Brownback's Kansas

when governor sam brownback took office five years ago he promised sweeping changes to kansas government and j mcintyre and today on k pr presents brown bats kansas it's a panel of political scientists from across the state gathered recently in lawrence to talk about the legacy of a governor brown bet's policies we'll hear from her dad who most of the university of kansas michael smith of emporia state university mark peterson of washburn university and had plenty of wichita state university before contribute to a weekly political column called inside cancers the opinions expressed on today's program are their own they do not represent those of kansas public radio or the university of kansas first qaeda's burdette loomis who moderated brownback a kansas honestly i think when sam brownback came into office in two thousand and ten after two thousand ten election aren't we all we're holding our breath how we didn't really know what to what to expect because for forty or fifty years cancer

had a varied well omar a conservative government it modernizes government sixties early seventies how we had democratic and republican governors over the years generally republican legislature but not a far right republican legislature and so at the end of the day governors and the legislature pretty much got together on a moderate conservative agenda which is probably very close to where the state wants is public public opinion over over that time but generally speaking it i think the state was governed reasonably well a good education system good roads not a large portion of that are on a lot two thousand ten came and although it had some movement to the right christian right and to an extent the fiscal right americans for prosperity two thousand tents national election against obama

obamacare the bridge that that move seven hundred state legislators into office across the nation and candace wheeler did sam brownback a very conservative governor and awkward virtually a very far right to represent how sherpas and the senate was an update here and over the next couple years old sam brownback enacted we enact tax policies which will talk about he called a great experiment reduce taxes took a lot of people off the rolls and you also have increasingly anti abortion laws but other things have come on the gender that would wonder where they were they ever came from and we'll talk about that i think although will slip into usage of the term concern that this is not just this is not been a conservative movement at all much

like other places this is this is a photo of the movement from my perspective that that that it is a far right movement that has dominated the governor's office and both houses of the legislature since two thousand two thousand twelve in that instance we could be kansas politics has taken a sharp sharp right turn from this moderate conservative consensus that we've had over the past forty years should show up to two thousand ten so that kind of little interaction dickinson's politics start with ethanol talk a little bit about some greater specifics about what we're interested in as we look at kim sam brownback scandals that's where that limits of the university of kansas department of political science he's moderating a panel called brown bags kansas first up and flimsy who started teaching political science at wichita state university back in nineteen seventy nine he's the

coauthor of kansas politics and government the clash of political cultures let me and try to give an overview of quick overview of fairly complicated picture of state finance under brownback and maybe a highlight the departure that brownback has taken on i have to bring some biases to the table in the sense that i am which summarizes the brownback five now almost six years as deficit spending no the words spending more than revenues are coming in unfair taxes and excessive debt and analysts don't sound like far

right positions in many ways let me talk a little bit about romney's comment first on taxes brownback departed from what bird described as a moderate conservative understanding that actually prevailed for most of the twentieth century in kansas and that was a three legged stool of public finance essentially an equity among property taxes income taxes and sales taxes and that was indeed at a bipartisan kind of agreement we can talk a little bit about when it started in our people but there was i think a bipartisan understanding that that was

fair and equitable taxation and brown backs departure was has been to essentially commit himself to the elimination of state income taxes which were adopted back in the thirties really at the recommendation of alf landon among others and dumb and soul essentially a taxation system that reduced income taxes across the board for individuals bud eliminated income taxes for about over three hundred thousand businesses and farm operations hand and so the three legged stool according to brownback so idea is slowly he hasn't been able to eliminate the income tax for

individuals but certainly for exempting businesses he's sick cutting away at that third leg of this so long term agreement on how to fund state and local government in kansas so there is there's some serious serious questions of fairness in the us and we can talk a little bit about that the other thing that he's done in terms of deficit spending and if you look at pm the general fund the fund essentially and fun so score services education and a higher education and social services for that the governor relied on a sales tax increase prior to his administration to essentially make it through the first years and then it's now gone he's also relied on

transferring funds from other agency primarily at a department of transportation fund highway fund and we're now in a desperate situation that in the last week these revenues are not coming in and the new thirteen million dollar cut across state university's so and it's not clear will even make it to the end of the fiscal year and i would add just one element to the finance picture that i've spent some time trying to understand and that's a kind of an a and republican thing of excessive debt and we can look at high wage gap we can look at pension debt we can look good general debt

