TPiH 51 Chris Courtwright

For this episode of That Podcast in Hutch, I decided to publish a recent event I hosted, that featured Chris Courtwright. For 35 years, Chris was the chief economist with the Kansas Legislative Research Department. In that role, he helped inform legislators about the consequences of changes to tax and spending policies through his research and staffing of the taxation and appropriations committees. He also worked with the Consensus Revenue Estimating group - a group of various industry experts who gather twice a year to calculate the next year's economic conditions, and the amount of expected state revenue. The work of the CRE is by statute what the governor must base a budget on, and it's what legislators rely on as they deliberate spending decisions. In this presentation, Chris goes through a good history of tax policy in Kansas, and he points out how changes in one area of taxation often lead to increases in other areas. He also throws in some very interesting history - including a reference to a Reno County lawyer who later became Governor and an Appellate Court Judge. If you want to follow along with his slideshow, you can access that here. If you'd rather watch the presentation on video, I've uploaded it to Youtube