May 15, 2012

D.C. politics come to roost in Kansas

According to the Merriam-Webster dictionary, the definition of reckless is "marked by lack of proper caution: careless of consequences." Synonyms include irresponsible, kamikaze and foolhardy.

It's now official, reckless is among the many ways to describe the actions of politicians at this year's legislative session. House Republicans, led by Speaker Mike O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, passed the Senate's tax cut package that would leave an estimated $2 billion hole in the state's budget by 2017.

In case you don't remember, back in late March, the Senate had voted down this tax cut package (20-20), but at the behest of the governor's office, came back later that day to pass it. This legislative maneuver enabled a conference committee to reconcile the House and Senate's tax cut proposals. On Wednesday, in the middle of the Senate's debate on the compromise House-Senate conference committee report, (a bill that would leave a smaller hole in the state's budget), O'Neal and Governor Sam Brownback decided to push for passage the Senate's original tax cut bill passed in March, which the speaker's conservative House Republicans allies quickly did.

Brownback now has promised to sign this larger tax cut measure, effectively stabbing Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, in the back. This is a classic tit-for-tat reprisal. Brownback and O'Neal feel Morris did not fulfill his promise to redraw three state Senate district boundaries to include announced conservative challengers to incumbent moderate Republican senators.

It's now time for everyone to take a chill pill. This is not a game. A $2 billion budgetary hole can only be filled by cutting almost every state agency and program, including highways, the state highway patrol, the KBI, state prisons, health care programs and -- the largest budget item -- education. This is on top of the last four years of budget cuts.

Now, I could go on to discuss the impact of these budget cuts, but let me instead propose a compromise for salvaging this legislative session and breaking the logjam.

First, Morris will shelve his state Senate map that gerrymanders conservative challengers out of the districts of his moderate Republican allies. Although one can certainly understand his frustration with the governor and speaker, who are openly plotting his political demise, his Senate map is egregiously gerrymandered and thus from the standpoint of democratic representation, seriously flawed.

Second, Brownback and O'Neal will use their influence to call off the conservative groups planning to pour thousands of dollars into Republican senatorial primary contests this summer.

There is nothing wrong with a fair political fight, where candidates with different ideas of the role of government present their cases to Republican primary voters.

However, with hundreds of thousands of dollars waiting to be spent by the governor's conservative allies, it turns these primary contests into unfair political battles, where the ideas from the most conservative side of this debate drowning out the right of center point of view. These are Washington, D.C., political warfare tactics come to roost in Kansas. Let there be a true battle of ideas and then let the Republican primary voters decide.

I realize that my prescription will fall of deaf ears. The governor and speaker are convinced that pointing this loaded political gun at the Senate president will make him and his Senate colleagues succumb to their wishes. However, playing this type of game with so much on the line represents a form of political gamesmanship this state has never seen.

This is also Washington, D.C., politics come to roost in Kansas. This is a political development that is bad for all of us.

Joseph A. Aistrup is a professor of political science at Kansas State University.

Bad bill

Brownback, O'Neal manage to pass potentially devastating tax-cut package

Hutch News

Despite the moderate leadership in the Senate that has been about the only road block to their vision of a new, austere Kansas, House Speaker Mike O'Neal and Gov. Sam Brownback scored a big victory this week.

O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, on Wednesday speedily rammed through his chamber an aggressive tax-cut plan, he and Brownback successfully outfoxing moderates in the Senate. It is a tax plan that is likely to have far-reaching consequences, shifting tax burden from the wealthy to the poor and setting the stage for deep cuts in education and other state spending.

The House, on a 64-59 vote, approved the bill, which will cut income and sales taxes by an estimated $3.8 billion over five years.

It was the same plan passed earlier in the Senate, at Brownback's urging, but only to advance debate on the subject and seek a House-Senate compromise plan.

Senators were debating that very compromise, a less-aggressive proposal coming out of a House-Senate conference committee that would have phased in income tax cuts. With that debate in progress and the prospect of the Senate not having support for any tax cut at all this session, O'Neal cut off debate in the House and forced a quick vote on the original plan.

Credit O'Neal for his procedural smarts though not for statesmanship. Meanwhile, many senators have cause to consider Brownback a double-crosser for saying he wanted a more responsible tax-cut package but in the end grabbing his bigger prize.