brownback and his legislative allies have essentially pushed the level of death some of which they essentially take and put into current spending and to levels we had never seen in kansas and so this moderate conservative agreement of caution in the use of data has really taken a new and i think one thing we might note is that the state constitution formally requires a balanced budget madison interpretation there but that's been the long term understanding and so this is really a deviation from that well what one does happen in

my view to play with respect to a highway dad the yam the governor in his cell executives have issued a record breaking their highway death and put that in the highway from a man that transfers out the highway fund and is a legal yes that can they say they didn't use twenty twenty year death for a courier spending they can assert it but the truth is they push that money into the highway fund through debt and then he simply took it out tooth and make up for the state tax cuts that's fed plenty of wichita state university speaking and brownback scam says a panel of political scientist looking at the legacy and governor sam brownback the group met march fourth two thousand

sixteen as part of the annual conference of the mid america american studies association michael smith teaches political science at emporia state university talk about another state executive secretary of state kris called bach who i would not call brownback now like oh black has his own agenda and the two are rumored to dislike each other personally i don't know if that's true or not i don't know either of them personally and they they kind of just gave each other space oddity a callback was bringing down trump kansas politics to the politics to kansas before the non trump was cool and that in particular this focus on the anti immigration and scan interesting the dynamic between kovach can come back and brownback he does not advertise it as an advertising for years

course we know that he came to the governorship from the us senate and as a us senator earlier in his career around two thousand early two thousand and one pre september eleventh he was a strong advocate of of immigration reform that would include about this citizenship and in fact he and his staff for working with congress and teddy kennedy and his staff on an immigration reform bill that obviously would win bipartisan and there's a really interesting documentary about that that is out there floating around i am sensing that the rail by september eleventh a lot of the few years of who's going to get in and what are they going to do if they get into the country terrace of all that but the bottom line is brownback by anti immigrant politics are not what brownback is about he just leaves the issue alone call box a hold of a man who is very aggressive and he's a nation only known

for his anti immigration a pop art exclusive arizona as well known for its anti immigrant laws callback helped write those he helped write alabama's laws i think he was involved with george's laws of a mystery nebraska expert and so he is not just in kansas he's now a law professor at the university missouri kansas city ah and it has a legal background to write this model legislation here in kansas is big issue has been what he calls voter fraud and passing very aggressive legislation designed to make it a good deal more difficult to vote more so for some people than others aren't i'm sure he altered a photo id law says and the big debate about the need to present a photo id to vote what about people that don't have a photo id what about the fact that a disproportionate number of lower income people don't have a photo id when if there's no office locally i don't etc etc it was he certainly supports that and be as so called safe act which he

championed to the legislature in twenty eleven has that provision but has another provision that's a little different and this is a newer wave of these restrictive voting laws as called proof of citizenship requirements essentially it requires first time voter registrants in kansas to prove that they are american citizens in order to register to vote on arizona which seems to parallel kansas possibly because they consult with cole walk about their laws i'm has also passed these very similar to kansas georgia has them now and some other states are either waiting for them to take effect are looking at passing them arm what this means in the real world is that if you want to register to vote for ninety percent plus of the people you have to present a birth certificate and i think you could do a whole panel at a conference like this just on the fascination of american conservatives with burr certificates that there's something about conservatives at birth certificates they have this thing about birth certificates but

i won't i won't go there except to say that that's how most first time voter registrants in kansas will do the opera for citizenship there are some other things allows a passport which he have to prove you're a citizen in a passport anyway aren't they often travel papers if you're native american and naturalization papers if you're a naturalized citizen one issue that's come up in this affects the photo the id stuff as well is it's all well and good that that law sets forth that for example travel papers can document pitcher in american citizen to register to vote if the workers at the elections office or the polls don't know this it doesn't do you a lot of that and when i testified recently before the us commission on civil rights so many other people testifying about one was of a woman from the pot a lot in the nation that said i showed up i had my travel it it says right here in this a

fact that i have right to register to vote and i was denied and she had to go through a process took a couple of hours you know top your supervisor dr supervisor's supervisor you can imagine and what ended up happening is that the poll worker was sick the day they had that training and miss the training where they thought the person vs travel ids now are and so one of the big issues and more about is implementation of the loss i mean i have a colleague who lives in douglas county when to vote had his passport without his passport here's your id sir we need a driver's license no the law doesn't say a driver's license and says photo id and sure enough he had been after my supervisor my supervisor's supervisor in all this on a busy election day the document that a passport is a photo id so that i have some real concerns about implementation bottom line

