A Kansas House committee late Friday approved a bill that would prevent state workers from being furloughed because of the Legislature’s impasse on budget and tax issues.

The Appropriations Committee’s action to make all state employees temporarily “essential” came in a hastily called Friday night meeting hours after thousands of workers in state agencies and at state universities received furlough notices.

The full House planned to debate the bill Saturday, the 107th day of the session, which ties a 2002 mark for the longest on record. If passed by lawmakers, the measure would prevent furloughs as long as the Legislature hasn’t formally adjourned its annual session. It was unclear early Saturday whether lawmakers in both chambers supported the bill.

Without a deal on taxes and spending for the fiscal year beginning July 1, the state is not authorized to pay nonessential state employees next week.

The move, announced via the official Kansas House GOP Twitter account at 11:30 p.m., came in response to fears that 24,200 state employees, including more than 7,000 who work at Kansas University and its extensions, could be furloughed starting Sunday if lawmakers fail to enact a balanced budget.

Meanwhile, the Senate reconvened just after midnight Friday to discuss a new plan to raise taxes and balance the budget. Lawmakers must raise taxes by more than $400 million to prevent a budget shortfall during the next fiscal year. Those discussions continued past the Journal-World’s 12:30 a.m. deadline.

Three Senate and three House negotiators drafted the plan Friday night to raise the sales tax to 6.55 percent and embrace Brownback’s position to limit the increase in taxes on business owners to $24 million during the next fiscal year.

The negotiators resumed their talks after the House earlier voted 82-27 against a plan to raise the sales tax to 6.45 percent and to defy Brownback’s veto threat by raising taxes on business owners by $101 million during the next fiscal year.

But senators weren’t able to finish debate on the bill because of confusion over a provision that would pave the way for a type of voucher program that offers tax credits for people who contribute to scholarship funds enabling low-income children to attend private and religious schools throughout the state.

That provision had been added by the tax conference committee. It was meant to broaden a program enacted last year that made those tax credits available only to corporations, and only for scholarships for students who were attending public schools in low-income neighborhoods.

A large group of education advocates gathered in the Statehouse at 11 p.m. Friday to voice opposition to the voucher addition.

Originally, the scholarship funds were to be set up by outside organizations, and the scholarships were to be awarded to the families of the students attending those schools. But the bill would have broadened the language to allow money to be distributed directly to the schools participating in the program.

Sen. Les Donovan, R-Wichita, who chairs the Senate tax committee, said that was requested by the Catholic Diocese of Wichita because it does not charge tuition to church members who tithe to the church.

That raised constitutional questions because Article 6, Section 6 of the Kansas Constitution specifically states, “No religious sect or sects shall control any part of the public educational funds.”

Sen. Pat Pettey, D-Kansas City, questioned Sen. Les Donovan, chair of the Senate tax committee, about that provision, asking: “Is that money coming from the state, or is that money coming from the private private institution that’s providing the scholarship for the tax credit?”

“Well, the money is raised by contributions, and the state’s portion is the tax credit that’s applied to those contributions. So I guess you could say it’s coming from both,” Donovan said.

Moments later, Senate GOP Leader Terry Bruce of Hutchinson asked to suspend debate on the bill for the night, saying there were problems with its language.

“It has been brought to my attention that we may have some issues, well we do have some issues with the underlying conference report as written,” Bruce said. “I got to looking at some of the language during some of … Sen. Pettey’s questioning, and I do believe it is not in its appropriate form.”

The Senate is scheduled to reconvene Saturday morning.

— The Associated Press contributed to this report.