December 23, 2019

1. Massachusetts reduces state income tax to final rate set by 2000 ballot initiative
2. Kansas governor to make second state supreme court appointment
3. Please consider us when deciding your year-end charitable donations

Massachusetts reduces state income tax to final rate set by 2000 ballot initiative

We cover a lot of ballot measures here in the Brew. But what we don’t see very often are state policy changes resulting from ballot measures passed 20 years earlier.

Massachusetts voters approved Question 4—the Massachusetts Income Tax Rate Reduction Initiative—in 2000 by a vote of 59% to 41%. This measure proposed a law lowering the state's personal income tax on wages and salaries by 0.3 percent per year—from 5.9% to 5%—by 2003. 

When the state income tax rate was 5.3%, the state legislature passed a law in 2002 that modified Question 4 by tying future tax rate decreases to specific revenue milestones. The legislation lowered the state's personal income tax rate by 0.05% every fiscal year that revenue benchmarks were met. These thresholds include the state achieving annual baseline revenue growth of greater than 2.5% over the previous fiscal year and achieving quarterly revenue growth for four consecutive periods over the prior year. 

There were no tax rate reductions until 2012. From 2012 to 2019, the revenue thresholds were met five times, which triggered decreases of 0.05% each time. The state Department of Revenue announced Dec. 13 that the law’s revenue targets were met once again and on Jan. 1, 2020, the income tax rate will decrease to 5%—the target rate established by Question 4.

The rate decrease is expected to lower tax revenue by $185 million for the next full fiscal year, which begins Oct. 1, 2020. Massachusetts is one of nine states with a flat income tax rate. In 2019, the tax rate among those states ranged from 3.07% to 5.25%. Seven states do not have a state income tax.

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Kansas governor to make second state supreme court appointment 

Kansas Governor Laura Kelly (D) made her first appointment to the state’s seven-member supreme court Dec. 16 and will make a second appointment to that court early in 2020. After both new justices are seated, Democratic governors will have appointed five Kansas Supreme Court justices and Republican governors will have appointed two.

Kelly appointed Justice Evelyn Wilson to the state supreme court last week. Wilson succeeds Lee Johnson, who was first appointed by Gov. Kathleen Sebelius (D) in 2007. Lawton Nuss—who served as chief justice since 2010—retired on Dec. 17. Nuss was originally appointed by Gov. Bill Graves (R) in 2002.

When a vacancy occurs on the Kansas Supreme Court, the governor selects a replacement from a list of three individuals submitted by the Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission. Newly appointed justices serve for at least one year, after which they must run for retention in the next general election. Subsequent terms last for six years.  

The Kansas Supreme Court Nominating Commission is a nine-member independent body created by the Kansas Constitution. Four members are non-lawyers appointed by the governor. Four are attorneys chosen by a vote of all licensed attorneys in each of the state's four congressional districts. The chair of the commission is a lawyer chosen in a statewide vote of the Kansas Bar Association.

Kansas voters will decide retention elections for two state supreme court justices in 2020. In addition to Wilson, Justice Eric Rosen—who was appointed to the court in 2005 by Sebelius—also faces a retention election. Thirty-five states are holding state supreme court elections in 2020, with 83 of the nation’s 344 state supreme court seats up for election. 

The map below shows which states are holding elections for supreme court seats in 2020. The darker a state appears in the map, the more seats that are on the ballot. States shown in gray are not holding supreme court elections in 2020. This data is subject to change if judges retire or are newly appointed.

Please consider us when deciding your year-end charitable donations 

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