National
Kansas lawmakers fail to override
veto of income tax hikes
TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — Kansas Gov. Sam Brownback on Wednesday vetoed a bill that would undo his signature income tax cut and his allies prevented the Legislature from overriding him, setting up future confrontations over balancing the state budget.
Less than two hours after Brownback vetoed the bill, the state House voted 85-40 to override him, giving supporters one vote more than the two-thirds majority they needed. But the vote in the Senate hours later was 24-16, which was three shy of a two-thirds majority.
By not overriding the veto, lawmakers will have to draft another plan aimed at closing projected budget shortfalls totaling nearly $1.1 billion through June 2019.
Senate President Susan Wagle, a Wichita Republican who opposed overriding the veto, said the elements of a new plan will remain similar: Increases in personal income tax rates and an end to an exemption for more than 330,000 farmers and business owners. The governor opposes both moves.
“I think we could see several vetoes,” she told fellow GOP senators during a pre-vote caucus.
Nobel-winning economist
Kenneth J. Arrow dies at 95
PALO ALTO, Calif. (AP) — Kenneth J. Arrow, the youngest-ever winner of a Nobel prize for economics, whose theories on risk, innovation and the basic mathematics of markets have influenced thinking on everything from voting to health insurance to high finance, has died. He was 95.
Arrow died Tuesday at his home in Palo Alto, in the San Francisco Bay Area, according to his son, David Arrow.
“He was a very loving, caring father and a very, very humble man. He’d do the dishes every night and cared about people very much,” David Arrow said. “I think in his academic career, when people talk about it, it often sounds like numbers and probabilities. But a large focus of his work was how people matter.”
“The fact that people often don’t behave rationally … that was one aspect that he often looked at, how it affected the lives of the people,” he said.