Kansas Governor Laura Kelly had a lot of battles with legislative Republicans during the 2023 session, but she said there were a lot of positive developments as well during an interview airing on KVOE’s Newsmaker segment Thursday.
By and large, the governor says “we were able to accomplish many of our goals,” using education funding as an example.
On taxation policy, Governor Kelly was disappointed when lawmakers combined efforts to speed up the end of the food tax with the start of a flat income tax.
Governor Kelly says the flat tax would not have reduced state revenues as quickly or as dramatically as tax cuts from a decade ago, but Kelly says they would have had the same effect.
The governor was also disappointed — but not surprised — when Medicaid expansion failed to move much in the 2023 session, although she expects more movement next year because all lawmakers are up for re-election and expansion is popular with voters.
While much of the attention late in the session was paid to disagreements on abortion and gender policies, Governor Kelly credited lawmakers for their work to adjust drug policy by taking fentanyl test strips off the drug paraphernalia prosecution list. Kelly also credited House Republican Troy Waymaster for developing the salary increase plan that was “better than the one I came up with.”