on these criticisms ship was we had done some research on i worked with the lawrence journal world to get a list of what are called suspense voters suspense voters are voters who did everything except provide proof of citizenship when they registered to vote so they're put on a special list i am instead of active aid for active for their voter registration isn't asked for suspended i'm and then they have a ninety days that was a rule change made last year is to be indefinite that was changed to ninety days last year i'm a ninety days to provide that proof of citizenship yet off the suspense voters listing get registered as active if they don't they're cleared when the voter list and then they start the entire process over again which includes the closing date yet the reddish about twenty five babies before the election i'm so we've got a list of the suspense voters got aikins open records law right last looked at the data and then compared it to some data from body eight months later how many people and with the two thousand and

fourteen election in between how many people completed their registrations and voted and we found that of course most of the suspense voters did not although there was a significant percent that did more than ten percent of the suspense voters did it's not trivial arm suspense voters who complete their registrations are concentrated in certain precincts where in one of them right now and they're very heavily concentrated in college towns especially at here at you but also on benefits for today is a precinct with a lot on so it seems to be there's there's a correlation between college students in the complete years so what we worry about on the night in complete years is that it's they're not not quite as old as the average voter but there are colder than the suspense voters who complete the median age in there are thirty ce and we are

able to look at the census tracts ten at concentrated in urban areas several in wichita there's a one in topeka i'll couple in johnson county some of those are anomalous but that it's not a perfect one to one relationship but it appears to be that in the census tracts where there's more poverty they're also more suspense voters and in particular suspense voters who don't complete their voter registrations critics of gold watch and the politics he represents and by the way he didn't endorse donald trump the other day if you didn't hear our brownback did not run back and norse rubio another sign of how those two are each playing a different game in and just give each other's face on but sam ah the critics are going to say look these are directed at minorities after americans latinos they're directed at lower income voters who is going to have difficulty locating a birth certificate lot of middle class people can use what might've a safe deposit box and they're good to go some people that were born at home we're born in hospitals were never issued

birth certificates are some people argue all their transactions into play asian they can just get online and enter our credit card number to order a copy their birth certificate this is going to have a disproportionate impact again i don't want to oversell it because our bait is not showing a one to one relationship but it does look like in particular suburban lower income precincts with the higher african american populations are getting hit a little harder for the overall numbers are not that high it's just a few percent of the voter roles that are suspense voters and of course that's now dropping because the people that don't finish in ninety days are coming off the voter rolls altogether so it's probably already had the highest number of skin and yet now that people are coming off because they're just being removed but sam it could swing a close election a close election for state rep was election for state senate city council city school border or even

be anointed the election in kansas it would mean they'd have to be as close as the presidential election in florida in two thousand if we had a gubernatorial election or something like that decided by a few percentage points aren't some in some areas the percentage of suspense voters is a size three percent of the precincts and the highest is this precinct right here where we are right now the census tracts it you so you can throw a close election i'm getting all stages quickly an award on the microphone is that a lot of his critics now and one of the critics of the laws don't buy the case for voter fraud there's an arm the brennan center at new york university has done a lot of research on this and essentially what they've found is that what's called voter fraud by impersonation which is essentially what you say somebody you're not maybe you read or do a book about we vote twice is very very rare and of course not all voter fraud would be prevented by these kinds of

loss are in particular voter fraud where you deny someone the right to vote when they have a right to vote this law would melt do much with that arm and the kind of voter fraud that these laws were designed to prevent is is extremely rare and so there's a question you could make the area look it's only a few percent of the voter rolls at the most that are suspense voters it's not really that many people but when you consider that robots have the legislature given prosecutorial authority to prosecute voter fraud and he's brought i think six cases the number one the suspense about our voices in the tens of thousands that's a lot more than sex i am so either way we may not get it meant huge numbers but the numbers of people on the suspense list says many many many many many many times the number of people that have actually been accused of not connected but accused of voter fraud awesomeness critics are very skeptical that this is really about voter fraud michael

