Topeka ? Is this any way to run a state government?

Janis Lee doesn’t think so.

When Gov. Bill Graves ordered an across-the-board cut to state agencies because of plummeting tax revenue, his Department of Administration increased the charge for services it provides to other state agencies – in some cases by as much as 800 percent.

State Sen. Lee, D-Kensington, said it was just one example of how state government must be reformed when Gov.-elect Kathleen Sebelius is sworn into office Jan. 13.

Lee is working on Sebelius’ transition team and fielding calls from state employees and the public about how to better run state government.

“It doesn’t seem appropriate that one agency tries to keep its budget inflated by jacking up the prices for services it provides to another agency,” Lee said. “It seems quite unfair.”

She said the Department of Administration move showed how some bureaucrats were more interested in protecting turf than working as a team.

“There’s not an understanding that we are a state government as a whole as opposed to a whole group of individual agencies,” she said.

But department spokesman Ben Bauman said the agency did nothing wrong.

After Graves cut the budget in August, the department lost funding for basic supervisory training, which is a required 40-hour course for state employees in some agencies who are going into supervisory positions.

The department used to charge state agencies $95 for the course.

But after the budget cuts, it increased that cost to other agencies – first to $295, then $595 and finally $795. Bauman said the extra charge was needed to offset the cuts and pay for the expense of the program.

Lee said an official with the Juvenile Justice Authority told her the authority offered to develop its own course instead of paying $795 for the course from the department. But that official was told that it would cost $2,000 for the department to approve the course curriculum.

Bauman said that $2,000 fee was discussed, but not implemented, and now the department is allowing agencies to develop their own courses, if that is what they want to do.

Lee said Sebelius’ transition team was getting an earful of complaints from agencies about charges for services from DOA and the state’s computer department.

She said no state lawmaker wanted one state agency to handle its budget at the expense of another agency.