The administration of Gov. Sam Brownback closed a successful re-election campaign by issuing a news release for consumption by potential voters that touted progress in decreasing poverty in Kansas.

The Kansas Department for Children and Families announced Oct. 20 poverty in the state had plummeted 2.3 percent under Brownback's guidance from 2011 to 2013. The information was a rebuttal to critics asserting Kansas' safety net for the poor was eroding.

"Poverty prevention doesn't happen overnight," DCF Secretary Phyllis Gilmore said, "but it is great to see that we're moving in the right direction."

Kansas Fact Meter finds the agency's claim of a 2.3 percent decline in poverty to be false. In this instance, the agency concurred a mistake was made but declined to disseminate a corrected version of the news release.

Kansas Health Institute, a nonprofit organization in Topeka dedicated to coverage of health issues, was the first to identify the agency's miscue in describing the level of poverty. DCF issued a revised statement exclusively to KHI, but didn't deliver the information to other news entities that received the department's original release.

The task of summarizing poverty rates can be complicated because a series of U.S. Census Bureau reports look at the issue from different angles. When preparing the pre-election news release in late October, a DCF spokeswoman said, agency officials inadvertently combined figures from separate poverty measures to substantiate an improvement.

"We misread the report," said Theresa Freed, a spokeswoman for DCF. "There was no intent to mislead anyone."

Gilmore said in the revised statement given to KHI that no dramatic decrease in Kansas poverty had occurred during the Brownback era. She said a reduction in poverty among children was "slight," but expressed confidence in effectiveness of strategies deployed to move in a positive direction.

Two Census Bureau measures have been frequently relied upon to assess poverty in Kansas. The federal agency generates for each state what is known as the official poverty measure, or CPS, as well as a supplemental poverty measure, or SPM. Both are framed in three-year rolling averages.

The CPS for Kansas showed a decrease in poverty to 14.1 percent in the 2011-2013 period from 14.5 percent in the 2010-2012. CPS is the Census Bureau's broad measure of poverty among Kansans of all ages.

Meanwhile, the SPM in Kansas increased to 11.8 percent in 2011-2013 from 11.5 percent in 2010-2012. SPM factors financial influences of taxes and medical or child care expenses that reduce a family's income to buy essentials of food, clothing, shelter and utilities.

Freed said the original news release sent statewide by DCF arrived at a 2.3 percent decline in Kansas poverty by subtracting the latest SPM of 11.8 percent from the updated CPS of 14.1 percent. The numbers aren’t intended to be manipulated in that manner.

Shannon Cotsoradis, president and chief executive officer at Kansas Action for Children, said a decrease in the state's CPS reflected national economic improvements.

A rise in SPM during the same period was likely because of a drop in Kansans' participation in public assistance programs, she said.

Ironically, the initial DCF news release highlighted — incorrectly, in terms of Kansas — decline in the supplemental poverty measure by including a statement by Census Bureau economist Kathleen Short that compared it to the official poverty measure.

"The supplemental poverty measure is an important tool that helps policymakers and the public judge the effectiveness of social safety-net programs in a way that the official poverty measure cannot," Short said. "It also helps us track how necessary expenses, such as paying taxes or work-related and medical out-of-pocket expenses affect the well-being of all families."

The issue of poverty has been a point of emphasis for Brownback. During his 2010 campaign for governor, he declared one of his top priorities to be a decrease in the percentage of Kansas children living in poverty.

He said during the 2014 campaign for re-election the administration's welfare-to-work reform of the anti-poverty program Temporary Assistance for Needy Families encouraged thousands of low-income parents to get a job rather than take aid.

Brownback said on the campaign stump he "cut in half" the state's welfare roll. He was speaking of TANF enrollment, which declined under his leadership by more than 50 percent from 38,963 in 2011 to 17,681 in 2014.

Cotsoradis said the state's 95,000 low-income families deserved TANF reforms that did more than emphasize narrowing of eligibility to exclude people from benefits.

"It's time to revise TANF policies to ensure this program is working for Kansas families instead of against them," she said. "We spend a lot of time blaming poor adults ... instead of policy choices that don't serve poor families very well."

Gilmore said the state's poverty rate for children appeared to be on the decline. In July, the Census Bureau released the American Communities Survey related to children 0-17 years of age. That survey indicated the percentage in Kansans fell in 2013 to 18.7 percent, down 0.3 points from 2012.

In October, the Current Population Survey by the Census Bureau indicated the Kansas poverty rate for those 0-18 years of age fell to 21.1 percent in 2013, a decline of 2 points from a year earlier.

Gilmore said the state would continue investment in Jobs for America's Graduates, a Kansas reading initiative and other programs in a bid to depress child poverty rates.