Higher Education Budget panel backs BSRB spending plan after directors outline fee‑fund pressures

The House Committee on Higher Education Budget voted to recommend the Behavioral Sciences Regulatory Board’s (BSRB) biennial budget allocations, the committee chair announced after a voice vote.

The BSRB’s executive director and the Legislature’s budget analyst told the committee the agency is a fee‑funded composite board that licenses about 16,000 professionals across seven mental‑health and behavioral‑health professions and is proposing budgets lower than the legislature approved for the current biennium.

The committee’s budget analyst, Dayton Lamonian of the Kansas Legislative Research Department, summarized the board’s requests and changes, noting the agency’s primary expenditures are salaries for 12 full‑time employees and contractual services. Lamonian described a requested deletion of a temporary full‑time position and an offsetting increase in contractual staff that yields a net reduction in the agency’s request of roughly $20,320 for the noted year, and he said the legislative budget committee concurred.

BSRB Executive Director…