smith teaches political science at the emporia state university i'm j mcintyre if you're just joining us today and kbr presents brownback says kansas it's a panel of political scientists from across the state gathered march fourth two thousand sixteen at the mid america american studies association conference mark peterson is the chair of the political science department at washburn university in topeka i would talk a little bit about what i guess i would call the human ecology of kansas politics and i think it makes a link between the thing that michael was just talking about with regard to workers kovach and it meant the brownback administration in the extraordinarily narrow right wing legislature and the kansas president has and this is sort of fascinated me because i'm not a native kansan and so one of the things that i've had to do in the near twenty years that i've been here is to try and get some understanding of the

place a high end and the people who live here and or what their values are i always remind my students that term well once upon a time kansas was considered quite a progressive state it in the union and of course our history on analysts is all unusual in the sense that i'm like kansas's area is a creation of an attempt to resolve a deep a national conflict over slavery i am done so you know we we began with the conflict between pro slavery anti slave interests and abolitionists i think people have to admit we're not exactly egalitarian to dislodge slavery yeah they are they were prepared to invest and those who were emancipated with them for civil rights and liberties from but it was a great step forward

from that the condition of the republic and its founding father that greuel a sort of a pen shop for un political oddballs and people with unusual views arm and people who were coming west as so many did during the nineteenth century to reinvent themselves and so by the time we got to on the turn of the nineteenth century on kansas a little before that i'm sorry for the turn of the twentieth century kansas went through a day a little spasm involving iran the rise of populism and progressive as i'm here on the prairie and other historians who argue that they're actually kansas played a minor role in that real populism was in the american southeast but you know our own history tells us that they was a pretty big event around here and done but i think the thing that i always have noticed

our remembered it is once upon a time in a year now michael's town there was a fairly famous newspaper a man named william allen white are confidant of a president stand up now a fellow that the un and people on the east coast actually traveled out to visit here i am no white was quite a promoter hi amber one of his comments and it i repeated early and often was things happen first in kansas ii and i think indeed in the time when he was so speaking in the year first quarter of the twentieth century they really were i remind my students every once a while that at the beginning of the twentieth century kansas had the same number of seats in the us congress as the state of california they each had eight armed today as we know i can't says there are california's a recall now

has fifty three members in the us house of representatives i and we have for rihanna for population trends continue there's a very good chance that by year two thousand twenty pound we will be reduced to three seats guy in the us house i and i really gets me to the point about the human ecology of kansas on the peak of kansas population came in the year in the nineteen teens i and since that time the population of the state of kansas in relation to buy its position in the overall population of the country has been declining we continue to grow a bit on bowie grow at a much slower rate than the rest the country for example i looked it and comparing my thoughts for today at the un the difference in

population growth since brownback stand by your election in two thousand and then america is so like alike it's a western european allies on the end in other developed nations in the world not growing at a particular fast rate were it not for the thing that crisco black dislikes had the most are we wouldn't be growing immigration has accounted for and the lion's share of growth in the last couple of decades in the united states both from the standpoint of people coming into the country but also the fact that immigrants by and large are young philip adults who are taking a main gamble on life i and if they get here and they find stability they make families high and so birthrates among first amongst recent immigrants and first generation children of immigrants is higher than it is for the overall population so according to census bureau since two thousand

ten until the mid part of this decade two thousand fifteen the country has grown at the rate of about eight tenths of a percent annually so we've gone from right at three hundred and nine million to about three hundred and twenty million according to the census bureau kansas on the other hand i and i rounded on which is sort of an unfair but kansas has been plus or minus a rounding error involved in and fifty thousand two hundred thousand individuals i had spent two point nine million individuals since two thousand ten ah that works out according to the data to a four tens of a percent rate of population growth in the state of kansas armed so we are one half of the national rate which isn't stellar in its own right but it really means that kansas is gradually becoming a smaller and smaller dot on the landscape in terms of human population

and other thing that has fascinated me and it has been the migration patterns are within the state itself on that peek above a proportional relationship to national population and i spoke out back in the nineteen teens involved a very substantial rural population of forty percent of the state's population lived on a farm and out west to do put in an image in one way our end since that time the rural portions of kansas have been emptying out today the first congressional district stretches from the colorado border to within forty miles of the missouri border and it reaches the nebraska and it reaches the oklahoma borders ii and it comes as far east in terms of major public population areas as manhattan fifty

