“Children’s advocates raised concerns Wednesday that the state is endangering long-term funding for programs meant to benefit Kansas kids.

“The Kansas Endowment for Youth Fund will drop to a record low amount at the end of fiscal year 2017, according to the advocacy group Kansas Action for Children, under the budgets passed by the Legislature last month.

“The Kansas Legislature has swept, or taken for other uses, $200 million from the KEY Fund since 2000. The fund, composed of money from the state’s tobacco settlement, is meant to provide future funding to children’s programs…

“Shannon Cotsoradis, president of Kansas Action for Children, said that when policymakers established the fund in 1999 it was with the intention to ensure long-term funding for these programs.

“‘But because lawmakers chipped away at the fund year by year to use it as a temporary budget stopgap, we have nearly — and likely permanently — depleted it,’ she said. ‘These short-term decisions have devastating long-term consequences to both our kids and our economy.'”

Read more here: http://www.kansas.com/news/politics-government/article26004952.html