photo by: Peter Hancock

Senate Majority Leader Jim Denning talks with Sen. Molly Baumgardner Monday, April 30, 2018 as senators prepare to debate a budget bill that adds roughly $1 billion in total state spending through the end of the next fiscal year.

TOPEKA ? The Kansas Senate passed a budget bill Monday that is slightly smaller than the one passed by the House over the weekend but that adds more money for higher education.

Both bills seek to restore part of the $24 million remaining of the 4 percent cut that former Gov. Sam Brownback ordered as part of a package of allotment cuts to balance last year’s budget.

The Senate bill puts back $17 million of that for the upcoming fiscal year that begins July 1, or about 75 percent, while the House bill puts back $12 million, or half of the remaining cut.

The University of Kansas and the Kansas Board of Regents had been hoping for full restoration of those cuts, but Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, said that wasn’t possible this year.

“It’s like everything else. We have so many needs,” he said in an interview after the Senate vote. “We’ve had so many financial issues for the past six years, so it’s going to take a while to right the ship.”

Both the House and Senate bills make adjustments to the two-year spending plan that lawmakers approved during the 2017 session. The Senate’s version adds about $1 billion to that package, while the House version adds a little more than $1.1 billion.

The biggest portion of those increases include the first year of a five-year phase-in of an increase for K-12 education, and about $109 million to pay for increasing costs in the state’s Medicaid and social service programs.

Those increases are made possible by higher-than-expected revenues flowing into the state as a result of action last year to reverse course on the controversial income tax cuts that Brownback had championed in 2012.

The biggest difference between the two is funding for the state’s pension plan, the Kansas Public Employees Retirement System, where lawmakers have been delaying payments for the last few years to make up for revenue shortfalls.

The House bill calls for making the full fourth-quarter payment next year of $194 million, a payment lawmakers had planned on delaying. The Senate version, however, calls for paying $82 million into the fund, to partially make up for a delayed payment in 2016.

The House version also sweeps less money out of the state highway fund to subsidize the cost of K-12 school transportation.

Neither of the two bills, however, includes the additional $24 million that Gov. Jeff Colyer had requested last week for the Department for Children and Families, money that was to go for computer system enhancements and pay raises for social workers.

“The request came a little too late, and not enough information,” Sen. Carolyn McGinn, R-Sedgwick, chairwoman of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, told reporters after the debate.

She added, however, that the issue of state employee pay raises would likely be revisited when the House and Senate meet in a conference committee to resolve differences between the two bills.

Lawmakers have only four days left to finish their work for the 2018 session. They are scheduled to adjourn Friday.

The Senate budget bill is contained in Senate Substitute for House Bill 2359.

The House version is contained in Substitute for House Bill 2365.