‘No Good Options’ to Solve Kansas Budget Mess; Alaska Eyes Changes to Its Permanent Fund

TOPEKA, KANSAS
STATE BUDGET | After the latest lowered state revenue projections were unveiled Wednesday, Republican Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director laid out options for lawmakers to bridge a budget shortfall now estimated at $290 million. These include siphoning $185 million from the state’s highway fund and cutting higher education spending. Other possibilities would involve selling a portion of Kansas’ financial settlement with tobacco companies on the bond market and delaying payments to the state employee pension system. Brownback’s least preferred option would involve slashing 3 to 5 percent from most state operations, including K-12 education. “There are no good options here at all,” said one Democratic state senator. Some lawmakers say there’s growing interest in the Legislature to repeal a business income tax exemption that was part of Brownback’s signature 2012 tax breaks. [The Kansas City Star]

JUNEAU, ALASKA
ALASKA’S PERMANENT FUND | Alaska has a $4.1 billion budget gap, thanks in large part to the global downturn in energy prices, and one of the fiscal puzzle pieces up for examination is Alaska’s Permanent Fund, which pays out dividend payments to state residents annually. Gov. Bill Walker, an Independent, thinks that to help ease the state’s budget woes, annual dividend payment should be reduced and redirected to the state government to fund operations. On Wednesday, Walker hosted a Q & A session for lawmakers at Centennial Hall to discuss the current budget situation. [Fairbanks Daily News-Miner]

MONTGOMERY, ALABAMA
STATE LOTTERIES | There are only a handful of states that do not have a lottery. Alabama is one of them. In 1999, the last time a lottery proposal made it to Yellowhammer State voters, Alabamians gave the plan a thumbs down. On Thursday, members of an Alabama Senate committee green-lighted a rudimentary framework for a constitutional amendment that’d authorize a state lottery. State Sen. Jim McClendon is expected to have a more detailed legislative proposal before the full Senate votes on the plan. Voters would have the final say on a constitutional amendment. [The Associated Press via AL.com]

PHILADELPHIA, PENNSYLVANIA
UBER | The Pennsylvania Public Utility Commission has handed down an $11.3 million fine against the ride-booking service Uber, which operated in the commonwealth without official authorization from regulators. "Uber has deliberately engaged in the most unprecedented series of civil violations," according to the commission’s vice chairman, Andrew Place. Uber plans to appeal the ruling. [The Inquirer]

NEWARK, NEW JERSEY
SECOND THOUGHTS | After accepting the top job at New Jersey Transit, William Crosbie, has decided to back out. Crosbie, a former executive at Amtrak, was slated to take the helm of NJ Transit later this month. “The decision came as a surprise to us,” Richard Hammer, who serves as the transit agency’s chairman said in a statement. NJ Transit has been grappling with budget difficulties. Crosbie apparently cited concerns about moving his family from Virginia. [The Wall Street Journal]

HOLLAND, MICHIGAN
CIVIC IDENTITY | This West Michigan city was founded by Dutch religious secessionists who thought the Netherlands was becoming too liberal. So nobody should be surprised that the city has promoted its Dutch heritage as a tourist draw for years, from its annual Tulip Time festivities, which include traditional dance events involving participants wearing wooden shoes. So when the city decided to update its image with new, modern welcome signs that don’t include the word “Welkom,” not everyone was happy. To appease the traditionalists, the city has moved to adapt the new signs to include the word “Welkom.” [Tulip Time; The Grand Rapids Press / MLive.com]

VANCOUVER, WASHINGTON
MARIJUANA | A campaign meant to keep children from trying marijuana is rolling out in school districts in Washington state’s Clark and Skamania Counties. It kicked off Wednesday, April 20—or 4-20—at a middle school in Vancouver. The initiative is called Weed Can Wait. Recreational pot sales began in Washington in 2014. A nonprofit group called Prevent! is backing the new effort to keep kids off pot. The group receives funding from tax revenues Washington collects from the cannabis industry. It may take work to get some youths to stay away from marijuana. "A lot of kids at school smoke pot," one 14-year-old student said. [The Oregonian / OregonLive.com]

MENDOCINO COUNTY, CALIFORNIA
WASTE MANAGEMENT | Some of the homeless camps in parts of this Northern California county are very remote, so remote in fact that they aren’t accessible by road. And that means that waste from those homeless camps can pile up. But the Skunk Train, which has a history of bad odors (from a combination of the fumes the locomotives that “old timers living along the line said … [smelled] like skunks), has been helping county personnel remove waste and garbage from the homeless camps along its remote route, hauled away on a flat-bed rail car. The Skunk Train is normally used for sightseeing purposes. “We were lucky to be able to coordinate this with the Skunk Train, which is doing its own cleanup,” says Mike Sweeney of the county’s solid waste authority. “This was the only way to move this trash; we couldn’t drive to this.” [Skunk Train / Willits News]

SIOUX FALLS, SOUTH DAKOTA
BUDGET PLANNING | City Council appears to have been overly optimistic with its 6 percent sales tax growth projection, when it adopted a $471 million budget last fall. Building permit fees, in part, offset the shortfall, but Sioux Falls’ revenue remains shy of what officials were hoping for. Quality of life projects could suffer as a result, a problem if the city wants to continue increasing its population. [Argus Leader]

NEW YORK CITY, NEW YORK
PROBES | U.S. Attorney Preet Bharara, who’s made a habit of investigating New York’s top lawmakers, has turned his attention to New York City Mayor Bill de Blasio. A probe will look into whether the mayor’s donors, backing his unfulfilled pledge to relegate horse carriages to Central Park, received or were promised special privileges. Contributions may have funded efforts to unseat the state Senate’s GOP majority in 2014, another point of investigation. [New York Daily News]