Good riddance to the Kansas flat tax. Now, will GOP politicians listen to the voters? | Opinion

Let’s start with the bottom line: It’s a good thing that Kansas Republicans failed on Tuesday to override Gov. Laura Kelly’s veto of their precious flat tax. The last thing this state needs is to radically upend its revenue structure just so Charles Koch can save a few hundred thousand bucks.

We already found that out the hard way during the Sam Brownback years.

Still, no bad idea goes away forever in Sunflower State politics. After all, voters overwhelmingly demonstrated their preference for legal abortion during the Value Them Both amendment election two years ago, but right-wing politicians keep trying to chip away at reproductive rights.

The same thing will happen with the Kansas GOP’s ceaseless crusade to keep rich people from paying taxes. Republicans tried and failed last year to pass a flat tax. They tried and failed again this year to pass a flat tax. It seems almost certain they’ll try again — and hopefully fail again — sometime in the near future.

So what lessons can we learn from this battle?

▪ Gov. Kelly’s “middle of the road” rhetoric is a winning message. I’ve long contended that Kansas is far more moderate than our “red state” image suggests. Kelly bet her political life on that idea, pitching the state’s voters on a “middle of the road” vision for the state. And it worked, helping the Democrat win election twice in a heavily Republican state.

That’s probably why right-wing GOP leaders tried to sell their flat tax plan — a fantasy among hardcore fiscal conservatives going back at least to Steve Forbes’ failed presidential run during the mid-1990s — as a “bipartisan compromise.”

No really.

“Signing this historic tax relief will send a powerful message that here in Kansas, we put people over politics and forged a true bipartisan compromise that benefits every single taxpayer, especially those who need it the most,” House Speaker Dan Hawkins and Senate President Ty Masterson said in January. It was an audacious, even ludicrous assertion — it’s not a “compromise” if you get everything you originally wanted — but it tells which way Kansas Republicans think the wind is blowing.

▪ Now is probably not the time for a giant tax cut. The only reason a tax plan to slash more than $1 billion from state revenues was remotely plausible is because Kansas has been running red-hot budget surpluses for more than a year. It’s not at all clear that the good times are here to stay, though: State tax receipts have come in below expectations for three straight months. Which means now is the time for caution.

Unfortunately for Gov. Kelly, that means it’s probably not a great time to test her own tax cut proposal to cut property and income taxes for most Kansans. Kelly’s plan would distribute its benefits more equitably than the GOP flat tax proposal, but it would still cut a hefty chunk from state revenues. If the failure of the flat tax means legislators get a little more breathing space before determining their next moves, it’s a good thing.

▪ Voters should get a chance to weigh in. One of the more irritating aspects of the flat tax proposal was how it came out of seemingly nowhere at the beginning of the Kansas Legislature’s 2023 session. Do you remember Republicans highlighting the flat tax as one of their top priorities during the 2022 campaign the previous fall? No? That’s because they didn’t, really. They were too busy running a culture war campaign painting Kelly as the favored candidate of drag queens.

They failed. Just like they failed to pass their flat tax.

The good news is that legislators have to go before Kansas voters again this fall. And those voters will get to decide — with eyes wide open — whether they really want to give Republicans a veto-proof majority for the purpose of giving a huge tax cut to the state’s richest residents. Those are the stakes. We know it this time.

Joel Mathis is a regular Kansas City Star and Wichita Eagle Opinion correspondent. He lives in Lawrence with his wife and son. Formerly a writer and editor at Kansas newspapers, he served nine years as a syndicated columnist.