Kansas Lawmakers Plan To Tweak Budget To Avoid Deficits

Kansas lawmakers working on a tax-cutting plan say they’ll tweak the proposal to avoid long-term budget deficits.

Tax negotiators received new estimates on the financial impact of the proposal, which would reduce income tax and business tax rates. The projection says that under the plan the state will be facing a $160 million budget shortfall by 2018, but that’s a significant improvement over previous estimates.

Wichita Republican Les Donovan is the lead Senate negotiator.

“I’m very happy with the new numbers because they are closer to what we thought we were doing,” says Donovan.

Donovan says they will make changes until the projections don’t show a budget shortfall. Negotiators could consider lowering the tax rates more gradually over several years