Everyone agrees the key issue in the 2005 legislative session, which begins today, will be education.

But with legislators facing a Supreme Court order to revamp the state’s K-12 school system, it’s unclear whether colleges and universities will be able to jump on the education bandwagon or will be competing for funds.

“In some respects, it always is (a competition), because there’s always only a fixed number of tax dollars to go around,” said Paul Carttar, executive vice chancellor for external affairs at Kansas University. “But there will be additional pressures that will be placed on the budget because of the K-12 issue. In the end, our job remains the same.”

And that will mean pushing for a slate of initiatives that is broader than in recent years, when the state’s tight financial situation meant much of the regents system’s lobbying was spent attempting to preserve the universities’ base budgets.

Reggie Robinson, president and CEO of the Kansas Board of Regents, said he was as eager as anyone to see how K-12 interests would mesh with higher education during the session.

“Nobody knows, but everybody wonders,” Robinson said. “I don’t have any particular insight into that.”

There have been signs that a possible boost to public school funding won’t come at the cost of higher education.

House Speaker Doug Mays, for one, said he hoped universities could receive a budget boost this session. But the Topeka Republican stopped short of saying how much of an increase he’d advocate.

“Higher education has gotten the short end of the stick,” Mays said. “Higher education has been neglected. They have suffered.”

KU lobbying team in place

Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, who presents her proposed budget to legislators Tuesday, also is talking in terms of a complete education system in Kansas, dubbed P-16, for preschool through college, by some.

“We can’t have a situation any longer, as it has been the case too often, where educators are fighting among themselves,” Sebelius said in a recent interview. “If you take K-12 and higher ed, we are really at 70, 75 percent of the budget.”

Failing infrastructure

The top legislative priority for the entire regents system will be finding a funding source to repair an estimated $584.5 million in backlogged repair projects on the six state university campuses. KU’s share of the list is $168.5 million in Lawrence and the $68.8 million at the Medical Center in Kansas City, Kan.

The so-called “deferred maintenance” issue has been discussed by legislators for several years, but regents have yet to put forward a specific proposal to pay for the repairs.

Possibilities include increasing the state’s educational building fund and issuing bonds to pay for the repairs. Robinson said regents still were working to decide what method they might advocate.

Stephen Morris, Senate president-elect, said he was hopeful the Legislature could begin addressing the deferred maintenance problem this year.

“I’ve given it a lot of thought over the last two or three years,” Morris said. “It is something that really has to be done. But having said that, trying to find the resources to address it this year may be difficult.”

University control

Two other legislative priorities involve increased local control of higher education, Carttar said.

One is allowing universities to exempt their classified employees from the state civil service system. KU administrators, who are pushing for the change, say the exemption would give them greater flexibility in hiring and allow them to pay employees more.

But the proposal is expected to draw opposition from organized labor and some classified employees, who say they would lose protections offered by civil service.

The other local control issue involves allowing universities to retain interest earned on tuition and fees collected on campuses. Currently, that money goes to the state general fund.

The interest amounts to about $2.7 million across the state, including about $900,000 in Lawrence and $174,000 at the Medical Center.

“Both of these we see as being philosophically consistent to principles the Legislature has been in favor of in recent years, and that’s giving the university the ability to manage itself consistent with the expectations the Legislature sets for it,” Carttar said.

He said that despite state budget woes in recent years and the K-12 situation, university officials remained optimistic about the upcoming session.

“Considering the state budget problems the last three years, in the end, we’re pretty impressed with the support of the governor and Legislature,” Carttar said. “Now, we’d expect the money issue to be somewhat less contentious. We see some opportunities there.”

— Staff writer Scott Rothschild contributed information to this report.