Social Services Budget committee reviews interim reports, flags KDADS requests as Legislature eyes $200 million reduction

Chair opened the Committee on Social Services Budget and set the meeting’s pace, including a schedule change moving the coming Friday session to 1:30 p.m. Chair said lawmakers should expect an intense 5–6 week stretch as the Legislature works through budget decisions.

Amanda Prosser of Legislative Research summarized a set of interim committee reports the social services committee selected for review. “The first one is going to be the report on the special committee on health and social services,” she said, highlighting recommendations directed at KDADS and other agencies.

Prosser listed several financial- and staffing-related recommendations that could affect the 2026 budget: KDADS was asked to study cost-effective alternatives to the use of contract nursing at state hospitals; to provide a comprehensive list of publicly funded behavioral-health providers; to consider incentives to attract more nursing faculty; and to work with the Department of Administration on creating internal PRN nursing positions for state hospitals. On intellectual and developmental disabilities (IDD) services, the special committee requested that KDADS provide a timeline for submitting a community support waiver to CMS and asked for a fiscal note for expanding day services from 25 to 40 hours per week. The report also directed KDADS to develop a public-facing wait-list portal and an "only willing and qualified provider" waiver policy to address provider availability on frontier/rural issues.

Prosser also reviewed recommendations from the Bethel committee, which oversees long-term care and Medicaid-related programs. Those recommendations included analyzing preventative maintenance and billing processes for durable medical equipment and complex wheelchairs; pursuing a CMS billing code for mobile sedation-dentistry providers; adding 500 IDD waiver slots (noted as likely part of KDADS’s budget request); and asking the Legislature to re-examine House bill 23 86 from the prior session, which would change CHIP eligibility language to rely on 250% of the federal poverty level as published that year rather than a fixed historical reference.

Committee members asked follow-up questions. One member asked whether broad recommendations on surveyor staffing were intended to include other specialists such as dietitians; Prosser said she would check the report’s detail. Another member noted the interim panel recommended multidisciplinary survey teams to reduce perceived bias and produce stronger recommendations for nursing facilities.

Prosser also briefed members on the altered budget workflow: agencies submit requests, the governor issues recommendations, and a special committee on the state budget (SBC) consolidated hearings and introduced parallel appropriation bills (house version "24 34" and senate bill "3 15") that the House and Senate plan to run through their processes before conference reconciliation. The chair added that the guidance he had received indicated the legislature is initially targeting roughly a $200,000,000 spending reduction.

To make funding requests easier to evaluate, the chair asked staff and agencies to include a BLUF (bottom line up front) two-paragraph business-case summary at the front of any request packet: “This is what the request is. This is what it will do. This is the cost savings to the state,” he said, describing the tool as a concise way to compare and prioritize proposals.

What’s next: the committee plans an informational hearing on January 15 to review a state predator-treatment program and a January 29 presentation by researchers from the University of Kansas on Alzheimer’s research and treatment models; staff will circulate shorthand documents showing differences among agency requests, governor recommendations, and SBC actions ahead of future meetings. The committee adjourned without taking formal votes.