Topeka ? Advocates for services to low-income, elderly Kansans on Thursday patrolled the Capitol lobbying for more money but came up empty-handed.

Marcus Farr, a care program specialist with the Jayhawk Area Agency on Aging, which provides services in Douglas County, said budget cuts had hit the agency hard.

“It’s challenging. We’re doing everything we can with limited resources,” Farr said.

Budget cuts in the current fiscal year have produced waiting lists for Kansas seniors seeking to receive assistance at home.

Some of those cuts are restored under Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ proposed budget for the 2004 fiscal year, which starts July 1, but not enough to prevent continued waiting lists.

“We really took great pains to buy those lists back down again and restore that money in the ’04 budget,” Sebelius said Thursday at a news conference. “We are still away from having all of the people served in the community who need that kind of service, and that needs to be a top priority.”

Though she frequently has talked about the need for additional revenue in her budget proposal, Sebelius has not said how she planned to make that happen.

Newly appointed Secretary of Aging Pamela Johnson-Betts did not have any answers how to address the waiting lists, either.

“I haven’t had the opportunity to go to the agency at this point, so I look forward to working with the staff and the Governor’s Office and the administration to address those issues,” she said at the news conference.

Johnson-Betts is a former social worker in the Topeka school district and earned a master’s degree in social work from Kansas University.

Representatives of many of the state’s 11 area agencies on aging, responsible for delivering community-based services to the elderly, were in the Capitol during “Older Kansans Day 2003.”