guide on its website called "Canonical Appeals for Dummies" on seeking Vatican intervention to stay open.
In recent years, clergy and lay people in the United States have increasingly turned to the church's internal legal system to challenge a bishop's or pastor's decision about even the workaday issues in Catholic life, according to canon lawyers in academia, dioceses and in private practice. Sometimes, the challengers even win.
But that outcome is no longer a given as Catholics, emboldened following the clergy abuse scandals that erupted a decade ago this month, have sought another avenue of redress.
The reasons for the uptick are complex and reach back decades, involving changes in the church and broader society. Canon lawyers say the American concern for individual freedoms likely has played a role. So has the explosion of information on the Internet. But the change is also an unexpected consequence of the clergy molestation crisis, with
the scandal exerting an influence far beyond cases that directly involve abusers.
"The focus on canon law and penal procedures in the case of sexual misconduct has made people aware that the church has a law system, it can work and people can take advantage of it," said Michael Ritty, founder of Canon Law Professionals, a private practice in Feura Bush, N.Y. "For so long, especially in the United States, many of the lay people did not speak up and did not know how to speak up, and many people in the hierarchy did not know how to accept things when people did speak up. I think that is changing."
No one knows the exact number of formal petitions before tribunals or agencies at the Vatican, or before church officials in the U.S. or in any country. The cases are guarded by pontifical secrecy, which bars advocates, judges and other parties from revealing details of the proceedings.
Still, U.S. canon lawyers say they have seen more widespread use of church law to resolve disputes.
Edward Peters,
and professor
at Sacred Heart
Major Seminary
in Detroit, said
the increase in
canonical litigation
is "indisputable."
The Canon Law Society of America, a professional group for church lawyers, held a workshop
Edward Peters, a canon lawyer
"Most of us, when we were training, were preparing for marriage tribunals, marriage annulments," said Monsignor Patrick Lagges of Chicago, a canon lawyer for three decades who helped lead the canon law society workshop last year. "Now there's such a broad range of things. It's a much broader field."
Until recently, the only canon law most American Catholics knew related to annulments, church declarations that a marriage was never valid. (For years, the majority of annulment petitions to the Vatican have come from the United States.) The first complete code of canon law, published in 1917, was also the first to be translated from the Latin into English. Even then, the system remained obscure, considered the province of an educated clergy-elite who were fluent in Latin and could quote directly from centuries-old papal decrees.
PATRICK LAGGES Canon lawyer
The Second Vatican Council, the 1960s meetings that ushered in modernizing reforms, aimed to make canon law more accessible. A revised legal code was eventually
on the trend called "Hierarchical Recourse: Cant We All Just Get Along?" Ritty founded his private practice in 2000 to keep active after he retired and now employs three other canon lawyers. Abuse cases are a significant part of his work, along with marriage annulments, but Ritty also has many cases relating to everyday church issues, such
"Most of us, when we were training,were preparing for marriage annuilments. Now there's such a broad range of things."
as use of money.
issued in 1983 by Pope John Paul II that placed new emphasis on the rights and obligations of all Catholics, lay and clergy. "The Christian faithful can legitimately vindicate and defend the rights which they possess in the
Church in the competent ecclesiastical forum according to the norm of law" canon 221:1 says.
Yet, no flurry of canonical petitions followed.
A few prominent cases played out in public. The ex-wife of former Massachusetts Rep. Joseph P. Kennedy II, son of Robert F. Kennedy, wrote a book about her
Then, 10 years ago, a crisis unfolded that became the worst in U.S. church history.
The Boston Globe persuaded a Massachusetts judge to unseal documents that showed the Archdiocese of Boston kept clergy who had molested children in parishes without warning parents or police. The outrage that the news reports generated spread nationwide.
appeal to reverse the church decision to annul their marriage of a dozen years. The Vatican took about a decade to decide the case, but ruled in her favor. In the 1990s, some parishioners appealed Cardinal Joseph Bernardin's decision to close their Chicago church. They succeeded in a phase of the appeal, but the building was ultimately shut down. Still, the numbers of cases remained small.
Soon, every American bishop was pressured to disclose diocesan records on abusive clergy. In June, bealequered church leaders gathered in Dallas, trailed by more than 750 reporters, to adopt a new child protection policy and discipline plan for guilty priests.
ASSOCIATED PRESS
Suddenly, canon law was frontpage news.
In many cases, the church's internal legal system was the only recourse for church officials who wanted to remove clergy from public ministry or the priesthood. Most victims came forward decades after they had been molested, long after the statute of limitations for criminal prosecution in civil court had passed. So over several months, American bishops began a closely watched negotiation with Vatican officials over how they could change church law to streamline the removal of guilty priests. Canonical due process rights for clergy emerged as a key issue. In a public meeting that
Bishops spent hundreds of millions of dollars on child protection programs and more on settlements with victims. But the damage was done. Trust in the bishops' judgment plummeted. So, when bishops in some dioceses announced the next round of parish closures, part of a consolidation that started years ago, angry parishioners didn't only protest and pray. They also hired canon lawyers.
Rev. Patrick Lagges looks over canon law books written in Latin in Chicago. Lagges, a canon lawyer for three decades in the Catholic Church, helped lead the canon law society workshop last year. It was once assumed that disagreements between Roman Catholic clergy and lay people would end one way: with the highest-ranking cleric getting the last word. That outcome is no longer a given.
"We just Googled it and got some information about who was available," said Patricia Schulte-Singleton, a 52-year-old parishioner who has helped coordinate resistance to church closures, including her own St. Patrick Catholic Church, throughout the Diocese of Cleveland. They hired a nun who was a canonist in Rhode Island.
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