Topeka ? The state must cut at least another $100 million from its current budget to avoid having a deficit on June 30, legislative leaders said Tuesday.

Those leaders made their assessment after a meeting of the Legislative Budget Committee, which is monitoring the state’s finances. Since the current fiscal year started on July 1, most of the news about the budget has been bad.

Committee members, who include the Senate president and the chairmen and ranking Democrats on the standing House and Senate budget committees, said they expect current $4.4 billion in spending to leave a budget deficit of about $103 million even with the $41 million in cuts that Gov. Bill Graves ordered in August.

And they think the problem could get worse. They said that when the state gets bills for the social services and aid to public schools, the projected deficit could be as high as $200 million.

“It doesn’t look bad it is bad,” said House Appropriations Committee Chairman Kenny Wilk, R-Lansing. “We have bills on the books right now that we don’t have the money to pay.”

They also said the looming deficit for the current fiscal year will compound budget problems that are likely to linger into the state’s 2004 fiscal year. Once legislators figure out how to prevent a deficit in the current budget, they’ll have to pass a balanced state budget for the next fiscal year.

“This hole is so large that it will take massive cuts, the elimination of whole departments, or a revenue enhancement,” said Senate President Dave Kerr, R-Hutchinson.

The committee received preliminary tax collection figures for September, which indicated those collections were $14 million short of expectations for the month $409 million instead of $423 million.

When final numbers are in, probably within a week, the total shortfall for July, August and September is likely to be about $50 million, said State Budget Director Duane Goossen.

He said those numbers suggest that the total revenue shortfall would exceed $200 million for the entire fiscal year, which ends June 30. That would mean revenues of $4.3 billion instead of the anticipated $4.5 billion.

“I think that’s a logical assumption,” Goossen said. “That’s about where we’re tracking.”

Last year, legislators approved $252 million in tax increases to shore up the budget.

But the Legislature doesn’t convene its 2003 session until Jan. 13, and probably won’t be able to consider tax increases to fill the gap quickly enough for the current fiscal year.

“It’s got to be done with spending reductions,” said Senate Ways and Means Committee Chairman Steve Morris, R-Hugoton.

Graves, who is term-limited and will leave office in January, has the authority to order further cuts in the current budget, but Goossen said Graves does not have such plans because he wants to let the new governor and legislators make decisions that play out next year.

For fiscal 2004, Kansas law requires the new governor to propose a budget that leaves a cash balance at the end of the fiscal year equal to 7.5 percent of spending.

Even if legislators cut spending significantly, the new governor will have to propose setting aside $290 million, according to one report from legislative staff.

In addition, state law includes several commitments for new spending, including extra money for employee pensions and higher education. Increases in the cost of social service programs are expected to continue, with federal law requiring those bills to be covered.

Legislators worry that the gap between all spending commitments and expected revenues will approach $800 million for fiscal year 2004.

That gap is more easily dealt with than the looming fiscal 2003 deficit, because legislators can go back on previous commitments and decrease cash reserves they’ll set aside.

But the problem is daunting enough, and about 85 percent of the state’s general tax dollars are spent on public schools, higher education and social services. Aid to public schools alone consumes about half.

Having heard the scenario from Alan Conroy, the Legislature’s chief fiscal analyst, Sen. Paul Feleciano, D-Wichita, told him: “You just gave me a migraine headache.”