Legislators Puzzled by Kansas Governor : Politics: Finney leaves lawmakers cooling heels while she performs on harp. ‘I don’t want to play the game,’ she says in response to critics.

The Kansas Legislature failed Tuesday to override Democratic Gov. Joan Finney’s veto of a budget containing big sales and income tax hikes, but the narrowness of the vote was another sign of trouble for Finney and her new--some would say odd--style of populism.

Since narrowly winning election last year on a platform of reducing property taxes, the 66-year-old Finney has puzzled and alienated legislators with what many consider eccentric behavior and caustic remarks.

She made few friends in Topeka, for example, when she was quoted earlier this month as saying, “I don’t care if the Legislature burns in hell if they don’t have enough courage” to pass her budget bill.

Also, at least one Republican representative was offended when he and other legislators went to the governor’s mansion for breakfast last March and Finney left them alone briefly while she played a song on her harp in the next room.

She is an accomplished musician and played the harp on CBS’ “This Morning” show recently.

Earlier this month, she panicked her security guards by hitching a ride to work.

Privately, some observers compare her to ousted Arizona Gov. Evan Mecham and talk of the “wackiness factor.” Other critics say she is in over her head.

“She doesn’t understand the way (the Legislature) operates, formally or informally,” Burdette Loomis, a University of Kansas political scientist, said. “She may not be up to playing the game.”

For her part, Finney, who was state treasurer for 16 years, says she understands the game very well but doesn’t approve of it.

“I don’t want to participate,” she said in an interview in her office. “I don’t want to play the game . . . . Frankly, the game bores me.”

She said that some of her problems with the Legislature stem from her being the state’s first woman governor, but she added: “This has really become a battle over ideology. Are the people going to run the state or special interests?”

Earlier this month, she vetoed the 1992 budget, which would have raised income and sales taxes by $138.3 million.

Critics contend that the veto guarantees deep cuts in services, social programs and education, although Finney and her backers note that a $130-million reserve fund can stave off the worst.

“By vetoing the budget, she guaranteed that the very thing she wanted to keep from happening is going to happen,” Loomis said. “All across the state, you’re going to have school boards faced with either cutting programs or raising taxes sharply.”

The two major bills Finney introduced this year--one that would have given voters powers of initiative and referendum, the other a $786-million budget bill--both were buried by the Legislature.

Her budget bill--which would have imposed a 1% sales tax on 77 categories of services, including accounting and law services, and eliminated 35 categories of sales-tax exemptions--didn’t even get out of a Democratic-controlled committee.

Finney lays claim to the populist tradition in Kansas, where the word was virtually invented a century ago when poor farmers, frustrated by economic conditions, demanded free coinage of silver and government control of monopolies.

But Finney’s critics call her brand of politics “bourgeois populism” at best, saying her defeated budget bill, which so scrupulously avoided property tax increases, was designed to appease wealthy property owners.

Theo Cribbs, a representative from a Wichita district in which 70% of the population is below the poverty level, said his constituents are the people who will be hurt the most by Finney’s budget veto.

Finney’s strongest support in the Legislature comes from Republicans. Mention this to Finney, and she replies, “But they’re people, too.”

Finney left the Republican Party in 1974 when she was asked to step aside in a congressional race so a man could seek the seat. She became a Democrat and won the state treasurer’s office in that year.

She contends that, by taking her appeals directly to the public, she is winning much grass-roots support for her cause.

“You’re talking to the legislators in this building,” she chided a reporter. “I suggest you follow me around this state and get with the people. Then you’ll see my support.”

She and the Legislature will probably have to deal with an even greater budget crisis next year.

On Tuesday, she didn’t rule out the possibility of a tax increase next year.

“I’m really not concerned about my political fate. I’m simply concerned about doing what I believe is in the best interest of Kansas,” she said during a press conference.