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Sunday, May 26, 2013

On the train wreck that is the Kansas State Legislature right now


Now Kansas Governor Brownback's own Secretary of Corrections is offering up proof of the insanity of the state's budget cuts:


Proposed cuts to corrections system could endanger Kansans


From the article:

 — The head of the state prison system said Friday that proposed budget cuts being considered by the Legislature could jeopardize the safety of Kansans.
In a memo distributed to legislators, Kansas Secretary of Corrections Ray Roberts says the cuts would force the closing of a prison in northwest Kansas and leave without supervision some low- and medium-risk offenders, including sex offenders, who are on parole.
There also could be cuts in programs for mental illness and substance abuse, he said.
"The end result is that we will be spending far more than we save with the potential for increased victimization of Kansans due to an increased rate of untreated, unsupervised offenders in our communities," Roberts said.
Republican House and Senate budget negotiators agreed earlier this week to a proposed state budget that would cut $12.5 million from public safety operations in the fiscal year that starts July 1, Roberts said.
As the Kansas Democratic Party so rightly said today on their Facebook page:

It's come to this: Gov. Brownback's own Sec. of Corrections is warning that budget cuts will endanger Kansans by leaving dangerous sex offenders unsupervised and forcing the closure of prison facilities. You can add the safety of Kansans to the list of things less important to Gov. Brownback and the Kansas GOP than tax breaks for billionaires.

The thing Kansans have to ask themselves at this point is, how bad does it have to get until we somehow get a change for the better and some relative responsibility--if not sanity--out of Topeka, especially as regards the State budget and spending?

1 comment:

Anonymous said...

Notice to all politicians: We need less ideology & more pragmatism.