$17 million mistake shorts water litigation fund

? Some $17 million that had been set aside for legal battles to protect Kansas’ water rights has “lapsed” into the state’s all-purpose general fund and been spent in other areas of the budget, it was revealed Monday.

Members of the Senate budget committee expressed bi-partisan frustration over the situation.

“If we are going to have lock boxes, the money needs to be put somewhere beside the general fund, so somebody notices the lock has been picked,” said state Sen. Mark Taddiken, R-Clifton.

State Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, said, “I’m not sure how we were allowed to spend it, if it had truly been set aside for a specific purpose.

Ways and Means Chairman Jay Emler, R-Lindsborg, said that in 2007 the Legislature agreed for budgeting purposes to sweep $1 million from the fund that the attorney general’s office used.

But the legislation was written incorrectly and the Legislature inadvertently swept the $1 million plus the remaining $16 million that was already in the fund, Emler said. “Whenever we have a lockbox, we also have a key,” he said.

He said the mistake wasn’t noticed until last year. Now the attorney general’s office is requesting funds to continue the litigation against the states of Nebraska and Colorado as part of long-running legal battles over water in the Republican and Arkansas rivers.

The litigation is crucial to Kansas interests, said Deputy Attorney General Michael Leitch. During 2005 and 2006, Nebraska shorted Kansas an amount of water that would supply a city of 100,000 people for 10 years, he said.