Kansas Governor Laura Kelly has presented her proposed budget for fiscal year 2025 to state lawmakers, and it contains the provisions she called for in her State of the State address.
The budget will provide full funding for K-12 schools, it cuts property, retirement and sales taxes for Kansas residents, and it calls for an expansion of Medicaid to cover another 150,000 Kansans.
The budget provides more than $56 million to expand child care slots and support the child care workforce. That includes nearly $30 million to construct new child care facilities. It also invests more than $10 million in family and adoption services to continue to repair the state’s foster care system.
The governor’s spending plan also has $53 million for water infrastructure and other projects, including the new funding level of $43 million now required by bipartisan House Bill 2302. The budget includes an additional $10 million for grants to rural communities in desperate need of improving local infrastructure in order to preserve local access to clean water.
The budget includes a bipartisan tax cut plan that was announced earlier. It eliminates the state tax on Social Security; exempts the first $100,000 in state property taxes for all homeowners; increases the standard deduction for personal income taxes; immediately axes the state sales tax on food, diapers, and feminine hygiene products; doubles the tax credit that parents can claim to help pay for child care; and includes a back-to-school state sales tax holiday. Republican legislative leaders are lukewarm to the plan overall, and they are still talking about putting a single-rate income tax system up for debate this session.
