Mary Poppins might be proud of the Kansas Legislature, which seemed to adopt her philosophy that “a spoon full of sugar helps the medicine go down.”

To gain approval for legislation funding K-12 schools and the state’s court system, legislators sweetened the deal by throwing in major policy changes. The policy changes attracted the necessary votes to pass the bills, but some Kansans — especially teachers and court officials — are finding those changes plenty hard to swallow.

The loss of due process for teachers has spurred public protests around the state. The only public criticism of the judicial budget has come from the Kansas Supreme Court but it nonetheless has a significant effect on how district courts are run and potentially the level of service they provide to state residents.

The court budget signed by Gov. Brownback this week limits the Supreme Court’s role in how the state’s 31 district handle their individual budgets. The administrative judge in each of those districts now will be chosen by the judges in that district and will be responsible for managing the district’s budget. Previously, the state Supreme Court appointed the administrative judge and oversaw the budgets for all the district courts, providing some much-needed flexibility in managing a tight court budget.

The Supreme Court opposed the legislation even though it allocated about $2 million from the state general fund to the judicial branch and approved increases in court fees that may or may not add up to the $8 million that Chief Justice Lawton Nuss says is needed to prevent court furloughs this summer. The fees are estimated to raise about $6 million, but $3.1 million of that won’t be used to offset the shortfall because it is mandated to pay for a new electronic court filing system.

In a statement responding to the bill signing, the Supreme Court called the deal “a poor trade.”

“It weakens the centralized authority of the Kansas unified court system in exchange for money to pay our employees and keep courts open,” the statement said. “And the money it provides still may fall short of even doing that.”

The legislation removes the Supreme Court’s ability to shift funding to districts that may face unexpected expenses, such as the cost of a capital murder trial. Putting administrative judges in charge of budgets, with limited supervision by the Supreme Court, also may raise some concerns about how those budgets are managed, particularly in the 14 state court districts in which judges are elected in partisan elections.

There is some question whether the provisions that limit the Supreme Court’s authority over district courts is constitutional. To make that determination more difficult, the legislation was written in a way that prevents the Supreme Court from invalidating those provisions without also losing the approved funding.

It’s no secret that the Kansas judicial and legislative branches haven’t been on particularly good terms in recent years, but it is sad that legislators apparently have taken advantage of the power of the purse to make changes that could hamper the ability of the courts to serve the people of Kansas.