The Kansas Legislature opens what could be a tumultuous 2017 session next Monday.

This in and of itself is not news. The Legislature convenes on the second Monday in January for an annual session and generally adjourns in early May. Usually.

But, these legislators have some big issues on their plate this year and they’re already planning on a long session. A legislative committee in November planned to extend the 2017 legislative session from 90 to 100 days. They did that by cutting the 2018 schedule down to 80 days. The longest session ever was in 2015 at 114 days.

However, state policymakers entered the 2016 Kansas legislative session on Jan. 11 with the intention of finishing their work as quickly as possible. Legislators achieved their goal of a short session, adjourning 73 days later, following a marathon push to approve the 2017 budget. However, on May 27 — five days before sine die adjournment — the Kansas Supreme Court ruled that some provisions of the K-12 school finance bill passed by the Legislature were unconstitutional. 

The court set a June 30 deadline for legislators to respond or they would face the possibility of the courts withholding all funding from schools, essentially shutting them down on July 1. On June 7, Gov. Sam Brownback called for a special legislative session to address the school funding issue. Legislators returned to Topeka on June 23 for the special session, which lasted two days and satisfied the court’s concerns. 

Fiscal issues received a great deal of attention in 2016. The state’s revenues continued to be lower than expected since the end of the 2015 session, forcing the governor to make mid-year cuts to the 2016 budget. 

Since an income tax reduction bill was passed in 2012 — including a major business income tax exemption — the Legislature has struggled to find ways to achieve long-term budget stability, and that debate continued during the 2016 session. 

Enough looking back, although the above recap could be a script for 2017.

This year, Kansas lawmakers already know they’ll have to balance the state budget. Add into that the huge issue of writing a new school funding formula.

But that’s not all: The Kansas Supreme Court could issue a ruling that says the state has to increase funding for schools by hundreds of millions of dollars, which would further complicate everything.

It looks like deja vu all over again.

The Kansas Legislature consists of a 125-member House of Representatives and a 40-member Senate. There will be a lot of new faces among them, and hopefully, a tilt to the more moderate end of the political spectrum.

If this shift materializes, the log jam that has stymied the Legislature in recent years may break loose. Also, lawmakers may finally reverse some of the destructive policies foisted on the state by Brownback and his minions in the Statehouse.

Maybe.

Dale Hogg