It’s sad to see an agency that started with such promise and delivered such benefits for Kansas now facing almost certain death.

Hamstrung by repeated reductions in state funding, the Kansas Bioscience Authority has stopped making new investments and decided last week to lay off seven of its 13 full-time staff members. Recent lack of support from the governor and Legislature has created uncertainty about the KBA’s future and hampered the agency’s ability to pursue its mission, according to KBA President and CEO Duane Cantrell. The KBA is allowed to receive up to $35 million a year in state funding but received less than $29 million from 2012 to 2015. Gov. Sam Brownback swept $22 million from the KBA to help fill last year’s budget hole, and legislation was introduced last year that would have abolished the agency and assigned the Department of Commerce to close out the KBA’s remaining obligations.

Sen. Laura Kelly, D-Topeka, is a member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, which held a hearing on that bill and said this week that KBA’s decision to scale back its operations is a step toward its final demise. She predicted that legislators would revive and pass next year the legislation abolishing the agency.

It’s a sad situation for an agency that had such a positive impact on the state. The KBA was formed in 2004 and had early success in attracting new companies to Kansas and expanding various Kansas ventures in the fields of agribusiness, animal health, human health and life sciences. Among its many ventures, the Authority provided key support for the successful effort to attract the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility to Manhattan and the Kansas University Medical Center’s successful drive to achieve National Cancer Center status. Every elected official in the state wants to claim part of the credit for those two major accomplishments, but apparently they are unwilling to provide key support for one of the major players, the KBA.

A few years ago, the KBA got caught up in a scandal involving mishandling of funds by its then-CEO Tom Thornton. The incident opened the door to new criticism of the KBA’s fiscal responsibility and provided an excuse for state officials who wanted to use funds that would have gone to the agency for other purposes.

KBA leaders tried to recover the agency’s momentum, but years of slack funding had taken a toll. Legislators now face a choice of whether to restore enough funding to allow the KBA to pursue its intended mission or simply let the agency die. As Sen. Kelly said, the latter course seems more likely.

At the time the KBA was founded, it was seen as an innovative model that other states sought to emulate. In the years that followed, the Authority helped Kansas make significant progress in promoting bioscience efforts in the state. The fact that political agendas and the state’s current financial situation may combine to kill that innovative effort is a disappointing development that doesn’t bode well for the future of the state.