Topeka ? Negotiators fashioned a new budget-balancing package of $257 million in tax increases Tuesday, and Republican leaders declared they would end the session even if it didn’t pass.

The House had rejected all significant tax increase proposals, and leaders of both parties saw little progress Tuesday the session’s record 104th calendar day until negotiators finished their work.

	Elements of the latest tax package to be considered by the Kansas Legislature. Raise the state’s 4.9 percent sales tax to 5.3 percent on July 1, then drop it to 5.2 percent in 2004 and to 5 percent in 2005.Raise the 24-cent cigarette tax to 89 cents, double the wholesale tax on tobacco products to 20 percent and tax property inherited by nephews, nieces and nonrelatives.Provide $5.7 million in tax breaks to poor families and $3.6 million to businesses.Raise wholesale taxes on beer, wine and liquor.

Legislators were striving to fill a $290 million funding gap in the $4.4 billion budget they sent Gov. Bill Graves for the fiscal year that begins July 1.

The tax package drafted by House and Senate negotiators wouldn’t quite raise enough money, but GOP leaders accepted it as better than nothing.

Elements of the package were in two bills.

One, to be considered first by the House, would raise the state’s 4.9 percent sales tax to 5.3 percent on July 1, then drop it to 5.2 percent in 2004 and to 5 percent in 2005.

It would also raise the 24-cent cigarette tax to 89 cents, double the wholesale tax on tobacco products to 20 percent and tax property inherited by nephews, nieces and nonrelatives.

The estimated $261 million in revenue from those steps would be offset by tax breaks worth $5.7 million to poor families and another $3.6 million to businesses.

A separate bill, to be taken up first by the Senate, would generate $5.5 million by raising the wholesale taxes on beer, wine and liquor.

“It is at least another step forward,” said House Taxation Committee Chairman John Edmonds, R-Great Bend, one of the negotiators.

House Speaker Kent Glasscock and Senate President Dave Kerr aimed to end the session today even without passage of a tax plan. Graves has promised to call legislators into the first special session since December 1989 if they don’t approve a tax package.

“Something’s got to happen here pretty quick,” said Glasscock, R-Manhattan. “I am disinclined to continue this rather pathetic agony.”

In 125-member House, where a similar tax package was rejected Monday on a 71-50 vote, support for the new measures was expected from most of the 79 Republicans. But many conservative Republicans continued to oppose any tax increases, and Democrats remained insistent that income taxes should also be raised.

Democrats said higher sales and excise taxes would raise the prices of consumer goods and hurt poor and working class.

“It still seems to be a one-way street,” said House Minority Leader Jim Garner, D-Coffeyville.