In recent days Kansas University officials have faced new setbacks with legislators on some key initiatives, but certainly not for lack of effort or focus.

For much of the past year the university’s public affairs office and top administrators have been trying to persuade lawmakers to help fund a new KU Medical Center facility that would help train more doctors.

They’ve talked, they’ve tweeted, they’ve gone on road trips around the state, they’ve invited lawmakers to the Med Center. They’ve even tapped KU alumni for help spreading the word about the health education initiative.

It’s rare to hear KU Chancellor Bernadette Gray-Little or Tim Caboni, KU’s chancellor for public affairs, give a talk without mentioning the state’s shortage of doctors and KU’s role, as the only state university with a medical school, in training them.

But the university hit another road block this week after the Kansas Senate Ways and Means Committee approved a capital improvement plan that excluded KU’s long-sought-after Med Center facility.

KU has requested the Legislature release a $25 million FICA tax refund linked to the medical center, and provide $1.4 million a year to help retire $15 million in bonds. The remaining funds needed for the building would be paid with private donations and internal funds, KU has said.

The $75 million building would would allow KU Med to expand capacity by 50 additional medical students and add new technologies and teaching methods that KU has said are necessary for accreditation.

Committee Chairman Ty Masterson, R-Andover, didn’t see it that way. Masterson told the Journal-World Tuesday, “I don’t feel the accreditation is in jeopardy. If it were, we would reconsider what we needed to reconsider.”

Caboni was on his way to speak about KU at a Rotary Club event in McPherson Kansas — a fairly typical road trip to spread the KU gospel — when he heard news of the committee’s decision.

“The state has a certain need for more primary care physicians, and the University of Kansas is the one institution in the state that can help solve this challenging problem,” Caboni said. “The decision today also unfortunately puts at risk the accreditation of the state’s only medical school.”

He said his public affairs team and fellow administrators plan to regroup after the decision.
“We will continue to talk about it across the state,” he added.

A senate subcommittee also excluded an item listed in Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget to help establish the Kansas Institute for Translational Chemical Biology.

The $2 million Brownback had set aside for the research center would help support labs working on drug discovery and other research aimed at fighting a range of health problems.

Caboni lamented that decision as well. “Without seed money, it makes it difficult to build the center,” he said. Pointing to competition in recruiting top faculty, he said, “It’s important to us that the talented faculty that do this work have the resources that will keep them at the University of Kansas.”