The Drudge-driven story in Kansas, that state tax returns are on hold, is, of course, not what it seems. The state is not really going to stop funding schools, close the hospitals, and start starving old folks, as local news reports have suggested.

Instead, the story is an example of Democratic Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’s skill at playing the Kansas media the way Joshua Bell saws a fiddle — while the state GOP plays it like Cap’n Hook.

The state’s broke and, like many of us, has been living on credit. It’s against the law in Kansas to run up a deficit — and Sebelius has pushed that deficit to record levels — but when things get tight, there’s a legal way to gain a little change to get by.

Sebelius knew about this coming shortfall because the state legislature has been telling her about it for months. Instead of following the rules, she let the clock run out, cancelled a meeting to discuss the problem with legislative leaders, and then sent out a press release claiming the poor would soon die because Republicans had made her stop sending people their tax refunds. The press did the rest.

But as Kansas House Speaker Mike O’Neal, an expert in state constitutional law, told Kansas Liberty, a statewide news site, “Kansas for years has had on the books procedures a governor can follow in times like these, but she’s refused to exercise those options, to the detriment of the state. She’s better than that.” What Sebelius wanted the lawmakers to do, he said, was against the law.

Her motive? A budget bill has to be signed, and it contains cuts in programs Sebelius likes. Critics say she’s trying to buy time and will sit on the budget for as long as possible once it crosses her desk, something she herself has promised to do, saying she’s worried about “errors” in the budget. The budget she proposed, meanwhile, would have resulted in an illegal deficit of many millions of dollars.

Meanwhile, O’Neal’s encouraging state employees who are worried about getting their paychecks to call the governor.

“They’re capable of making payroll if they choose to do it,” O’Neal said.

— Denis Boyles is the author, most recently, of Superior, Nebraska. He directs the Brouzils Seminars and is completing a book on early twentieth-century publishing for Knopf.