Topeka ? Another financial disaster has struck state government.

Preliminary figures Friday from the Department of Revenue said the state collected about $119 million less in revenues than expected in May. The department also said the total shortfall for the current fiscal year, which began July 1, 2001, was about $194 million.

If those numbers hold up, slumping revenue collections would blow a huge hole in the budget that legislators approved and Gov. Bill Graves signed into law for the next fiscal year despite $252 million in recently approved tax increases.

The shortfall puts the state close to finishing the current fiscal year on June 30 with a deficit in its general fund and means it will struggle to avoid one again during the next fiscal year.

“It means the Titanic keeps hitting icebergs,” said House Speaker Kent Glasscock, R-Manhattan.

Projections underestimated

A revenue forecast issued March 8 by state officials predicted Kansas would collect $453 million in tax revenues in May. Instead, the state collected only $334 million in its general fund, according to the department’s preliminary figures. That’s 27 percent less than expected.

For the entire 2002 fiscal year through May, the state had expected $3.7 billion in tax revenues but saw only $3.51 billion.

The news stunned lawmakers.

“I don’t think anyone anticipated revenues would be quite this weak,” said Senate President Dave Kerr, R-Hutchinson.

Legislative staff had projected the budget lawmakers approved would leave the state with a balance of just under $195 million in the general fund on June 30, and a balance of almost $275 million in fiscal 2003.

With the Department of Revenue’s figures, the balance on June 30 for the general fund would be a mere $100,000 after $4.5 billion in spending.

Things would get worse in fiscal 2003. The same $194 million shortfall would occur again, putting the state on course for a deficit of $113 million.

“At some point, it has to start going down,” Kerr said. “Right now, it is accelerating on the down side.”

Budget revisions

The latest figures came the same day Graves signed a budget cleanup bill into law but vetoed 11 of its provisions.

One provision would have blocked further state participation in federal litigation against computer software giant Microsoft. Graves said lawmakers should observe the traditional separation of powers between different branches of government.

Graves also vetoed a provision that would have restricted the ability of state agencies to furlough employees.

The governor called the provision an “unreasonable intrusion” into the executive branch’s management of agency budgets and “micromanaging of the worst kind.”

In addition, Graves vetoed a provision that would have paid for a new flagpole outside the administration building at Hesston College.

The Mennonite institution hasn’t flown the American flag outside since protests in 1970 over the killing of four students at Kent State University in Ohio. Someone cut the flagpole down during the 1970s.

The money would have come from postage allotment for Rep. Carlos Mayans, R-Wichita, who maintained that the institution comply with a state law requiring that all schools fly the flag because it received state dollars for student scholarships.

But Graves wrote in his veto message: “It is poor public policy for the Legislature to intrude on the rights of private institutions.”

The governor said the appropriate policy would have been to withhold state money something many House members wanted but senators wouldn’t accept.