Wichita ? An effort by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office to track down parole absconders hasn’t been in operation since spring because of budget restraints, officials confirmed Monday.

Atty. Gen. Phill Kline said he planned to restart the program later this year, but he’s not sure when.

The task force, which was started in July 2003 after The Wichita Eagle reported that more than two dozen Kansas residents had been killed by parolees between 1999 and 2002, was credited with the arrests of 75 absconders in less than a year.

Kline spokesman Whitney Watson said that starting in March, Operation PADLOC stopped tracking down violent criminals who skip out on parole officers.

The Kansas Department of Corrections for the past decade has had its own program for tracking down parole absconders. That effort employs 13 corrections officers statewide, including four in Wichita.

Corrections department spokesman Bill Miskell said assistance from the attorney general’s task force, which includes agents from the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, was “more than welcome,” in part because the KBI has some databases that the corrections department doesn’t have.

But Gov. Kathleen Sebelius’ office questioned the need for Kline’s task force when another agency provided the same service.

“To create a whole other entity — that does not seem like a real good use of tax dollars,” said Sebelius spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran. “We already have an established organization that works.”

Corcoran said Sebelius was surprised last year when Kline announced the creation of the PADLOC program.

“The key is, we need to work together, and not separate, on an issue like this,” she said.

Kline said budget limitations caused him to halt the program in the spring, and now his office is struggling with funding for KBI homicide investigations and prosecutions.

KBI has 17 vacant agent positions it can’t afford to fill, Kline said, which is about 20 percent of the agency’s investigative force.

Miskell said that although it’s important to track down missing parolees, the corrections department has bigger priorities, such as trying to restore money for drug and mental health treatment for offenders.

Kline agreed that helping offenders with drug abuse and mental health problems could help keep them from violating parole, but he said it’s also critical to find those who run because they are most likely to commit new crimes.