Dodge City ? Ford County taxpayers and their local community colleges are taking action to reinstate tax money lost by the passage of a Senate bill that requires only counties that have community colleges to fund them.

Kansas counties supported community colleges with tax dollars before 1999, when the bill made it through the Legislature. It took about six years to phase out support from other counties, leaving 18 counties to pay for all Kansas community colleges.

The bill in Ford County alone: $860,000 in tax money that other counties would have paid for students attending Dodge City Community College and Dodge City Vocational Technical School.

Terry Malone, a Dodge City Community College trustee, said many people weren’t aware of how community colleges are funded.

“The plan is first to do an educational campaign – go to (Kansas) Board of Regents, go to the Legislature, and go to the people and let them know,” Malone said. “There is no political solution to this problem. If you have 18 counties out of 105 that bear the financial burden, you have 87 counties that don’t have to pay a dime.”

Malone added that trustees also are considering filing a lawsuit against the state.

“Just as Salina and Dodge City school districts did to correct the K-12 situation,” Malone said. “And they were successful.”

Previously, Hodgeman, Gray, Clark and Edwards counties – which all currently send students to Ford County community colleges – would have paid $24 per credit hour for out-of-district tuition, Dodge City Community College trustee Morris Reeves said.

About 500 students came from outside of Ford County during the 2004-05 school year. If each student took a full schedule of 30 credit hours at Dodge City Community College, Ford County would have lost about $720 in tax money per student or about $360,000 total.

At Dodge City Vocational Technical School, Reeves said residents lost out on closer to $500,000 in tax money.

While other counties conceivably could offer to support the community colleges, the trustees said in 40 years there has never been a county that has volunteered to help.

“Obviously, the odds are stacked against us getting any solution,” Malone said.