Even before budget problems prompted Republican Gov. Sam Brownback to propose siphoning off transportation dollars to help erase projected shortfalls, Kansas had the biggest decade-long decline in per-person spending on highways of any state, according to new federal data.

Brownback is facing bipartisan criticism for proposals to divert $858 million over three years, ending in June 2017, which would allow the state to cover spending on education, social services, prisons and other programs while sustaining personal income tax cuts that Brownback championed. The state’s budget problems arose after lawmakers reduced taxes in 2012 and 2013 at the governor’s urging, hoping to boost the economy.

But the state’s per capita spending on highways already was 29 percent lower during its 2013 fiscal year than in fiscal 2003, according to data compiled by the Federal Highway Administration and analyzed by The Associated Press. It was nearly $695 in 2003 and $490 in 2013; Kansas ranked fifth in per capita spending in 2003 and dropped to 28th a decade later.

“I’m just surprised that we’ve dropped that much nationally,” said state Rep. Russ Jennings, a Lakin Republican. “I guess I shouldn’t be.”

State and local officials and national surveys have regularly touted Kansas’ highways as among the nation’s best — and cited commitments to multi-year transportation programs over the past 25 years. But the revenues raised for such programs are a tempting target when the state faces budget problems, and the diversion of funds has been common enough that legislators talk about tapping “the Bank of KDOT.”

The Kansas Department of Transportation has announced that it will delay some smaller, as-yet-unidentified road resurfacing and bridge repair projects if Brownback’s proposals are adopted. It does not plan to cancel any larger projects already promised into 2020, and KDOT’s leaders don’t expect the state highway system to deteriorate. But legislators and local officials still worry, particularly in rural areas.

“Our main business is agriculture,” said Clair Schrock, road supervisor in Thomas County in northwest Kansas. “If our roads fall apart, we are sunk as an agricultural community. It just gets tougher and tougher when they take that money and think they have to rectify a budget without finding another source of income.”

Meanwhile, the data shows that the money available from the federal Highway Trust Fund peaked during its 2010 fiscal year and has declined since. Kansas received $131 per resident for highways from that source for 2013, or 10 percent less than the nearly $146 it received for 2008.

KDOT officials say that for all the questions about ongoing funding of projects, almost all of Kansas’ interstate highway miles and more than 80 percent of its noninterstate miles and bridges are in good condition. And Deputy Transportation Secretary Jerry Younger said a 1999-2008 transportation program put more emphasis on large highway and interchange projects than the current program, started in 2010.

“It would make sense that our numbers would go down,” he said.

Later, he added, “I would like to believe we at KDOT have become more efficient.”

And House Appropriations Committee Chairman Ron Ryckman Jr., an Olathe Republican, defended the diversion of highway funds. His committee ratified the governor’s proposals this week.

If the committee had rejected those proposals, he said, “It would have been a detriment to all the other services that the state provides.”