Kansas lawmakers adjourned on Saturday after 113 days, marking the end of a contentious legislative year. They are slated to return to Topeka on June 26th for adjournment "sine die" to formally end session.
Legislative leadership in Topeka faced a split caucus this year following the 2016 elections, where voters sent several legislators to the Capitol who were opposed to many of the policies championed by Governor Sam Brownback. Lawmakers struggled all year to compromise on several critical issues, and the new legislative makeup took the state in a different direction than previous years after passing a $1.2 billion tax increase.
Lawmakers came to an agreement on the tax plan last Tuesday evening by passing
SB 30. The tax plan was quickly vetoed by Governor Brownback; however, the House and Senate voted to override his veto by a vote of 88-31 and 27-13, respectively. Legislators reached a consensus after battling the tax issue for months, doing so in an effort to close the budget short fall and provide additional money for schools.
SB 30 will notably repeal the LLC tax exemption for over 300,000 businesses and extend the Star Bond Program 'sunset date' until July 2020. The tax increase is also applied retroactively to January 1, 2017.
We look forward to keeping a pulse on Topeka and working to develop our initiatives and goals over the next several months for next year's session.
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