The bill cuts individual income tax rates, dropping the top rate to 4.9 percent from 6.45 percent. It eliminates income taxes for 191,000 partnerships, sole proprietorships and other businesses. It increases the standard deduction for all individual filers but ends some tax credits and deductions, including the food sales tax rebate for low-income families. It also drops the sales tax to 5.7 percent in July 2013, from 6.3 percent now.

The tax cut is projected to open up a $270 million hole in the state budget in 2014 that would grow to a $2.7 billion deficit by 2017.

Brownback and O'Neal are convinced the tax cut will stimulate job creation. That relies on flawed supply-side economics and assumes Kansas isn't already growing, which it is.

Instead, what this tax package mainly does is cut taxes for businesses and wealthy tax-filers and effectively increases taxes on the poorest Kansans.

In the case of business owners who live out of state, Kansas taxes simply will flow to other states.

And you can bet local property taxes will increase.

Meanwhile, schools and social service agencies that serve the disabled and the aged are likely to face draconian budget cuts - on top of what they have suffered in recent years.

It is bad, irresponsible legislation, achieved in underhanded fashion. If this tax plan is left to stand and is signed into law by Brownback, this isn't a good time for Kansas.

Tax-cut bill puts education at risk

Wichita Eagle

The following commentary was submitted by school superintendents John Allison, Wichita; John Burke, Haysville; Randal Chickadonz, Rose Hill; Mark A. Evans, Andover; Sue Givens, El Dorado; Justin Henry, Goddard; Jim Keller, Circle; Doug Powers, Maize; Brad Rahe, Mulvane; Mike Roth, Clearwater; Scott Springston, Valley Center; and Craig Wilford, Derby:

The Kansas Legislature’s approval of a tax-reduction bill that will plunge the state general fund into the red beginning in 2014 could critically damage public education in Kansas. If Gov. Sam Brownback signs H.B. 2117 into law, local school districts will need to start planning immediately for huge reductions in state aid.

This isn’t just a challenge for local school boards and school faculty. This is a challenge for our entire community.

Public education is the foundation of our local economy. It generates the quality workforce that is essential to our prosperity. Like any other structure, the foundation must be sustained to keep everything else in place. If the foundation is eroded, everything else starts to crumble.

Our options are very limited. If we want to maintain our current level of academic performance, we would have to replace the state dollars with local property taxes. That is an unacceptable alternative that would only mask the state’s failure to meet its constitutional responsibility to public education.

Our only other option is to force dramatic cuts on our current education model. That means larger class sizes, the loss of hundreds of jobs, and the elimination of all but the most critical educational programs. Sports, music, the arts and all other similar programs will be at risk.

The burden will be felt most by those who can least afford it. Economically challenged students will lose their only viable path to a productive life.

The maintenance of our current workforce is threatened by the growing retirement rate. Waves of employees are completing their professional work lives. Without a solid base of public education to prepare future workers, we stand at great risk of losing our competitive position nationally and globally.

In recent years, public education has focused on workforce development. Technical education has been strengthened. We are partnering with our Kansas Board of Regents institutions to create a new supply of engineers, a critical component of our community’s workforce.

The massive cuts that will be necessary under the bill sent to the governor will place all of those programs at risk and will negate all of our recent achievements.

State education budget cuts play out in the future of our children. The first casualty is a child’s opportunity for a productive life. The state is engaging in a high-stakes gamble, hoping that economic growth will fill in all of the budget holes.

Debate in GOP drags out Kansas Legislature

By John Milburn - Associated Press

TOPEKA - Legislative leaders are describing relations in the Statehouse in military terms, saying war has been declared on moderate Republicans by the party's conservative wing and Gov. Sam Brownback.

The tensions and mistrust among the GOP, which controls the governor's office and both chambers of the Legislature, has been an impediment to completing work on the state budget, school finance, pension revisions and drawing new political boundaries.

The GOP rift is most evident in the Senate, where eight moderate incumbents have been targeted in the August primaries by conservative challengers and the political arm of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce.

"There's a war," said Senate President Steve Morris, a Hugoton moderate who's the target of one of the primaries. "It's not unprecedented to have animosity. It's unfortunate, but it happens. It's probably as bad as I've seen it."

Brownback denies he holds any grudges against Morris or Senate moderates, but he was critical Friday of the chamber's lack of action on key issues. He praised the House, led by conservative Republican Speaker Mike O'Neal of Hutchinson, for staying focused and working towards ending the session.

"I'm not at war with anybody," Brownback said. "I'm here to help the people of Kansas."

