Governor of Kansas Sam Brownback
Credit: AP Photo/Charlie Riedel
Kansas has paid attorneys nearly $1.2 million to defend the flood of abortion restrictions the state has passed since 2011. As the Associated Press reported Tuesday, Kansas Attorney General Derek Schmidt announced that the state paid a Lawrence-based firm nearly $800,000 in expenses related to multiple lawsuits, and had spent more than $400,000 on a Witchita firm defending a measure that cut off funding for Planned Parenthood.
Serving as the backdrop to the news is the state’s budget crisis, a $344 million hole driven by income tax cuts that Republican Gov. Sam Brownback signed into law in 2012. In response, pensions are being slashed, infrastructure is suffering and Brownback has proposed cutting spending on public schools and state universities by $45 million. Even Brownback’s fellow Republicans are telling him to stop living in “fantasyland” and call off his anti-tax experiment.
One would think, given the dire straits the state finds itself in, a pause from the […]
