Ranker Statement on Flawed Budget Process

— from State Senator Kevin Ranker —

“While I supported this budget, I cannot support the process. It should not take the risk of a government shutdown to reach an agreement. We should not risk the long term fiscal health of our state and we should not play political games with our public employees and the services they provide. We owe our public employees an apology for playing politics with their well-being.

“In the end, this is a compromise budget and with compromise no side gets everything it wants. This said, I feel that many of our state’s core values are represented in this agreement.

“We made college more affordable by decreasing college tuition for the first time in state history. We invested in the programs which protect our state’s most vulnerable that were devastated during the Great Recession. We also increased teacher compensation for the first time in several years and while we definitely did not do enough, it is a step in the right direction.

“We also however, came up short in some areas. We still have much to do when it comes to K-12 funding. While we did invest more than $1.3 billion in education, we failed to address some of our most pressing needs such as fixing our school district levy system and addressing the voter-approved class size initiative – key issues in the Supreme Court’s McCleary Decision. All told, these critical issues carry a daunting price tag of approximately $5 billion in additional revenue.

“While there was bipartisan agreement that we must raise new revenue to pay for this, unfortunately there was no agreement on which tax to raise with Republicans pushing a significant property tax increase and Democrats supporting a high-earner capital gains tax.

“In the end, we accomplished a lot, but there are many challenges left. I hope that as we move forward we can tackle these issues together and with the best interests of the state and its people in mind.”