The Legislature’s 2025 Budget Priorities

Adrienne Olejnik | April 2, 2025

This session brought a new budget process for lawmakers to work through. The result? A lack of transparency, limited opportunities for Kansans to share their experiences and expertise, and a final product that favors special interests and penalizes struggling families.

Late last fall, the Legislature decided to veer from its typical budget process of using the Governor’s January Budget Recommendation as a base and editing that version for the remainder of session. In this new process, the Legislature decided to ignore the Governor’s recommendations and instead create their own funding plan.

Additionally, in prior years, each agency’s budget was carefully crafted by a subset of lawmakers focused on particular topics. But this year, many of those subcommittees were not deployed, resulting in just a handful of lawmakers making most of the budget decisions.

Again, veering from what has been budget precedent, the Legislature only plans to pass this one budget bill instead of passing a follow-up budget bill to account for any new legislation from the session that has a fiscal note. And, typically, this follow-up budget bill (called the “omnibus budget”) is considered after the state releases its fiscal projections for the next year. In their new methods this year, the 2025 Legislature won’t be able to adjust state spending to better match what those estimates are saying.

Now, as we near the end of the 2025 session, the House and Senate have negotiated their differences for the state budget, and we have the clearest picture yet of what the Legislature is prioritizing.

Budget Highlights

This year’s budget saw the appropriations committee cut spending for agencies, play K-12 funding tricks, tie arbitrary rules to programs helping families, and funnel money toward unproven or untested AI programs.

Our full analysis of notable items affecting Kansas kids and families (or overall state budget structures) can be found here.

Here are some of the budget items we’ve watched this year.

Department	Item	Amount from State Funds	Analysis
Department of Commerce	Sunflower Summer Program	$3 million	The Legislature reduced the funding for this program, but kept it at an amount that is meaningful and keeps this program alive for Kansas families to use.
Attorney General	Safe and Secure Firearm Detection	$10 million	While this has to go through the RFP process, this is for the Zero Eyes vendor that sells AI-detection equipment and software to detect guns via video cameras. This was not asked for by the Kansas State Department of Education.
Legislature	AI Budget Analysis	$ 1 million	Very few details were provided, and the item did not receive subsequent review or discussion. We are unaware of who will be hired to do this AI analysis.
State Finance Council	Summer EBT	$1.825 million	We are thankful the Legislature continued funding for the Summer EBT program, which is meaningful financial support for families to purchase groceries to feed their children over the summer when school meals are not available. However, the language regarding the waiver is holding hostage critical funding for a priority that should not have been included in the budget process.
KDADS	Summer EBT Administrative Costs	$825,000
KDHE	Continuous Eligibility	—	This language stops the 12-month continuous eligibility for parents/caregivers using KanCare that has been in place since 2010. It's estimated this change will cost the state an additional $3 million to $4 million in eligibility determination costs. But the most harm will be on the parents who will more likely churn on and off of KanCare, causing health care disruptions and delays based on small changes in income.
KDHE	Child Care Pilot Program	$2.5 million	Maintaining this expected funding, that had already been committed, was important to see this public-private partnership continue.
KSDE	Special Education	$10 million	There was a risk no new additional SPED funding was going to be added, so having $10 million as an increase will at least keep the commitment from sliding backwards due to inflation. However, the increase is nowhere near enough to keep the Legislature on a path to fully funding their statutory requirement of special education excess costs.
School for the Blind	Building Improvements	$450,000	It was not always guaranteed this funding would be included in the budget. We appreciate the Legislature's attention to the health and safety of some of our most vulnerable students.
School for the Deaf	Building Improvements	$710,000	It was not always guaranteed this funding would be included in the budget. We appreciate the Legislature's attention to the health and safety of some of our most vulnerable students.
Department of Agriculture	Local Farm to Food Program	-$900,000	Federal funding was cut for this program, and the Legislature followed suit in deleting resources that helped improve access to local and healthy foods.
Statewide	Agency Budget Cuts	-$7.28 million	This broad 1.5% cut may seem small or insignificant, but will have a serious impact on many state agencies, especially during a time when budget language was added that new or expanded services be funded with existing resources.

What This All Means for Kansans

While often overlooked by many, the Kansas state budget remains one of the most important pieces of legislation during the session. The state’s spending plan touches every Kansan’s life – from the roads we drive on, to the schools children attend, and the programs families can temporarily access to make ends meet.

The Legislature has created a self-imposed budget crisis to justify cutting items from the budget that improve the well-being of families. Lawmakers are doing this while doling out state dollars to special interests for state projects and further cutting taxes that won’t give much relief to the average Kansan.

While there remain some good things for families, like the continuation of the Sunflower Summer program or SunBucks funding (Summer EBT), there is much more that state leaders must do to ensure children and families are prioritized in future years. If Kansas continues down this road where vital programs are cut and arbitrary rules are added, families will be burdened the most.

As we look to the next budget cycle with this new budget process, we are beginning to identify new opportunities to work with lawmakers to elevate the needs of every Kansas family.

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