Kansas Gov. Jeff Colyer has appointed Mark Hutton, left, and Allen Schmidt, center, and reappointed William Feuerborn, right, to the Kansas Board of Regents.

TOPEKA – A Kansas Senate committee gave its approval Wednesday to Gov. Jeff Colyer’s appointments of two new members of the Kansas Board of Regents and the reappointment of another, all three of whom are former state lawmakers.

The Board of Regents supervises higher education in Kansas. That includes governing the state’s six Regents universities as well as public community colleges and technical colleges.

The two new members include former Rep. Mark Hutton, R-Wichita, and former Sen. Allen Schmidt, D-Hays. The panel also approved the reappointment of former Rep. Bill Feuerborn, D-Garnett.

All three appointments received unanimous approval from the Senate Confirmation Oversight Committee.

And while they still are subject to confirmation by the full Senate when it convenes in January, all three can begin serving in their posts immediately, Regents officials said.

Hutton, who was briefly a candidate for the Republican nomination for governor earlier this year, is a graduate of Kansas State University and the founder of Hutton Construction Company in Wichita.

He serves on a number of advisory boards for Kansas State University’s College of Engineering and is chairman of the Kansas Construction Education Foundation, which awards grants and scholarships for programs at K-State and Pittsburg State University.

Hutton served three terms in the Kansas House, from 2013 to 2017, and was vice chairman of the Joint Committee on State Building Construction. In that role, he acknowledged, he had disagreements with the University of Kansas over the way it financed its Central District projects, which involved issuing bonds through a method that bypassed the legislative approval process.

He also acknowledged Wednesday that he may occasionally have potential conflicts of interest because his construction company sometimes works on projects at state universities, but he said he would recuse himself from voting on matters whenever those conflicts arose.

Schmidt served only two years in the Kansas Senate. He was appointed to the seat in 2011 when former Sen. Janis Lee was named to a seat on the Board of Tax Appeals. But he lost his bid for election to a full term in 2012 after district lines were redrawn.

He is a graduate of KU, where he earned a degree in psychology and served in the ROTC. He served 32 years in the military and now lives on a farm in northwest Kansas.

Feuerborn was first appointed to the Board of Regents by Gov. Sam Brownback in 2014. Before that, he served 18 years in the Kansas House and was the ranking Democrat on the House Appropriations Committee from 2006 to 2012.

The Board of Regents is made up of nine members. By law, no more than five can be members of the same political party, and there must be at least one from each of the state’s congressional districts.

If confirmed by the full Senate, all three new members reviewed Wednesday will serve terms that expire June 30, 2022.