Topeka ? Legislators thought they’d found a good way to save $6 million in the face of a budget shortfall: Prohibit state agencies from buying new office furniture for a year.

The proposal slipped through both chambers quietly, included as a provision in their versions of a proposed budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

But House and Senate negotiators learned of unintended consequences in the furniture-buying ban and had to modify it Wednesday.

The prohibition would threaten the self-sufficiency of Kansas Correctional Industries, a program that keeps scores of prison inmates busy producing factory-made goods for government agencies.

To the relief of Corrections Secretary Charles Simmons, the negotiators agreed Wednesday to let agencies buy furniture from the program.

Simmons said lawmakers might have been unaware of the potential problem they created.

“I don’t think anybody wants to put Correctional Industries in that kind of fiscal jeopardy,” he told The Kansas City Star.

The program operates 17 factories at prisons in Hutchinson, Lansing and Norton and state and federal surplus property sites in Topeka. During the last fiscal year, the factories employed 457 inmates and had $10.7 million in sales.

Furniture sales were about $3.4 million, and 19 percent about $640,000 worth were to state agencies.

Budget negotiators also agreed to a one-year ban on motor vehicle purchases by all agencies except the Kansas Highway Patrol. If agencies don’t purchase vehicles, they don’t have older vehicles to sell, and Correctional Industries also runs state surplus property sales. In addition, female inmates in Topeka have jobs cleaning up the cars before they are sold.