miles west of topeka ah and a good lenders on the other hand are some of those counties have actually fewer humans in them i suspect around and then known just about any other form of full of fauna that you can find in the territory and their median wages of many of those northwestern counties in the state are now well over fifty years of age the median population of the state itself is a thirty six years of age and so the west is emptying died there are few or if you're young people another thing that i looked at was what i consider to be sort of a vital age cohort in the state in terms of predicting its its future dynamic in and ability to thrive and prosper and that's the age category between twenty and thirty nine no

longer adolescence not yet fully settled adults people who are capable of going somewhere else i and me out in the decade before umm brownback selection in two thousand there were seven hundred and forty six thousand six hundred individuals in the state who fell in that demographic category and in two thousand ten when brownback was elected office that same court had seven hundred and fifty four thousand six hundred individuals in it and according to be on the kansas there was available now on the prom like a you hear that's one point one percent growth in ten years yeah when you look at the age cohort of adolescence finishing high school and going to war going in going to college are going in the workplace you see an actual decline in population over those

ten years in other words the people as we often how are you mark and i sam ripening to perfection and kansas's ripening body is aging fast and one could make a strong case for many of the things that sam brownback at mit's to at times it in his rhetoric i as it as being important things to consider and the difficulty is the rhetoric and the politics that surrounds it we have to do something about the fact that we maintain three hundred school districts in this state each of them with its own set of administrative overhead as many of them with colossally expensive transportation routes all of them charge legally with the responsibility of providing an education that prepares young people for moving into the modern world and with ever more limited by resources within their

territories to support those things we have a tremendous problem confronting the costs of providing services to the elderly and the disabled we have it a sort of a cultural destroyed that is developed in the state between its urban areas and its world heritage in background on the politics of johnson county of sedgwick county and most of the counties in northeastern kansas in terms of what the population expects from government the services that they're looking for other manner in which government but should operate are vastly different from what people out in west kansas expect so it's entirely possible that a year that a traditionally conservative politician power with a rhetoric that says we need more efficient more economical more adaptable government

perhaps providing fewer services in some cases i am perhaps addressing these these very difficult problems of telling people that it simply isn't possible to do what you expect given the amount of resources that you're prepared to commit to the undertaking and that that could have been done its part was run for a politician look at that people like paul wellstone and paul tsongas and jimmy carter mom who at various times in their careers essentially gave those he ate each rupees policy statements arm but does set you know you get the face of tension realities here folks i am the public objected on here in kansas however we've developed something new to add to the pot and that is that we have developed this rhetoric which we've seen around the country and in fact republicans are now beginning in these recent weeks to talk about with regard to the phenomenon of donald trump we're vilified government

we make government the agent of catastrophe it is the thing that has caused these problems it's not it's not what people choose to do and it's not what people decide at the ballot box it is instead of faceless bureaucrats global forces bad ideas arm and m and a as some of you probably noted enlisting the campaign rhetoric descriptions of the condition that go almost to the point of suggesting that somehow or another now we're living in a in a catastrophe contrast that with this morning's news that last month we created two hundred and forty two thousand jobs in this country are the unemployment rate is at four point nine percent and in spite of a global economy that seemed pretty sick condition hours continues to move ahead and grow at least at a sustainable with nada a rapid rate and it says though you know the

drama and the fiction has come to eliminate the reality and so here in kansas what we've done and what our governor has done them what many of the people who've been elected to the legislature in the wake of that ryder would have done is we got out and we found new tools for justifying policy armed and owl one of them that i came across as i was preparing for today was a conference that the legislature had in may of two thousand thirteen this is in the wake of the governor's election and then the advocacy for the reduction in the income tax rates of any point for and got mom actually heat he has admitted a timer to more than he had actually expanded but in may of two thousand thirteen the legislature got together because i at the end of the day of the session because they realize that the impact

of what they had done was going to prove to be significantly greater than where originally forecast arms and an led me out and serve a little footnote there and that is that the idea of the income tax was brought to governor brownback arm or at least didn't the year that that the seminal characteristics of that he alleges came from a fellow who's known to lots of people who followed republican fiscal practices four of thirty or forty years ago and in art laffer and of doctor laffer economist was hired biden brownback administration to provide constipated services on the subject of how to structure income tax a furry is also a client of an obstacle alec the american legislative exchange council which is a job they think tank that is so supported heavily on by a leak the brothers of the four letter word that

