Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little, left, and interim Kansas State University President Richard Myers, right.

TOPEKA — The heads of the state’s two largest universities are mounting a public relations push to urge Gov. Sam Brownback to line-item veto a provision of the recently-passed state budget bill that would make their schools shoulder a larger share of a 3-percent cut to higher education.

Kansas University Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little and Kansas State University’s interim president Gen. Richard Myers sent an open letter this week to their schools’ alumni, urging them to contact the governor personally.

“We are asking Wildcat and Jayhawk supporters like you to contact Governor Brownback and ask him to veto the Legislature’s harmful proviso that dictates where cuts are to be made to higher education and unfairly places more of the burden on K-State and KU,” the letter stated.

Brownback initially ordered a 3-percent cut to each of the six universities in March, following lower-than-expected tax collections in the month of February.

In April, after revenue estimators lowered their forecast for tax collections in the upcoming fiscal year, which begins July 1, Brownback proposed extending that cut into the new fiscal year.

That cut totals more than $17 million each year.

However, at the urging of Sen. Jake LaTurner, R-Pittsburg, whose district includes Pittsburg State University, Republican budget negotiators agreed during the wrap-up session to change the formula for allocating those cuts.

Instead of applying the $17 million cuts evenly — 3 percent to each institution — the bill calls for applying it in proportion to each school’s “all funds” budget. It also says the revised formula would apply both to this year’s cuts and next year’s.

That means KU and K-State, each of which have large research budgets funded by federal and industry grants, would take cuts more than $1 million greater than under the current formula in both fiscal years.

The budget bill narrowly passed both chambers of the Legislature: 63-61 in the House; and 22-18 in the Senate. Both senators and all four House members from Douglas County opposed the bill.

“This formula penalizes Kansas State University and the University of Kansas, whose all-funds budgets are higher because of our large research portfolios,” the letter stated. “In essence, this formula punishes K-State and KU for conducting research and successfully securing federal research grants that bring new dollars to Kansas.”

“Additionally, this formula defunds the two universities that collectively create the most graduates for the Kansas workforce, the most jobs, the most startup companies, and the most economic development in Kansas,” the letter continued.

The letter from Gray-Little and Myers came on the heels of a statement that the Kansas Board of Regents issued immediately after passage of the bill, which argued that the Kansas Constitution puts the Regents in charge of supervising higher education.

“Managing the budgets of these complicated, mission-driven, institutions in a way that coordinates their efforts as a single system for the betterment of the state is without question a job that should be left to the Regents – not prescribed by the legislature,” Regents chairman Shane Bangerter said.

LaTurner, a first-term senator who faces a potentially strong challenge in the 2016 elections, defended his request to change the formula, arguing that a flat 3-percent cut to all universities disproportionately affects the smaller schools that have fewer outside funding streams.