Topeka ? The two main candidates for Kansas governor Tuesday repeated their pledge of support for the state’s public schools  but they declined to say where they’d get the money to back that support.

Democrat Kathleen Sebelius and Republican Tim Shallenburger told school board members from across the state that elimination of waste in government was a good place to look for education funding.

Both also said a tax increase was not the answer, a stance that drew skepticism from lawmakers, educators and others at the Kansas Association of School Boards’ seminar on education politics.

Sen. John Vratil, a Leawood Republican, said the no-tax talk was nonsense.

The state’s revenue shortfall could balloon to more than $600 million by next year. Vratil said anyone who was saying the state could get past the 2003 session without a tax increase simply was churning out campaign rhetoric.

“It cannot be done,” Vratil said. “There will be a tax increase before the Legislature adjourns.”

John Koepke, executive director of the association, predicted the candidates would keep up their refusal to support a statewide tax increase until after the November election.

He said the next governor would wake up Nov. 5 and claim “nobody told them how bad it was, and it’s all (Gov.) Bill Graves’ fault.”

Rep. Ralph Tanner, a Baldwin Republican who is chairman of the House Education Committee, said in an interview that neither Shallenburger nor Sebelius had laid out a plausible approach to repairing the state budget and school funding.

“I honestly don’t believe either one of the gubernatorial candidates. They’re just whistling ‘Dixie,'” he said.

Everyone in politics was talking about education these days, Tanner said, but added, “The problem right now is everybody has a remedy, but no one has enough votes (in the Legislature) to get any of them passed.”

With three weeks left before Election Day, Sebelius and Shallenburger appeared separately before about 100 superintendents and school board members.

Both candidates said they would support legislation that removed the cap on the “local option budget,” or LOB.

The LOB law was established in 1992. It allows a local school board to raise property taxes for schools up to 25 percent of the state’s general fund budget appropriation to the district. Lawrence has been at the 25 percent cap for years.

In the last legislative session, lawmakers considered allowing school boards to raise the LOB by 5 percent more than the cap. That’s appealing to some lawmakers because it raises tax dollars for education at home but shields officeholders from responsibility for a tax increase.

Sebelius said removal of the lid was necessary to assist districts at the cap because of declining enrollment and a state budget cut.

“In too many districts across the state, what we have is a pressure cooker,” she said.

Sebelius said more should be done at the state level to help districts improve teacher salaries and benefits.

However, Shallenburger said Kansas teachers had asked him to address problems with solutions that wouldn’t cost the state millions of dollars.

For example, he said, teachers believe they’re required to spend too much time on paperwork. They also complain they’ve had the power to effectively discipline students stripped from their arsenal, he said.

“We hear this,” Shallenburger said. “Those are things we can address without a lot of financial assistance.”