folks like us talk about here of the koch brothers ii and that they had prepared a report called rich states poor states i am be a president of our state senate senator susan wagle from of which dot com anna to the or newspapers at the time at the un cutting income tax was just the right thing to do there we need to put the state of kansas on the basis of her relying on consumption taxes i handed dr leverage for poor term of which shaq alec funded show that there's no correlation between lower sales taxes and economic growth but however there's a clear correlation between states that have no income tax and tremendous economic growth and creation of jobs om so on know we've been raising our sales tax to little effect but effective rates i have not brought in more revenue arm but they're

cutting the income taxes will cause charge to grow exponentially on the kansas city star columnist yale adding a hell hole cut just early yesterday a good day or one of his comments and pointed out that they are thus far in two thousand now a sixteen pound we've created exactly ninety five hundred jobs in the state of kansas are my desk her sore so i don't know that i trust the numbers are but the point is that had been characterized as a need for efficiency and economy the brownback an illustration might be going into the books as me goodrow an illustration that really grappled with the changes that have occurred in kansas i instead we have a situation in which show his approval rating scoring two for your forties though eight poles docking is to shoot

holes arm are lower than president obama's i have i suspect unworthy your governor facing a run for his third term in office to challenge might be a deal to color a bridge too far for him mark peterson is the chair of the political science department at washburn university in topeka burdett loomis teaches political science at the university of kansas and that book years older than the context in the west i grew up twenty miles from ohio in western pennsylvania i can i was consumers of midwestern for the guard twenty miles and a tree to beer it i went to college in minnesota or to grad school wisconsin taught illinois taught indiana not picking kansas suddenly eastern edge and i think and this is on the western edge of heaven on longer for the northern tier of the of the midwest and i think that all of the states in the midwest how have

undergone this the kind of pressures that we've been talking about fiscal pressures in in particular how do with national regulations stuff stuff like that and it argues that the court that focusing on the midwest as dry generalize is really difficult alone because the political culture is only to the states it's quite different and how they react to the forces are it is quite different and indeed there in their economic situations are different and we don't have a flint michigan here were calling out of detroit on the other hand we don't we end we we don't have a state government's been more aggressive in pursuing a both revenues and and policies as are something like minnesota i am so i was a how does that the forces that that affecting

kansas affect the popup other states and one of my arguments is that there are actually two thousand ten with his collection of republican legislators that'll in that election changed the face of of politics both at the national level brought in john painter and republicans running the house so you have much more potential for for gridlock at the national level but also brought in two and many states wisconsin michigan ohio kansas indiana a much more republican and a right wing republican governor varied from state to state of pop of course and so with that would push a couple of the arms the hallmarks your one is an antagonism ct government i think of state government on here is in the middle we've got the federal government want to get you've got local government often operate on a home rule

within the state and many in the state government in kansas in particular i think has been a highly antagonistic to the federal government we sue the federal government oh everything environment healthcare you name that aren't legislators voted unanimously against obamacare and so there's a tremendous antagonism toward the federal government and particularly the the obama admin tradition on the same top the state government this antagonistic towards obama is also highly antagonistic toward local guns in the air and so it has swept into its reach up funds from from local government is restricted and how local government what what local government can do ensure insure part series and right now the state government is key is considering a law

that would take a substantial amount of local traffic tickets and sweep it into state farms large and i think allie ideology there think so that that one for available this puts tremendous pressure on local government this is not a small c conservative notion at all audie in many ways it is a reversal of policies that have got been going on from one on our other states do other things was wisconsin a great state of public education over the years yeah scott walker packing the university of wisconsin a staggering i'm an unprecedented ryan to wage a republican governor illinois who really want it can cooperate with it with alleged which therefore part of a lot of the budget that staggering it was someone like john case it to appear just the moderate

in republican debates has done a variety of of arm of a fairly far far right things when i'm talking about social issues right now which is another couple of the thing the point is that took to look at the the midwest as a song place that has you find characteristics i'm not sure is is what i think what's fascinating to see how the bowels play out in state after state receive with a look and find some parallels with the attack on higher education is there are payne general the attack on public education is it is in their own went with it was with some notable exceptions minnesota being being what one of them and so what what i'm thinking here is that our it we often think of stage copying policies from each other regional what i do

