Delivering his sixth State of the State address, Gov. Sam Brownback discouraged lawmakers from trying to reverse his tax policies or expand Medicaid during the 2017 legislative session.

Topeka ? Gov. Sam Brownback’s office declined to comment Wednesday on a broadcast report that he will soon be named the next U.S. ambassador to the United Nations’ agencies for food and agriculture in Rome.

That report, first posted on Kansas Public Radio’s website, cites an unnamed source described as a “former high-ranking government official” who spoke on the condition of anonymity. The Journal-World was not immediately able to confirm that report independently.

“Governor Brownback is focused on working with the Kansas legislature to balance the budget and pass a modern school funding system,” Brownback’s communications director Melika Willoughby said in a statement emailed to news organizations on Wednesday.

Clay Barker, executive director of the Kansas Republican Party, also said he had heard nothing official.

“I spoke with someone close to the governor who said he thinks it’s a premature announcement,” Barker said.

Brownback’s former press secretary, Eileen Hawley, told the Journal-World through a text message that she had not heard anything directly about an appointment.

“I’ve heard the rumor repeatedly,” she said. “Also heard timing of any announcement would be after any budget solution. He does not want to abdicate his responsibility.”

If the report of his leaving is true, Brownback would resign as governor and Lt. Gov. Jeff Colyer would succeed him.

Neither Colyer nor his spokeswoman was available Wednesday afternoon for comment.

Most other legislative leaders were either unavailable or said they had heard nothing official from the governor’s office.

House Democratic Leader Jim Ward, of Wichita, however, said he had heard specific rumors about the U.N. job for a few weeks.

“I had heard it a couple of weeks ago, and I heard it from several different places,” Ward said. “I can’t tell you who or why or what was going on.”

Brownback served as Kansas secretary of agriculture from 1986 until 1993, when a federal judge struck down the method used at that time to elect that position. He was elected to the 2nd District U.S. House seat from Kansas in 1994, the year of the so-called “Gingrich Revolution,” and served two terms there.

In 1996, he ran for the U.S. Senate in a special election to fill the seat vacated when former Sen. Bob Dole resigned to focus on his presidential campaign that year. He was later re-elected to two full terms in the Senate before stepping down to run for governor in 2010. He won that race against State Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, and was re-elected in 2014 in a close race against former Rep. Paul Davis, D-Lawrence.

Brownback’s departure would come at a time when the policies that he hoped would become his legacy are under serious attack, even within the Republican-controlled Legislature, which nearly overrode his veto two weeks ago of a tax bill that would have reversed many of the income tax cuts he championed in 2012.

“I think it’s huge that we’d have a different face on the second floor,” Ward said. “We have super-majorities. We had 85 people vote to override the governor and 24 senators in a body that’s pretty heavily Republican. That means that the building, reflecting the will of the people, wants to go in a different direction.”