The 90-day session was supposed to end Friday, but because of a resolution passed March 30 legislators can keep working until June 1.

While Senate leaders have differed with Brownback on tax cuts, pensions and education reforms, Morris said they aren't trying to derail the session or the governor's agenda.

"We're just looking to pass good public policy and be responsible," Morris said.

The fight has been pronounced in the drawing of new Senate boundaries. Senators thought they had an agreement with the House on map that would accommodate two House Republicans who are challenging moderate GOP senators in the August primary.

But O'Neal said that map would have prevented a conservative Wichita-area businessman from challenging moderate Sen. Carolyn McGinn of Sedgwick. The House rejected the Senate map, which members also said diluted the minority vote by splitting one western Kansas district over three. Then it passed its own version in an unusual break from tradition where each chamber draws its own districts.

O'Neal said he expected the Legislature to wrap up Friday or Saturday and faulted the Senate for the fact that it hadn't. While there are sometimes good reasons for lawmakers to finish on time, the speaker didn't think that was the case this year.

"We had a lot of things on our plate, but the pieces were there for compromise," he said, adding that the lack of movement from the Senate suggests there is no interest in resolving the issues. "I'm pretty frustrated."

Leaders don't expect the session to drag through the rest of May, but it is already the longest wrap-up in state history, eclipsing the 16-day session in 2002. That also was a year in which legislators had to redraw political districts.

It costs taxpayers about $35,000 for each day the lawmakers are in session.

Legislators were notified Thursday that they would still be paid $88.66 a day for salary and $123 a day for expenses, though they had until Friday to decline pay for any portion of the wrap-up session. Money is still available for the remaining days, but it was unclear just how long it would last before legislators would need to request additional funds, said Jeff Russell, director of Legislative Administrative Services.

Gov: Tax cut plan would produce growth

By John Milburn - Associated Press

TOPEKA -- Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback said Friday the package of tax cuts that legislators have sent him isn't the exact plan he wanted in order to stimulate the economy, but it is one that would create growth.

The Republican governor also said that to make the series of reductions in individual income taxes and elimination of some taxes for an estimated 191,000 businesses work, Kansas will need to constrain its spending in future years.

"I'm excited we're going to get fundamental tax reform for the state of Kansas," Brownback said. "I'm looking forward to either signing this bill or if something is worked through the Legislature that's different from this."

New projections from legislative staff estimate that the tax plan could result in deficits of nearly $2.5 billion in fiscal year 2018.

Brownback said economic models show the plan will create jobs and grow the state economy sooner than the compromise proposal. The approved plan is based on 4 percent annual revenue growth, but Legislative Research Department projections indicate the state would start showing revenue deficits of $242 million in 2014, requiring belt-tightening by state government.

"The rule in government is you will either spend the money to grow the economy or grow the government. We're going to be able to handle this," he said.

House Speaker Mike O'Neal said the tax plan should result in higher, not lower, revenues for government, but that it will necessitate "prudent budgeting" to make it all balance.

"We have learned from the past that you can't tax yourself to prosperity nor spend yourself to prosperity," the Hutchinson Republican said.

Democrats questioned how tax reductions will result in significant revenue growth for budget priorities.

"There is no way you can grow your way out of the deficit that this (tax plan) would project. It's impossible," said House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley said he already knew that Brownback was a "supply-side economics guy" who is counting on the tax cuts to create jobs. But Hensley said the plan puts the governor in a tough spot with its impact on the budget.

"The tax cut that he's faced with now goes far beyond what even he imagined the Legislature would pass," said Hensley, a Topeka Democrat. "No one in their right mind believed we would have these kinds of numbers when we cut taxes."

The Senate approved the tax plan with 29 votes in March at Brownback's insistence that the chamber get something passed so negotiators could reach a compromise. The House passed that plan Wednesday 64-59 amid concerns that the Senate was trying to kill the compromise and not pass any tax cuts.

Senate President Steve Morris said it is doubtful senators would approve the compromise that was on the floor Wednesday if it came back before the chamber. The Hugoton Republican didn't rule out taking another shot at taxes before the session ended sometime next week.

"It certainly depends on what the compromise is," Morris said.

Meanwhile, House and Senate negotiators resumed talks on the proposed $14 billion Kansas budget for 2013. The spending measure, when factoring the effects of the tax package, would leave the state with reserves of approximately $510 million on June 30, 2013.

