The Kansas Bioscience Authority has been slowly strangled by deep cuts in state funding for several years, but its transfer last week into the Kansas Department of Commerce almost certainly is the last chapter in this once-promising economic development venture.

The whole reason for putting KBA inside Commerce is to facilitate the sale of KBA’s assets and investment portfolio. That move was authorized earlier this year by Kansas lawmakers, at least in part, to help balance this year’s state budget. The state expects the sale of KBA assets to raise $25 million to fill the state budget hole. If it raises more than that, up to $13 million of the excess money will be used to fund the school finance equity bill.

Some state legislators have called the strategy to raise one-time funds “a fire sale.” House Majority Leader Jene Vickrey disputed that depiction, saying “The way this was constructed didn’t work as well as we needed it to, and we need a new structure.”

Let’s be clear: KBA is not being restructured. It and its mission are being abandoned.

It is a sad end for an agency that provided many benefits for the state despite being plagued by political maneuvers and some questionable leadership. In the last 12 years, state taxpayers contributed more than $200 million to KBA, which operated as a quasi-public venture capital group. That’s a lot of money, but it paid off in many ways for the state. KBA support was critical to the state’s success in landing the National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility for Manhattan and gaining designation of the Kansas University Medical Center as a National Cancer Center. The KBA also invested in companies that helped boost the Research Triangle in Fairway.

It can be argued that KBA was an essential part of raising the state’s stature and reputation in the highly competitive bioscience field. How or whether that reputation now can be retained — let alone, advanced — is a major question mark.

KBA got off to a promising start, but politics and problems with a former president made it vulnerable to critics in recent years. State allocations were reduced and, in the last two years, eliminated.

The demise of KBA is a clear step backward for Kansas. By selling off KBA’s assets, the state will raise some short-term cash but it will lose a venture that had the potential to be a long-term benefit to the state economy.