Topeka ? The Kansas House on Monday approved and sent to Gov. Sam Brownback a bill funding the judicial branch for the next two years, although critics of the bill say it is blatantly unconstitutional.

The bill provides the court system with $131 million for the next fiscal year, roughly a 1.9 percent increase over this year, but about $18 million less than the courts said they need.

But the most controversial provision says that if the courts overturn a law enacted last year dealing with the selection of district court chief judges, then all other parts of the bill, including funding for the courts, will be considered invalid as well.

The bill passed, 88-26. Rep. Tom Sloan, R-Lawrence, voted for the bill. Democratic Reps. Boog Highberger and John Wilson, of Lawrence, voted no. Rep. Barbara Ballard, D-Lawrence, was absent.

That 2014 law stripped the Supreme Court of its long-standing authority to appoint chief judges and now requires chief judges to be elected by the other judges in the district.

This year’s budget bill includes a “nonseverability” provision that says if any part of the bill is declared invalid, then all parts of the bill, including funding for the courts, will also be invalid.

While nonseverability clauses have been used before, legislative staff have said they have never before been used to tie funding in one fiscal year to provisions of bills enacted in an earlier fiscal year.

That 2014 law is currently being challenged in Shawnee County District Court in a suit filed by Judge Larry Solomon, chief judge of the 30th Judicial District in Kingman County. He argues that Article 3 of the Kansas Constitution gives the Supreme Court authority for the supervision of other courts in the state.

Sen. Jeff King, R-Independence, who chairs the Senate Judiciary Committee, said it was a matter of local control over local court budgets. He said chief judges have broad discretion about allocating court resources, and he said those decisions should be made at the local level instead of by the Supreme Court.

He said the issue has been particularly important in Sedgwick County where district court judges are elected locally in partisan elections.

Monday’s vote in the House came as lawmakers face a looming deadline June 7 to either pass a budget for the fiscal year that begins July 1, or face a partial shutdown of state government and the furlough of nonessential employees.

Rep. Blaine Finch, R-Ottawa, said it was improper to tie judicial funding to the outcome of a particular case.

“Friends, if any of you were to walk into a courtroom and offer the judge, ‘I’ll make your next house payment if you decide my case this way,’ I’ll tell you where you’d end up. It’d be in the little room with the bars, and you’d stay there for a long time. It’s called bribery,” Finch said.

“And if you also went up to the judge and said, ‘Don’t decide this case my way, I’ll come over to your house and steal something from you,’ that would be extortion and you’d also go to jail,” he said.

Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said lawmakers were being forced to choose “between expediency and principle,” because without the funding bill, the courts could be forced to close as early as next week.

“But I’m going to vote for the separation of powers, because I think it’s more important than to keep the doors open next week at the courthouse,” Carmichael said.

But others, including Rep. Steve Becker, R-Buhler, said it was more important to keep the courthouse doors open than to fight over the clause linking funding to a favorable court ruling.

“That battle is something that looms in the future,” he said. “We can fight that when it comes up. What we have to do is fund the judiciary so they can keep the lights on next week.”