Recent Kansas editorials

The Kansas City Star, July 1

Online sales tax correct decision for states

While the U.S. Supreme Court might not have clothed itself in glory as it closed out its term this year - upholding President Trump’s ban on travelers from majority-Muslim countries, among other dubious decisions - it did open one door that holds potential for Kansas.

In a 5-4 vote, the court has formally allowed states to collect sales tax on purchases made online. Previously, if a business didn’t have a physical presence in a state, they weren’t required to collect the tax. (Taxpayers might have been required to do so, but when was the last time you did so?)

Now-retiring Justice Anthony Kennedy Justice Anthony Kennedy wrote in the majority opinion that: “Each year the physical presence rule becomes further removed from economic reality and results in significant revenue losses to the States.”

He added that such barriers “limited States’ ability to seek long-term prosperity and has prevented market participants from competing on an even playing field.”

Kansas legislators heard testimony on collecting the tax last session, but the case before the high court was undecided at that point. It was estimated, however, that the state could have gained somewhere between $113 million and $170 million from such taxes last year.

These numbers matter, especially given the decisions that lawmakers will face next session.

They will be under pressure from the state supreme court to adequately fund schools. The court has suggested that the state needs to adjust payments to account for inflation. An extra $100 million plus each year could go a long way toward meeting that requirement.

Pressure has also increased from all corners to reduce the state’s sales tax on food, which stands at 6.5 percent in addition to any local taxes. Revenue from online purchases could also help reduce that shamefully high percentage.

At this point, state legislators owe it to their constituents to make sure that online businesses collect the same sales taxes as brick-and-mortar ones. Beyond the additional revenue mentioned above, such tax equity will benefit local businesses. Until now, they faced would-be customers who would make tax-free online sales after browsing their real-world wares.

Online sales taxes won’t solve everything, of course.

Most large online retailers (such as Amazon) have been collecting them for some time. The burden will largely fall to smaller online companies and individuals hawking their wares in virtual marketplaces. And the challenges facing real-world retail aren’t simply about cost.

But the U.S. Supreme Court has cleared a path for our state lawmakers to follow, one that will help Kansas on the road to recovery after damage wrought by former Gov. Sam Brownback’s misguided tax policy.

We should take that path.

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Lawrence Journal-World, July 1

Amendment wasted effort

Not 24 hours after the Kansas Supreme Court issued a ruling in the school finance case that offered the state an olive branch, conservatives began calling for a constitutional amendment giving the Legislature exclusive control over school funding.

Not only is such an effort unwise from a checks and balances standpoint, but also, the requirements to pass a constitutional amendment are such that time spent on the effort is wasted energy.

On Monday, the state Supreme Court ruled that the state finally has an equitable and fair plan for distributing school funding and that the amount that the state plans to spend on schools in 2018-19 is adequate. But the court said that the increasing funding amounts for future years, which reach an additional $522 million annually in five years, was inadequate because they did not account for inflation. If legislators can make modest increases to school funding through 2023 to account for inflation, the state and court likely can finally settle the now 8-year-old Gannon v. State of Kansas lawsuit.

But with light showing at the end of the tunnel, some conservatives want to steer the train off the rails.

“It is vitally important that the people of Kansas direct how their tax dollars are prioritized for our students and it appears that a Constitutional Amendment is the only way to give control back to the people,” said House Speaker Ron Ryckman said.

“The unelected bureaucrats of the Kansas Supreme Court chose to continue with the endless cycle of school litigation, leading us down the road to an unavoidable tax hike,” added Senate President Susan Wagle.

And from Secretary of State Kris Kobach, a candidate for governor, “The business of funding schools belongs with the representatives of the people - not seven, unelected judges.”

Monday’s ruling was the state Supreme Court’s sixth in the Gannon case and conservatives feel the court has held the state budget hostage for years over public school funding.

But a constitutional amendment stripping the court of any role in school funding would face an arduous and uphill battle. A two-thirds vote of both houses is required to get the amendment on the ballot and then it must be approved by voters. It’s hard to see such an amendment reaching the two-thirds standard in either the House or Senate, and it’s unlikely to come before Kansas voters.

Nor should it. The three branches of government serve the public good by providing checks and balances on one another. A constitutional amendment giving the Legislature full control over school financing would deprive taxpayers of a method to address and correct grievances with how schools are funded, thus eliminating any accountability for state government to fund schools adequately and fairly.

Any time spent trying to strip the court of its authority in school finance decisions would be better spent working on the resolution of the Gannon lawsuit that is so close at hand.

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The Wichita Eagle, June 29

Can these deaths at least be the starting point for a conversation about respect?

Newspaper reporters and editors around the country woke up Friday and activated phones or iPads, scanning news sites and social media. It’s a daily ritual of searching for news they missed while they slept.

What likely stopped them cold, and maybe forced tears to form, was the New York Times photo of two Annapolis, Md., journalists standing alongside the bed of a pickup in a parking garage Thursday night. They were working on Friday’s paper.

Their newsroom was a crime scene. But there was a paper to put out.

The murders of five people inside The Capital newspaper in Annapolis, Md., on Thursday put newspapers on the list of locations for mass shootings in America, 2017-18 version. Also on the list: high schools, an elementary school, a Waffle House, an office building, a bank, a nightclub, and an open-air concert.

So newspapers are in that respect no different. We have learned mass shootings can happen anywhere that a person with mental health problems and access to guns and ammunition chooses.

But Thursday’s shooting also reminded us that journalists, much as we in the profession would not like to think about it, can be targets. The man charged with Thursday’s killings had previously filed a lawsuit - dismissed as baseless - against the paper for defamation.

Journalism can be a tough job to explain. A reporter has to be nosy to the point of being an irritant to the people they cover. Reporters write stories about injustices and inequalities one day, then write uplifting pieces about inspiring people the next.

And during all that, reporters have to be fair. Make no assumptions, base all reporting in fact. Thick skin, dogged determination. But in doing that, reporters create enemies of varying degrees.

Many of us have been threatened in some form, some to the point of notifying police. That’s where it normally stops, because the public usually knows our role is to report and inform - and sometimes it takes digging that makes others uncomfortable.

That digging, though, is where we seem to have become polarized as a nation. Honest, accurate reporting now is criticized at the highest levels of government. “Fake News” is spewed by those who choose to ignore facts and instead set off on their own belief system, hoping to rope in people who are uninformed and unengaged along the way.

President Trump’s tirades, labeling the news media as “the enemy of the American people” - when he knows the media is only his own enemy because it calls him on his endless number of lies and false characterizations - helps enrage his base. We don’t know if the newspaper shooter felt enabled by anti-media rants, but those rants themselves are at the very least corrosive to a free press guaranteed under the First Amendment.

America has not seen this level of polarization and disdain in some time, probably 50 years ago in what was the most turbulent year of the last half of the last century. Thursday’s shooting won’t be the point where everyone unites to talk about mental health and gun control. If 59 dead in Las Vegas and 17 dead at a Parkland, Fla., high school aren’t enough to get those conversations started, five newspaper employees won’t move the needle.

But can it at least be the starting point for a conversation about respect? Valuing a different opinion? Taking a civil tone? Respecting an opposing view shouldn’t come with vitriol. We’ve lost that as a nation, and every American can play a part in getting it back. One hello, one sentence, one conversation at a time.

Meanwhile, newspapers will continue reporting stories to engage an informed community. They’re back at work in Annapolis - working and mourning - as an example to us all.

The Capital lost 20 percent of its newsroom to a gunman. The five who died, and the reporters and editors who press on, inspire us and remind us why we chose journalism as our lives.