Topeka ? Advocates for people with disabilities said Wednesday they would file lawsuits challenging cuts in welfare spending.

“Ours will be filed within 30 days,” said Kirk Lowry, an attorney at the Topeka Independent Living Resource Center.

And Tom Laing, executive director at Interhab, a state association representing community programs for the developmentally disabled, said his group’s suit could come even sooner.

“I’m expecting – within a 99 percent degree of certainty – that a request for a restraining order will be filed shortly,” he said.

Laing and Lowry announced their groups’ plans during a meeting with more than a dozen other advocacy groups.

Together, the coalition – calling itself “The Big Tent” – also is planning to propose a $60 million tax package.

The legal challenges, Laing said, could delay the cuts long enough to give advocates time to lobby both Gov.-elect Kathleen Sebelius and the Legislature for funds.

Most of the cuts are expected to take effect Feb. 1.

Gov. Bill Graves last month ordered the Department of Social and Rehabilitation Services to cut $26.6 million from its $2.2 billion budget to help offset a projected $312 million shortfall in the current budget year, which ends June 30.

Because most SRS programs match federal money with state money, the cut is expected to reduce SRS’ total spending by $49 million.

“There’s a bunch of due process in this that’s been skipped,” said Mike Oxford, executive director of Topeka Independent Living Resource Center.

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Most Medicaid waiver programs require states to hear appeals – and appeals of lost appeals – before cuts can take effect, Oxford said.

Like Independence Inc. in Lawrence, Topeka Independent Living Resource Center helps people with physical disabilities live in their own homes and avoid moving to nursing homes.

Under the latest cuts, 350 physically disabled adults – most of them in wheelchairs – will lose their in-home services. An additional 118 waiting for services will be told they’re no longer eligible.

The group’s revenue package is expected to include:

• Increases in taxes on alcohol, tobacco products and soft drinks.
• A 10 percent increase in the state’s corporate income tax.
• A two-mill increase in the state 20-mill property tax levy.

Oxford also proposed adding brackets to the state’s income tax code.

“The way it is now, the guy who’s working his butt off for $36,000 a year is in the same bracket as David Wittig – that’s ridiculous,” he said, referring to the former Westar Energy executive who was paid millions of dollars despite the company’s poor performance.

The group will have a hard time getting its tax package past the House subcommittee assigned to the SRS budget.

“I’m not going to support a tax increase,” said Rep. Brenda Landwehr, R-Wichita. “I believe there’s enough in other areas of the budget that we can trim, and I’ve still not heard the word ‘furlough.'”

Also, Landwehr said she’d rather reduce SRS’ cuts by sharing them with the state’s public schools and universities.

“I can’t raise taxes on people who don’t have any money,” Landwehr said. “Hey, I’m from Wichita – down here, Cessna just got through laying off another 1,500 workers.”