Negotiators are at odds over how to fund increases in public schools, including how much to boost spending and the source of that funding. They also disagree on spending on social services and providing money to defend the state in litigation over redistricting maps.

Legislators were expecting to work late Friday night and over the weekend on the spending bill, hoping to find a compromise before the full House and Senate return to work Monday in Topeka.

The Kansas Constitution prohibits the state from running a deficit, mandating that expenses match revenues. Brownback noted that last year the state was faced with a $500 million projected shortfall, but through cuts, a rebounding economy and other fiscal adjustments, Kansas will finish with a $500 million surplus on June 30 of this year.

But Morris said with the projected shortfalls in future years from the tax plan that there would be few places the state could cut that wouldn't have an impact. He said that K-12 school spending accounted for about 52 percent of the $6 billion in state tax revenues spent annually. And he said federal rules on Medicaid spending would also limit the state's options.

"We're just trying to pass good public policy and be responsible," Morris said.

Infighting reaches a peak as Kansas lawmakers push session into overtime

By STEVE KRASKE and BRAD COOPER
The Kansas City Star

It’s the year of the perfect storm in the Kansas Capitol.

A governor at war with leaders of the Senate. Leaders of the Senate at loggerheads with the heads of the House. Moderate Republicans clashing swords with conservative Republicans.

Toss in an intensely controversial tax cut and the always contentious process of legislative redistricting and, in the eyes of many, ill will has swamped the statehouse this spring.

“The worst I’ve ever seen it,” said Rep. Pat Colloton, a Leawood Republican first elected in 2004.

Friday marked the 2012 Legislature’s 90th day, when lawmakers traditionally call it quits for the year. But legislators are headed back to Topeka on Monday at a cost to taxpayers of $35,000 a day for what could be another week of work. So far, they have little to show for all their infighting.

The massive tax cut package — which would cost the state $3.7 billion over five years — now sits on Gov. Sam Brownback’s desk, but the Republican governor appears reluctant to sign it and is waiting for a new, less costly bill that may never come.

Meanwhile, the state budget remains unfinished. School funding is unresolved. And a fix for the state’s pension problems remains elusive.

So bogged down is the once-a-decade redistricting for the House, Senate and Congress that some now predict that the courts will be forced to take over.

“We ought to be done. But we’ve done nothing this week. Nothing,” said Sen. Ray Merrick, a Stilwell Republican. “Why? What’s the endgame? Why are we still sitting here fiddling around? It’s not right for the people of the state.”

Like many conservatives, Merrick is upset with Senate leadership, which is in the hands of moderate Republicans. But moderate leaders point to conservatives and Brownback for complicating negotiations over the tax plan and other issues.

They point out that Brownback’s allies have worked to recruit opponents for many moderate senators.

“All this combined has opened this ongoing wound in the Republican Party,” said Bob Beatty, a political scientist at Washburn University. “It’s exacerbated the moderate/conservative split in a way that I haven’t seen it in my 11 years here.”

“When you have the three most powerful people in this building not liking each other, that’s just an automatic recipe for inefficient government, wasteful spending and poor function,” said Rep. Mike Slattery, a Mission Democrat.

At the root of all the turmoil may be what Rep. Scott Schwab calls an enormous power shift from moderate Republicans to their conservative colleagues, who traditionally oppose tax increases and emphasize social issues, such as their opposition to abortion.

Every time you have a shift in political power, “it’s not easy,” said Schwab, an Olathe Republican. Moderates, he added, are not relinquishing their power easily.

But on Friday, Brownback insisted that he’s not at war with anybody and was elected to expand the state’s economy.

“That’s what I ran on,” he said. “That’s what I told the people of Kansas I thought we really needed to do.”

However, the governor later chided the chamber for its lack of productivity, especially over drawing new election boundaries.

“I think it’s reasonable for people to say they should have gotten things done in 90 days,” Brownback said. “It seems like to me the House has worked pretty aggressively to do that. I haven’t seen as much action out of the Senate.”

House Speaker Mike O’Neal said Friday that he wasn’t taking any responsibility for the breakdown in cooperation with the Senate. While admitting that he is “strong-willed,” the conservative O’Neal said he has only reacted to the Senate’s actions.

“My job is to defend the House and promote the things that the House believes in,” said O’Neal, a Hutchinson Republican. “Name one thing that the House initiated that was poking a stick at the Senate.”

But O’Neal said he has problems with how the Senate has treated Brownback.