argue is that in the nine states that day that that that with that with that with the internet with the ease of communication and with the organizational importance of the american legislative exchange council out very conservative organization model legislation that one deep red state model another deep friendship maybe we hear looking at kansas oklahoma lose a lot of revenue look see how another state has dealt with oklahoma's attracts a huge revenue revenue lost and so it is going down states that have gone very far deep red louisiana north carolina how most progressive state in the south for motion of the twentieth century has been taken over with with a far right politics illinois wisconsin still wisconsin surely hirsch elements over of strong democratic party have tightened the baldwin you may get right russ feingold back again

in wisconsin on the other hand you have a governor highly anti union that did a lot of damage louisiana in a race to the bottom campus is certainly a powerful contestant but little easier has got their first bobby jindal is out of office and them to ask you where states are going with this far right regime losing tax revenues being antagonistic toward government we see as a great place to speak to start so the final thing i'd say about the state's ears although they're antagonistic toward the federal government critically about administration they're impaired they want more control over the local government they are also antagonistic toward their own state government and the way this happens is that bureaucracies are hauled out in less revenues he started to you cut back i'd

do with less government is not seen a significant it's not it's not that valued very highly and state of kansas without any question whether that evidence is more anecdotal that is systematic you have increasingly and state government a kind of religious oils we look back at the progressive year old geezer of machine politics they handout to spoil system to the winner went the spoils rica put into place on youtube or your property would put into place rules and regulations are and in many ways a brownback admit magicians turn the clock back not to make it more partisan atmosphere over partisanship is part of it but to make it so almost real in some instances a religious test to serve and to be if you are you are fundamentally belong to certain kind of church or certain church that again that's very hard to get out and

as often anecdotal but what you end up with is making a kind of government within the state that is oppressive in many ways and people voluntarily leave we leave government there were places that people were generally not as competent and surely more ideological both parties and also in terms of being fundamentally christian and in that in many ways is a very different government five and a half years and then it was at the end of zero where government usually talk about it fifty or sixty or whatever years moderate conservative government or people i think really did care about government i'm not sure this gets right that trump that that we really don't seem to be caring about governing and his political science professors i think we care a lot about and certainly as for ed

as both a professor and administrator in a it's a staggering change and it as one that we look at i think in him in a very depression went and i think that tone it's been repeated in another states whether it's michigan half or wisconsin or illinois and chilies and a north carolina around the country so the midwest again many of these issues but my chances were talking the visit itself on states in in in distinct ways based on mark were talking about that that that states history again for debt limits of the university of kansas political science department he was joined by michael smith of emporia state university mark peterson of washburn university an ad flinty of wichita state university for a

panel on brown bats kansas to close out the hour we'll hear some predictions for post brown backs kansas for mark peterson an excellency well dewayne ago simmons not here today has said in a couple different venues that it will take at least a generation for kansas to dig out of that fiscal problem it's got that you consider that we've got a billion dollars worth of capers bonds to be paid off over twenty years one of the one of the problems that exists i think there are a number of people and topeka who who now think they don't express that maybe that income tax cut was a little more dramatic than it ought to have been but what everybody in politics knows that that the voters don't view pairing the damage and bringing the rates back up to

something that will provide history as being just an adjustment to the system as a tax increase and a tax increase is a thank you very much for your service we're putting somebody new in your seat so it's going to take a long time and if if if what i look at in terms of demographics continues to bare and i think it will you've got the double problem that in the absence of a robust economy and something magical happening in terms of new markets for kansas products or innovation of some sort know what's happened to the bioscience authority it's highly unlikely that there's going to be a renaissance economically in kansas is going to create that rising tide that lifts the boats a generation perhaps one thing that brownback did was way over self cutting income taxes as the stimulus to the economy and in all the federal tax structure

is five six seven ten twelve times the impact of the state and i think we made in her with what's going on red states going one direction blue states another in advance on this national election of a time when there's a growing federal involvement in a whole array of things and the state elected officials are you know fighting against it but not controlling the votes and dumped their own brownback on the one hand the blast the federal government and then goes to manhattan to diego shovel of the imbalance or go comes down to mcconnell air base and picks

and extols the virtues of the defense department's expansion i think worry or we may see another kind of elevation of federal loan policy address to the big states in the urban areas but also affecting other smaller states you've just heard brown bats kansas recorded march fourth two thousand sixteen at play hughes memorial union i'm j mcintyre k pr present is a production of kansas public radio at the university of kansas