Topeka ? Asked about the Kansas Board of Regents’ plan to pay for a mammoth backlog of maintenance and repairs at public universities, House Speaker Doug Mays ticked off the problems.

It’s a tax increase.

It will be introduced during an election year.

And it’s complicated.

“Not only are they asking for one tax increase, but two,” the Topeka Republican noted.

Other legislative leaders also see the regents’ plan as a non-starter.

“I’m not sure all the groundwork has been laid to get this issue moving,” said state Senate Republican Leader Derek Schmidt of Independence.

The plan includes a proposed one-tenth-cent statewide sales tax, a one-mill property tax increase and the issuance of $150 million in bonds.

• Regents seeking increased funding (11-13-05)
• Regents expect difficult budget (08-11-05)
• Lawmakers to hear regents requests (08-08-05)
• 6News video: Kansas’s universities need $584 million in maintenance (08-07-05)
• More stories about higher education in the Legislature

The entire plan would raise $1.5 billion in the next 15 years to cover nearly $600 million in deferred maintenance and provide enough for annual maintenance to avoid a future backlog.

University buildings make up about two-thirds of all state buildings. Recent studies have identified hundreds of needed repair projects, some of them crucial to fix safety hazards.

Nearly 40 percent of the universities’ buildings were built between 1960 and 1980 to accommodate the Baby Boom generation of students. Now many of those buildings need major overhauls.

“The valuable infrastructure the state is fortunate to have in place must be properly maintained,” said Donna Shank, chairwoman of the Kansas Board of Regents. “We owe it to Kansas taxpayers to preserve and protect their important investment.”

But two weeks after the plan was unveiled, the proposal hasn’t gained much traction.

“People are very, very uncomfortable with property taxes today, and adding to it is not going to generate a lot of interest,” said state Rep. Kenny Wilk, R-Lansing.

Wilk said the proposal had to work its way through the process, being introduced as a bill and heard in committee, to get the Legislature educated on what is happening.

Schmidt said the regents’ proposal would start discussion about the issue.

“This is a real problem, and it is not going to go away,” Schmidt said of the condition of some university facilities. But he added the call for a tax increase “raised red flags.”

Reggie Robinson, president and chief executive officer of the regents, agreed that the proposal would be a tough sell, but that the problem of deferred maintenance was only going to get more expensive if left unaddressed.

“We recognize political realities and know that moving anything like this forward would be difficult, but at some point you have to put something on the table and engage the issue,” Robinson said.