Two northeast Kansas men are making a run for the Kansas House for the 63rd District seat.
Republican John Eplee, MD of Atchison and Democrat W. Brett Neibling of Doniphan are running for the seat that has long been held by Democrat Jerry Henry who is making a run for the Kansas Senate.
Eplee is a doctor in Atchison and Neibling is a farmer in Highland. Both sat down with KFEQ’s Barry Birr for an interview on the issues and said they have plans to tackle economics within the state.
“What’s been going on with our state and our public schools really got me inspired to get involved. My wife is a public school teacher, I have two young girls who are going to go to public schools and I just felt like it was something that needed to be done, that I needed to get involved,” Neibling said.
“I have served on our school board locally for six years and my first introduction to state funding was not getting funded adequately for the entire time I’ve been on the school board but particularly the first two years. We had physical year cuts and then we had mid-year cuts and it made it very hard on administration to run a fluid smooth program,” Eplee said.
The Kansas budget is an issue both candidates are looking at.
“We’ve had to borrow vast amounts of money from the department of transportation, over a billion dollars over the last several years, we have cut higher education which is really serious in the state of Kansas,” Eplee said. “It’s really a wide-spread problem and it’s really predicated on revenue and budget and that’s what we have to dive into and solve.”
“What’s happened is our education budget have been almost a slush fund for running our government. I’m not opposed to tax cuts, I’m a farmer I think it’s necessary to generate revenue. It stimulates the economy. It’s important. But what happened with the tax experiment in Kansas is I think we jumped into the pool without knowing how to swim,” Neibling said. “I’m not advocating tax increases but we need to be able to sit down and have an honest conversation about these issues.”
Eplee said looking ahead that a tax increase could be needed in the state to improve the state budget.
“I think truth be known and the time is right and there is a hunger to put back some of the tax loopholes that were created in 2012 for business and perhaps not in full in part or incrementally. Depending on how the budget preforms,” Eplee said. “I think we at least need to revisit sales tax for gasoline.”
Looking ahead towards the future Neibling said he feels issues that will be important to the state in the next 10 to 20 years are energy and water.
“For the past three years I’ve serves on numerous water boards dealing with the water shortage we have in Kansas,” Neibling said. “I believe we’re going to have to deal with rising energy costs across the state.”
The 63rd district covers Doniphan and Atchison counties. Voters will decide who will fill the 63rd district during the Nov. 8 General Election.