(KAIR)--The Kansas Legislature gets back to business on January 12th for what appears to be a busy session.

State Representative Jerry Henry says there are numerous issues set to be addressed, including education funding. The Cummings Democrat says he expects significant discussion on the topic during the upcoming session. He says that “The Governor has already talked about how he would like to change some functions in schools , how can we get more money to the classroom? Are there some issues that we can talk about in the way of using technology? I think you are going to see some more pressure on consolidation of small schools, I think we are going to see more discussion of sharing administrators and sharing teachers...we are going to have a lot of discussion on money for schools, but also on how schools are operated”.

Henry says taxes, as the result of controversial policies of Governor Sam Brownback, will be at the center of the upcoming budget discussion. He believes there will be a debate on the floor concerning the possible increase of the state sales tax, as well as if the income tax should be eliminated or not. Henry says “That's a big movement now by the Governor and by probably a vast majority of legislators. They would like to see  income tax completely eliminated for cooperations and for individuals, but we may have to raise sales tax, because a lot of legislators feel that is more fair than our current income tax situation”.

Henry adds that he feels there should be a clear plan to deal with these issues as they move forward, saying that he thinks they need to get their tax and revenue structure together. “We will never reascend all the tax cuts that are happening,” he says, “but maybe we can smooth out some in the future and look at that. We have to walk out of there with not only a balanced budget, we should really talk about how we are going to get through the next one to three years and make sure we got things taken care of”.

Although the 2015 session starts January 12th, the traditional, official start will come after Governor Sam Brownback delivers his state of the state address.

That will happen at 6:30 on the evening of January 15th at the Statehouse in Topeka.