Two businessmen both seek changes to stabilize budget

Ray Merrick’s time in the Legislature is coming to a close, and two Republicans from Johnson County are running to be his successor.

The race for the retiring House speaker’s legislative district features Tim Harmon, a construction company owner, and Stilwell resident Sean Tarwater. The winner of the District 27 primary will likely run against Democrat Larry Miller in the general election. Miller is unopposed in the Democratic primary. The district includes parts of Leawood and Overland Park.

Harmon wants to see government take a private-sector approach to efficient production, he said.

“If you can create jobs and have a business environment that’s going to attract more companies, then you have more revenue,” Harmon said. “So we need to create more revenue.”

To have job growth you have to have education, he said. Finding a long-term solution to school finance is at the top of the agenda for the next legislative session, he said.

Harmon said the state depends on a handful of industries that are still struggling.

“That’s aviation, agriculture, oil and gas, and those went through the recession and are coming back out of it,” Harmon said. “They’re still down. If you enable them to have good policies and incentives to grow their base, they’ll create new jobs. New jobs create new taxes.”

The state needs to have a sustainable budget that Kansans can have confidence in, he said. Harmon said the state’s budget needs to be reviewed to make sure core needs are being met.

“There needs to be some changes,” he said. “In the next session, it won’t be reflective necessarily of what has happened in the past. I don’t run my business that way. I don’t run my personal life that way. I don’t run deficits.”

Tarwater said he’s seeing Kansas “spiraling downhill.” The business owner said he’s grown tired of the state’s debate over school finance, which has included litigation and nearly caused schools to close in June.

“We’ve got to come up with a solution that works for everyone and keep it out of the courts so we can just move on,” Tarwater said.

The 2012 tax cuts have had ripple effects in Kansas, Tarwater said. The state needs to find better sources of revenue, he said. Those cuts didn’t help Kansas, Tarwater said, and the state is still spending too much money. He said it was a priority of his to balance the state’s budget.

“I’m sure when the administration did it, they felt like they were doing the right thing,” Tarwater said. “I think there were a lot of unintended consequences from that. It’s going to be very difficult the next two years. There’s going to be some very difficult decisions made that may or may not be popular with everyone.”

Tarwater, who characterized himself as being more of a moderate, said the state’s sweep of money from the Kansas Department of Transportation has hurt the state in recent years. The state needs a balanced budget, he said, and that means the state needs to find more income. Properly funding KDOT would spur road construction, Tarwater said, which would bring more jobs and revenue to Kansas.

“We’ve got to stop bleeding,” he said. “We’ve got to make Kansas whole.”

This story was originally published July 20, 2016 at 1:14 PM with the headline "Two businessmen both seek changes to stabilize budget."