Hutchinson ? The number of traffic tickets issued by the Kansas Highway Patrol dropped in July, but patrol officials said a new policy reducing the time officers are driving did not contribute to the decline.

The highway patrol issued more moving violation tickets in May and June than it had in the same two months of 2007 and 2008. But numbers for July 2009 were 7.6 percent less than in July 2008 and 3.7 percent less than in July 2007.

August statistics are not yet available.

On July 1, the highway patrol began a policy of reducing troopers’ driving time by 10 percent in an effort to save money amid state budget problems. It said troopers would spend more time sitting next to highways and issuing tickets.

Many troopers had already reduced driving time and the plan to reduce mileage “simply means more of us will be doing that,” said Technical Trooper Edna Buttler, from the highway patrol’s general headquarters in Topeka.

Buttler said July’s numbers didn’t seem to be that much of a difference from the past.

“If you’re trying to say the patrol is reducing its quality of service to the public, you won’t be able to see that,” she said.

Highway Patrol Capt. Dennis Marten, based in Wichita, said the new policy wouldn’t restrict troopers, who are still able to monitor traffic and look for other violations while sitting in parked vehicles.

State Budget Director Duane Goossen said that after court costs, the money paid for fines from highway patrol-issued citations go into the state’s general fund.

“It’s a relatively small piece of the revenue stream,” he said, but “that will bear watching” to see if the stream narrows.