Kansas legislators didn’t exactly do themselves proud as they wrapped up business and headed out of town Sunday.

By slim majorities, the House and Senate passed a bill that will provide $129 million in the next fiscal year to correct what the Kansas Supreme Court ruled were unconstitutional funding inequities among wealthy and poor school districts in the state. That was really all legislators had to do to meet the court’s July 1 deadline, but they didn’t stop there. In order to gain votes from legislators who may not otherwise support the funding, lawmakers tacked on provisions that cancel due process rights for K-12 public school teachers, created a tax credit for companies donating to private school scholarship funds and formed a K-12 commission to study options for more efficient operation and management of school districts.

In the process, legislators also left themselves open to charges of squelching debate and violating the Kansas Open Meetings Act by failing to adequately notify news media and committee members of a meeting of the House-Senate conference committee on the bill early Sunday morning.

The compromise passed both the House (63-57) and Senate (22-16) on slim six-vote margins. Those voting against the measure were Democrats and a mix of moderate and a few conservative Republicans who either thought the bill went too far or not far enough on non-budget issues like the scholarship program and teacher tenure.

Regardless of how Kansans feel about any of the policy issues that were tacked onto the school finance measure, they may feel somewhat cheated by the way those measures were passed — without any committee hearings or opportunity for testimony from school officials or the public at large. Public school teachers lined the halls of the capitol last weekend in protest of the tenure measure but were given no formal opportunity for input on the legislation that was being passed.

That kind of process was impossible at this point of the session. Rather than delaying action on the measures until they could be more carefully considered, legislative leaders turned the issues into bargaining chips designed to tip the balance on the school finance vote. None of them had anything to do with the central purpose of the bill, but they were tacked on to attract just enough votes to pass the measure.

Such dealings certainly are not unique to this legislative session, but the small margin of victory for this bill and the significance of the side issues attached to it raise some additional concerns this year. It is, at least, disappointing to see important issues being settled by a handful of legislative negotiators rather than receive the public hearing and input they deserve.