The Wizard of Oz promised many things. He promised the Cowardly Lion courage, the Tin Man a heart, the Scarecrow a brain, and for Dorothy, well she just wanted to go home to Kansas. Modern day wizard, or, um, Governor of Kansas, Sam Brownback promised a lot of things too. He promised Kansans that his deep income tax cuts favoring the wealthy would bring lots of great new things to the state. You know, that jobs would magically flow across the border from Missouri, and tax revenue would actually increase, thus balancing the budget and turning Kansas into the Land of Oz, or at least a trickle down utopia. This utopia would become a national model for Koch funded Republican candidates to hold up as proof that supply side economics work.
Well a lot of Kansans are slowly waking up from their nap in the poppy field to realize that it was all a dream and they are, indeed, still in Kansas.
Back on Jan 2, 2015, the federal Bureau of Labor Statistics released a report showing how jobs had grown in metropolitan areas across America. Unfortunately for both Brownback and the citizens of his state, the report showed that the Missouri side of the state line had gained jobs at four times the rate of the Kansas side.
Later that same day, a judicial panel in Shawnee County ruled that Kansas was inadequately funding K-12 education. Which meant that the state would need to come up with at least $500 million more yearly to bring schools up to minimum standards.
He already was going to have to slash the state budget in the coming months because the income tax cuts were leading to a $1.1 billion hole in revenues in both 2015 and '16. Then on the following Wednesday afternoon, Kansans found out the state had collected $15 million less than expected in December. This all after Kansas Governor Sam Brownback announced that he would have to reduce spending on pensions and roads to pay for the $280 million hole in the state budget caused by tax revenue shortfalls, as well as announcing that he would also be using $55 million from the Medicaid drug rebate program expanded under the Affordable Care Act.
Instead of looking for ways to restore revenue, by doing things like reversing the tax breaks he gave to the wealthy, Brownback defiantly promised to "continue the march toward zero income taxes even as his policy is expected to keep billions out of state coffers in the coming years." Source: cjonline.com
And now six school districts in Kansas will have to close early this year, because of budget cuts signed in March by Brownback.
Two school districts, Concordia Unified School District and Twin Valley Unified School District, announced earlier this month that they would end the year early because they lacked the funds to keep the schools open. This week, four more districts confirmed they would also shorten their calendars, according to the Topeka Capital-Journal. Source: Huffington Post
Twin Valley School District and Smokey Valley School District both issued statements saying that they had to cut school days because of spending cuts signed into law by Brownback.
Shawnee Heights superintendent tried to put a brave face on.
The superintendent of the Shawnee Heights Unified School District, Martin Stessman, told the Capital-Journal he doesn't intend for the shortened school year to become permanent, and he noted that the low number of snow days this past winter meant that his schools had some wiggle room when it came to a closing date. According to minutes from a meeting of the Shawnee Heights School Board in early February, Brownback's cuts cost the district $190,000 for the 2014-2015 school year, forcing it to freeze classroom and library spending and shorten the school year by two days. Huffington Post
It would appear that Brownback and his supporters are either the stupidest people around or that this is all actually part of their plan to make the gullible citizens of Kansas so poorly educated that they will become the stupidest people around and therefore continue to be fooled by the promises made by the man behind the curtain.