“It’s just pushing back on everything,” he said.

Senate President Steve Morris, a Hugoton Republican, disagreed with that.

“There’s a difference between being disrespectful and having disagreements,” Morris said.

He said that while it’s common for emotions to run high during a session, he has noticed a difference this year.

“It’s probably as bad as I’ve seen it,” Morris said.

Yet House Minority Leader Paul Davis, a Lawrence Democrat, said he doesn’t believe Brownback when the governor claims he’s not battling with moderate Republicans.

“His staff and his supporters have been highly involved in this redistricting process and all of it orchestrated toward one goal, and that goal would be to defeat the moderate Republican senators,” Davis said.

This year the issue is more intense because of how the new maps will affect legislative races, especially with control of the Senate up for grabs. That could decide the fate of Brownback’s agenda.

Tensions flared during the session when the Senate approved maps for its own districts that cut three conservative challengers out of districts represented by moderate incumbents.

Brownback opted to stand back while conservative after conservative lined up to challenge moderate Senate leaders, including Morris. Those conservatives have the support of the Kansas Chamber of Commerce and other groups.

“That hasn’t helped,” Morris said recently.

Slattery and others said a waste of time and energy has been a hallmark of the 2012 session. He cited the lengthy House debate last week over a resolution condemning United Nations Agenda 21, which promotes global partnership for sustainable development.

“We spend more time talking about a hypothetical U.N. conspiracy theory than on a tax bill that would leave the state $2.7 billion in the hole,” Slattery said. “That is absurd.”

Session mostly a mess

Wichita Eagle

Gov. Sam Brownback loaded up the 2012 Legislature with bold proposals on taxes, school finance, Medicaid, water and state employee pensions, all on top of lawmakers’ mandatory budget and reapportionment duties.

“Our season is short, the needs are great and people, particularly our children, are depending on us,” he told lawmakers in his State of the State address in January.

Yet the state of the GOP-controlled state government as of Friday, which was supposed to be the last day of the 90-day legislative session, was utter failure.

Water policy was the only major issue resolved, not counting an uncharted Medicaid privatization that is mostly beyond the Legislature’s ability to stop or shape.

Kansas lawmakers are alone in the nation in having come to no agreement on a new map for congressional districts. The other maps are in limbo, too, which necessitated postponement of the candidate filing deadline and also could delay the August primary.

The House and Senate remain at odds on the 2013 budget, a pension system reform and whether to restore some of the cuts made in recent years to schools and social services.

Yet on Friday the Senate had a lengthy, contentious debate before passing unnecessary legislation to purge Kansas courts of Shariah or other foreign legal codes.

Meanwhile, off on its own fearmongering tangent, the House spent way too much time last week debating and passing a meaningless resolution condemning a 20-year-old nonbinding United Nations document.

In retrospect, the state’s business didn’t stand a chance this spring – not with Brownback making no secret of his alignment with the Kansas Chamber of Commerce’s crusade to unseat moderate Republican senators including Senate President Steve Morris of Hugoton and Sens. Jean Schodorf of Wichita and Carolyn McGinn of Sedgwick.

If moderate senators have strained credibility in drawing Senate maps that protect themselves from would-be conservative challengers, by last week it was hard to fault them.

That’s when Brownback orchestrated the brutish power play to put an irresponsible tax-cut bill on his desk in an effort to coerce Senate leaders into agreeing to a marginally less irresponsible one.

The Kansas Legislative Research Department projects that, in the most optimistic scenario, the bill Brownback and House Speaker Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, are holding over senators’ heads would turn a $459 million surplus at the end of the 2012 fiscal year in June into a $2.4 billion budget shortfall by June 2018.

No true fiscal conservative would support such legislation, yet the governor said Friday he was “looking forward to either signing this bill” or some other one still to be worked out.

In closing his January speech, Brownback said: “Together we will succeed, for we must.”

Well, the clock just ticked into overtime, Governor, and the session is more mess than success.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

State budget talks narrow differences

By Tim Carpenter cjonline.com

May 12, 2012 - 04:38pm

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

Ten negotiation sessions over two days on a compromise state government budget wrapped up Saturday with narrowing points of contention between the House and Senate.

About half of the spending differences written into versions of the budget adopted by the two chambers had been resolved prior to the closure of talks in advance of Mother's Day. Budget negotiations are set to resume Monday on K-12 school finance, state employee compensation, and property tax relief to cities and counties.

