Topeka ? While most of the record 104-day legislative session has been spent on the budget, resolution of a congressional redistricting plan also has proved elusive.

Tuesday, some movement occurred. The Kansas House approved another map redrawing the state’s four congressional districts, but the proposal is expected to face strong opposition in the Senate.

Rep. Ward Loyd, R-Garden City, looks over congressional redistricting maps. The House on Tuesday sent to the Senate another congressional redistricting plan.

“The session is not over. We have to finish the people’s work,” Rep. Mike O’Neal, R-Hutchinson, said as he pushed for support of the new map that splits Lawrence between the 2nd and 3rd districts along Iowa Street.

The Senate was expected to take up the proposed map today.

Kansas is one of only four states still working on congressional redistricting, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures.

“It’s been contentious in almost every state,” said Tim Storey, a redistricting expert for the NCSL.

Lawrence officials have fought for a year to keep the city in the 3rd District, where it is now with the Kansas City area of Johnson and Wyandotte counties.

But plans to do that would split Johnson County, a Republican stronghold that the GOP has been unwilling to divide.

With Republicans in charge of redistricting because of their substantial majorities in the Legislature, the split of Lawrence has become an almost foregone conclusion.

But splitting Lawrence has produced other problems for Republicans.

The split puts a lot of new voters in the 2nd District, which is represented by U.S. Rep. Jim Ryun, a conservative Republican. Many of those new voters have been voting for Democrat Dennis Moore, who currently represents them as the 3rd District congressman.

Now some Republican legislators, in a move thought to help Ryun, want to move Junction City which is evenly divided between Democrats and Republicans from the 2nd District to the 1st District, and then move some Republican-rich counties into the 2nd.

The problem with that option is that Junction City is the town most closely linked to Fort Riley, which Ryun wants to keep in his district.

“It comes down to Jim Ryun and his wishes. The interest of one incumbent Republican congressman is paramount over everything else,” Senate Democratic Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka said.

But a spokesman for Ryun denied the congressman is exerting any undo influence in the redistricting process. In fact, the spokesman said, Ryun wants to keep Junction City in the 1st District.