Sure, you've read the stories, the guesses mostly, about state budget cuts, about tax increases, about state employee layoffs and all the usual things that can be done to assemble a budget for the coming fiscal year.

Well, that's all next year, and the governor and Legislature will hammer out that budget in the upcoming legislative session, which starts Jan. 11.

The most immediate interest of Statehouse old-timers -- who admittedly have relatively short attention spans -- is how Gov. Mark Parkinson gets the state's budget through the current fiscal year, which is nearly five months old, which means that any spending cuts he imposes have to be compressed into just seven months of state operations.

The raw numbers indicate the governor -- if he took the politically problematic, simple long-division option -- would have to make across-the-board budget cuts of nearly 8 percent to every dime the state spends, or planned to spend, this fiscal year, which ends June 30. That simplistic approach means that compressed into the seven months left this fiscal year, the cuts would be well more than 10 percent. That's a lot to cut in a short period of time.

Nobody is looking for that arithmetic solution that virtually would gut state government.

So, we're all waiting, along with you, to see what Parkinson proposes -- virtually orders -- be done to get through this fiscal year. There are estimates the governor would need to cut $460 million in just seven months if he buys into what the Legislature decided to spend last year.

There is no reason to believe he is going to do that.

So, we're going to see strong cuts in some areas, some more minor cuts in others, and we're going to see what essentially is reshaping the state by Parkinson, an ugly job he has agreed to perform.

This might be the most expansive use of the governor's authority at making cuts, called allotments, in recent memory. He'll be deciding what agencies remain, what they can do, what they can't do, and he's going to have to do it quickly. The effects of cuts will radiate from the Statehouse to cities, counties, school districts -- virtually every level of government in Kansas.

Because of the late start and the compression of cuts needed, there is going to be virtually no time for agencies to respond or for the Kansans who deal with those agencies and programs to respond.

It's going to be the most dramatic change we've seen in years. It's going to happen quickly, either this week or maybe next week. If Parkinson has one advantage, it is that the cuts will be so dramatic that few lawmakers are going to want to prevent them.

They have a new budget coming up.

Syndicated by Hawver News Co. of Topeka, Martin Hawver is publisher of Hawver's Capitol Report. To learn more about this statewide political news service, visit www.hawvernews.com.