The 2012 legislative session was scheduled to end Friday on the 90th day of the annual marathon, but compromise on the budget, taxes, political district realignment and the state pension system weren’t found.

“We’ve made some great progress this weekend,” said Sen. Carolyn McGinn, a Sedgwick Republican and chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee. "I'm confident we can wrap up these final items when the Legislature returns."

The House's top Republican budget negotiator, Rep. Marc Rhoades, of Newton, was absent from negotiations conducted Saturday. He is chairman of the House Appropriations Committee.

"We're down to the major decision points on this budget," McGinn said, "decisions that really should be made with the House chairman's input."

The House passed its version of the fiscal year 2013 budget May 8 on a 77-44 vote. The Senate voted 34-5 for its blueprint for state spending in the year starting July 1.

House Speaker Mike O'Neal, R-Hutchinson, issued a statement that said the Senate budget would leave the state with an estimated ending balance of 5 percent. The House package would yield an ending balance of at least 7.5 percent, he said.

On Friday, Gov. Sam Brownback urged legislators to give consideration to a five-year, tax-reform package lowering individual income taxes and eliminating some business income taxes. A similar bill was approved by the House and Senate, but would change tax rates more rapidly.

Brownback said he would sign the measure on his desk if the Legislature doesn't produce a suitable option.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, said the tax-reform bill presented to Brownback should be vetoed.

The bill would trigger a projected $2.5 billion deficit in five years by shrinking the tax base, Hensley said. It would force the state to slash budgets for education, public safety, transportation, and services to the elderly and poor, he said.

"We would have to go in and make massive cuts to the budget," Hensley said. "All in the name of giving wealthy individuals and corporations tax cuts at the expense of low-income working Kansans. That is Robin Hood in reverse."

However, O'Neal said estimates of financial doom over a five-year period shouldn't be used.

"Projections in out years are unreliable due to the fact that no model currently exists to predict the dynamic effect of tax relief," O'Neal said.

Brownback said the executive branch staff had evaluated the pending tax-reform bill and concluded the state's business sector would respond by expanding employment and bolstering state revenue. He declined to reveal information about those computer runs.

House and Senate negotiators also are working on a bill that would reform the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System.

There is interest in adopting a 401(k)-style system for new government workers, which would peg retiree benefits to investment earnings in the marketplace. Currently, KPERS' retirees receive a benefit defined by contributions and years of service.

Development of new district boundary maps — necessary for the August primary — has come to a standstill. The state is required to redraw districts every decade for the U.S. House, Kansas Senate, Kansas House and Kansas State Board of Education.

Leaders say KPERS reform plan is close

By Andy Marso cjonline.com

May 11, 2012 - 06:13pm

THE CAPITAL-JOURNAL

It will take the entire legislative session, and then some, but leaders at the Capitol said Friday reform of the Kansas Public Employees Retirement system appears imminent.

The Senate has endorsed a move to a cash balance plan with a 6 percent employee contribution and a 6 percent guarantee on that investment. The state would contribute 4 percent.

The Senate passed that bill 32-8 after narrowly rejecting a measure offered by Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, that followed a study commission's recommendation to switch new employees to a 401k-style defined contribution plan favored by conservatives.

A final KPERS proposal is being hashed out by a conference committee, but Gov. Sam Brownback said the House and Senate members are getting close to agreement.

"We’re talking about percentages and basically having a defined contribution option,” Brownback said. "Hopefully everybody can take a day or two then come back and finish this."

Brownback named KPERS reform one of his key agenda items during his State of the State address at the beginning of the session.

The Legislature has now passed its 90-day regular session and is heading to overtime, but Senate President Steve Morris, R-Hugoton, agreed that KPERS could be one of the first big-ticket items to close on next week.

"I think we’re getting close to getting a KPERS plan," Morris said Friday.

The moderate Senate and more conservative House reached an impasse on a number of important issues in recent weeks, including the state budget and redistricting maps.

There are differences on KPERS as well, but both sides seem to agree something needs to be done.

Due largely to state underfunding and the market collapse, there is a projected $8 billion gap between what employees will be owed under the current pension system and what the system is likely to bring in between now and 2033. A number of ideas have been floated to close the margin, including using gambling revenues and selling state-owned surplus real estate.

But a fundamental change in the state's current and future liability also seems likely at this point.

"This system needs to be changed, and we’re very close," Brownback said.