The Associated Press

TOPEKA, Kan. — Kansas’ governor said Wednesday that he’s prepared to make additional spending cuts this year to keep the state’s budget balanced, and key legislators predicted he’ll be forced to further trim aid to public schools.

Gov. Mark Parkinson wouldn’t speculate during a news conference about what steps he’ll take to close any projected deficit for the fiscal year that began July 1. But he said he won’t leave the job of closing a shortfall to legislators when they reconvene in January.

More than half of Kansas’ general tax revenues, nearly $3 billion under the current budget, go to the state’s 293 school districts as aid. The Republican chairmen of the House and Senate budget committees said they don’t believe the Democratic governor can make additional cuts without touching education spending.

The state has seen four rounds of cuts and other adjustments this year to keep the budget balanced, and the last revisions were imposed by Parkinson in July. Public schools have lost $130 million, and their base aid per student dropped by $215, or 4.8 percent.

Kansas law allows Parkinson to impose cuts when legislators are out of session, as they have been since early June. But he also could wait until legislators reconvene, then have them debate budget revisions. His predecessor, Democrat Kathleen Sebelius, did that in 2008 and 2009.

“When the Legislature comes back, this budget will be in balance,” Parkinson said during a Statehouse news conference. “I will make the decisions, and I’ll take the responsibility.”

It was the first time Parkinson has said publicly how he plans to deal with Kansas’ budget problems since state officials learned tax collections in July, August and September were $67 million short of expectations, a shortfall of 5 percent.

“I’m going to take all the heat,” he told reporters.

The GOP-controlled Legislature’s budget committee chairmen, Sen. Jay Emler, of Lindsborg, and Rep. Kevin Yoder, of Overland Park, praised Parkinson for promising to make cuts. GOP leaders often had criticized Sebelius, who resigned in April to become U.S. health and human services secretary, for not doing the same.

“It’s nice to have the governor step forward and work on this, because he fully understands that we’re in a world of hurt,” Emler said.

Still, Parkinson declined to provide details about how he’d close a projected budget gap.

The Department of Revenue is expected to release preliminary figures Friday for tax collections in October. And state officials and university economists are scheduled next week to release new revenue projections for the fiscal year. The new forecast is expected to be more pessimistic.

“It’s just not productive to speculate at this point about what decisions we might make in order to put the budget back in balance, because I don’t want to create any sort of hysteria out there that’s not necessary,” Parkinson said.

But Yoder said: “I don’t see how he resolves the projected shortfalls without doing some significant trimming to K-through-12 spending.”