Topeka ? A Kansas lawmaker is asking for an attorney general’s opinion about whether Gov. Sam Brownback violated state law by submitting a budget proposal that significantly reduced the judicial branch’s request.

Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said state law requires the governor to submit the judicial branch’s budget request to the Legislature.

Yet the budget proposal that Brownback submitted in January cut the judiciary’s budget by $23 million for the fiscal year that begins July 1 and by $30 million for the following fiscal year.

Carmichael said he thinks the cuts are part of a long-running tug-of-war between the executive and legislative branches on one side and the judicial branch on the other.

“Everything in this Statehouse is related to something else,” he said. “There is a battle between the judiciary, which seeks to enforce the Constitution of the State of Kansas, and the Legislature, which refuses to adequately fund public education, and certainly that is the root of the conflict.”

But the governor’s office countered that there was nothing improper about the cut because Chief Justice Lawton Nuss, in preparing the budget request, did not submit it in the proper form.

“The judiciary branch requested large increases to their budget,” Brownback’s press secretary Eileen Hawlee said in an email to the Journal-World. “Rather than submit it in the form of an enhancement request, as they should have based on the written instructions that were provided and as they have done in previous years, they submitted it in their base budget.”

Under state law, the chief justice of the Kansas Supreme Court is responsible for preparing and submitting a budget for the judicial branch as a whole.

This upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, Nuss requested total funding of $149.1 million for the entire judicial branch, including $119.5 million from the state general fund, about $22 million more than the judicial branch will receive this year.

For the following fiscal year, which runs from July 1, 2016, to June 30, 2017, Nuss requested total funding of $159.7 million, including $126.6 million from the state general fund.

The increases were intended to offset declining revenue from docket fees. Also, Nuss was requesting money for 20 additional court clerks and nine additional judges, along with salary increases for court personnel and money to fill 80 positions that have been held vacant for the last few years.

But in his budget request to the Legislature, Brownback cut $23 million from the request for the upcoming year and $30 million from the total request for the following fiscal year.

In its budget report to the Legislature, the administration said the request for increased spending should have been listed as an “enhancement package” instead of a base funding request.

“It seems the applicable statutes prohibit the governor from modifying the budget that’s requested from the state judiciary,” Carmichael said. “The law allows a legislator to request opinions from the attorney general’s office, and I thought what appears to be a violation of the law, at least on its face, it would be appropriate to solicit the attorney general’s advice.”

Hawley, however, said there is still an opportunity for lawmakers to consider the judicial branch’s total request because, similar to last year, the judiciary’s budget will be considered separately from the bulk of the state budget.

Lawmakers did that last year with both the judiciary and K-12 education so they could combine funding for those agencies with other bills that made significant policy changes.