Last week, the Kansas Taxpayers Network released its 2008 list of legislators who have signed a pledge not to support higher state taxes during the upcoming legislative session.

The release of the names of pledge signers has been an annual pre-election ritual for the last 14 years. This year, the state faces a revenue shortfall and Gov. Kathleen Sebelius has mandated a two percent across-the-board spending cut.

Sebelius has not indicated that she'll propose new taxes for 2009, but if she did, she might have an easier time getting new taxes passed in the Senate than in the House.

House Speaker Melvin Neufeld has already signed the KTN pledge, as have many other legislators.

But the state Senate leadership has apparently refused. Republican Senators Steve Morris, Derek Schmidt, John Vratil and Democratic leader Anthony Hensley have all declined to promise Kansas taxpayers not to raise their taxes.

In a statement released Friday, Karl Peterjohn, Executive Director of KTN, said, "The pledge is an important tool to help voters separate out the candidates who will make a firm promise to taxpayers and voters in their district" not to increase the state's taxes.

"When voters combine the pledge signers with legislative vote scores at KTN's web site, they can get an excellent picture of the legislators who are really working to help Kansas taxpayers," Peterjohn said.

Peterjohn told KansasLiberty he wasn't surprised to learn that the Senate leadership was avoiding the pledge. "The senate leadership in both political parties has often been deaf to complaints from Kansas taxpayers," he said.

"This deafness is reflected in KTN's lifetime vote rating for [the senate leadership]," Peterjohn added.

• Morris, the senate president, is rated by KTN at 32.5 percent.
• Republican majority leader Derek Schmidt's KTN rating is 45.2 percent.
• Senate vice-president John Vratil's rating is 18.2 percent.
• Senate minority leader Anthony Hensley gets a 29.4 percent rating from KTN.

The House leadership, by contrast, is much friendlier to state taxpayers.

Speaker Melvin Neufeld's KTN rating is 74.6 percent, while Speaker Pro Tem Donald Dahl rates 81.8 perrcent and Majority Leader Ray Merrick's rating is 84.2 percent. Democratic minority leader Dennis McKinney's KTM score, however, is only 27.2 percent.

The Week in Review