U.S. Sen. Jerry Moran supports a bill working its way through the Kansas Legislature dealing with federal impact aid. He noted that in Kansas the state government made the decision to equalize impact aid, which comes from the federal taxpayers and is designed to help compensate local units of government where there is less property revenue due to a large amount of federal property. "Certainly that is the case surrounding Fort Riley in Kansas."
Moran noted that the impact aid helps school districts provide those services that are normally paid for through property taxes, which would be higher on the rest of the community without the impact aid. But in Kansas those funds are equalized across all the school districts in the state. "Legislation is working its way through the state legislature to bring that back to the districts in which it was intended to benefit."
Moran said that would be a positive for the taxpayers of USD 475. He noted that Kansas was one of the few states that took the action to equalize the federal impact aid it put a black mark the list of things, "when Army, military or defense are looking at what states, what communities are pro-military and pro-military families. The way that we treated this issue in Kansas was a negative for us and we don't want any negatives. We want positives."
Moran touched on the topic during a visit to Junction City this week.