Kansas revenue figures fall $5.8 million below expectations in May

Revenue secretary touts better-than-expected individual tax receipts

By Justin Wingerter

justin.wingerter@cjonline.com

Kansas revenue numbers again fell below expectations for the month of May, the Kansas Department of Revenue announced Friday.

Overall tax receipts were $5.8 million lower than expected, Kansas Department of Revenue spokeswoman Jeannine Koranda said in a news release. Koranda cited weak corporate income and sales tax receipts “which reflected a downward national trend.”

The state pulled in $9.5 million less than expected from sales and tax use receipts and $3.3 million less than expected from corporate income taxes, the revenue department said.

Legislative process is being subverted in Kansas

From Dave Trabert
cjonline.com

A very sad but not uncommon process is playing out right now in the Kansas Legislature that is designed to avoid transparency and prevent citizens from knowing exactly where their elected representatives stand on important issues.

Kansans expect that all 125 members of the House of Representatives and all 40 state senators will participate in a robust debate in arriving at each chamber’s respective tax plan, but efforts are underway to subvert the full legislative process and put control in the hands of just 6 people and those who appoint them.

Olathe’s Vanya Shivashankar ties for National Spelling Bee title

Vanya Shivashankar, left, and Gokul Venkatachalam lift the trophy after becoming co-champions after the final round of the 88th annual Scripps National Spelling Bee at National Harbor, Md., on May 28, 2015…Photo by Joshua Roberts—Reuters

The winning words in the nail-biter final were ‘scherenschnitte’ and ‘nunatak’

From Time Magazine

In a dramatic, flawless final round, two eighth-graders proved to be joint winners at the 2015 Scripps National Spelling Bee. One a girl and one a boy, one from Kansas and one from Missouri, one a five-time finalist and one a four-timer, 13-year-old Vanya Shivashankar and 14-year-old Gokul Venkatachalam put both their hands on the trophy and thrust it into the air on Thursday evening—after spelling word after word that few people could even hope to pronounce correctly.

Shivashankar’s winning word was scherenschnitte, meaning the art of cutting paper into decorative designs. Venkatachalam’s was nunatak, a hill or mountain completely surrounded by glacial ice.