The Senate chamber of the Kansas Statehouse is pictured July 23, 2014 in Topeka.

Topeka ? Voters in Kansas elected 14 new members to the Kansas Senate in November, and those freshman senators will have considerable influence in writing the next state budget.

Senate President Susan Wagle, R-Wichita, released the full list of committee assignments for the upcoming session. It shows Wagle has expanded the Ways and Means Committee, which handles spending bills, from 11 members to 13, with freshman senators getting six of those seats.

And because the committee is being expanded, Democrats will have three seats on the committee instead of two.

That may be a telling sign of what kind of budget the group is likely to produce next year because most of those new senators, including Sen.-elect Rick Billinger, of Goodland, who will serve as vice chairman, are moderate Republicans who campaigned against the tax and budget policies that conservatives have pushed through in the last four years.

Wagle had already announced earlier that moderate Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, would replace conservative Sen. Ty Masterson, of Andover, as chair of the committee.

Traditionally, lawmakers are expected to work their way up the ladder before getting such powerful committee posts, but Billinger said he’s not reading too much into it.

“I think she’s just trying to put people in the right positions,” he said Thursday.

Others, however, say the budget committee assignments show that Wagle wants the Senate to move in a different direction on tax and budget issues.

“I personally take it as a positive development,” said Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, who will continue as the ranking Democrat on the Senate tax committee. “Senator Wagle talks repeatedly about how she got unloaded on when she was campaigning on people’s doorsteps.”

Billinger may be new to the Senate, but he has served three terms in the House. He ran for the Senate this year after the incumbent in the 40th District, Ralph Ostmeyer, of Grinnell, announced he was stepping down.

In the House last year, Billinger said he voted against the final budget bill because it was out of balance, and he voted in favor of repealing one of Gov. Sam Brownback’s signature tax cuts, the so-called LLC loophole that exempts income derived from certain pass-through business entities.

“First and foremost, we need to make sure we come out with a balanced budget,” Billinger said when asked about his top budget priority next session. “We have to figure out where we can generate enough revenue and balance the budget.”

Other new senators on the budget panel include Larry Alley, R-Winfield; Ed Beger, R-Hutchinson; former House member John Doll, R-Garden City; Dan Goddard, R-Parsons; and John Skubal, R-Overland Park.

Senate Minority Leader Anthony Hensley, D-Topeka, named the three Democrats who will serve on the panel. He reappointed Sen. Laura Kelly, of Topeka, to serve as the ranking minority member. But he did not reappoint Sen. Marci Francisco, of Lawrence. Instead, he named himself and Sen. Tom Hawk, of Manhattan.

Francisco said that was largely the result of juggling that had to be done because Democrats gained one Seat in the Senate this year, but that was not enough to give them additional seats on most standing committees.

Besides McGinn, the other veteran GOP senators on the panel will be Jim Denning, of Overland Park; Dan Kerschen, of Garden Plains; and Vicki Schmidt, of Topeka.

PAY-GO rule

Holland said one of the first votes in the 2017 session will be a key indicator of whether there will be a major shift in direction of the Senate, and that will be the vote to adopt the rules of the Senate.

For the last several years, both the House and Senate have had what lawmakers call a “pay as you go” rule, commonly shortened to “PAY-GO.”

Under that rule, when a budget bill comes out of the Ways and Means Committee for full debate on the Senate floor, no amendments can be offered to increase spending in any part of the bill unless the amendment includes an equal or greater amount of cuts somewhere else.

Conservatives in the Senate adopted that rule in 2013, right after they won control of the Senate in the 2012 elections. The House adopted a similar rule in 2011.

It was intended to block Democrats and moderates from offering amendments that would be politically difficult to oppose, but which might also result in the need for tax increases or cut off the ability to pass tax cuts.

Critics of the rule, however, argue that it puts too much power in the hands of only a few lawmakers because it allows as few as seven senators — a simple majority on the Ways and Means Committee — to decide how much the state will spend, depriving other senators of the ability to represent the interests of their constituents.

“I think that if you really want to try to develop consensus on budget and tax policies going forward, it’s imperative that everybody be able weigh in on the budget and not be hamstrung by the PAY-GO rule,” Holland said.

Both chambers typically vote on their respective rules during the first week of the session.

Local delegation

Although Francisco was not reappointed to the Senate’s Ways and Means Committee, she was assigned to the Assessments and Taxation Committee where Holland will remain as the ranking Democrat. Ranking members represent the minority party in conference committee negotiations.

Francisco also will be the ranking member on the Agriculture and Natural Resources Committee. That panel had been two separate committees, and Francisco had been the ranking Democrat on both. And she will serve on the Senate Utilities Committee, although she will not continue as ranking Democrat there.

Holland will also continue as ranking member on the Senate Commerce Committee.

Hensley, whose district includes part of western Douglas County, will continue as the ranking Democrat on the Education Committee and will sit on the Financial Institutions and Insurance Committee.