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TOPEKA — The Senate Public Health and Welfare Committee voted Wednesday to table a House-passed bill that would have exposed welfare recipients to random drug testing.

The bill’s future is uncertain.

“This bill is not dead, but it will be difficult to bring it off the table – to do that would require a two-thirds vote of the committee,” said Sen. Jim Barnett, R-Emporia and chairman of the nine-member committee.

Barnett voted against tabling House Bill 2275 and was joined by Sens. Mary Pilcher-Cook, R-Shawnee; Jeff Colyer, R-Overland Park; and David Haley, D-Kansas City.

Voting to shelve the bill were Sens. Pete Brungardt, R-Salina; Vicki Schmidt, R-Topeka; Dick Kelsey, R-Goddard; Laura Kelly, D-Topeka; and Terrie Huntington, R-Fairway.

The committee spent several minutes discussing the possibility of expanding the testing to also cover legislators and elected state officials in an effort to overcome constitutional concerns that just testing welfare recipients discriminated against the poor.

The bill’s sponsor, Rep. Kasha Kelley, R-Arkansas City, said the bill was needed to assure the public that cash assistance payments were not being spent on drugs.

Kelley offered similar legislation last year.

“I think we have a responsibility to the people who actually receive assistance to make sure the assistance is going i where it’s supposed to, and we have a duty to taxpayers to be sure the money is going where it is supposed to be going,” Kelley said.

But Sen. Laura Kelly said she could not justify spending more than $1 million on drug tests when earlier testimony indicated they wouldn’t detect more drug use than the screening procedures already in place.

The bill called for limiting the testing to one-third of the adults –parents of young children, mostly - receiving cash assistance.

In Kansas, a typical three-person family living below the federal poverty level is eligible for about $400 a month in cash aid.

Kelly, a member of the Senate Ways and Means Committee, said there’s a chance the cash assistance program will be eliminated altogether this year due to budget strains.

“I don’t know what the budget looks like in the House, but on the Senate side, we (budget committee) have cut cash assistance,” Kelly said. “It may not be there.”

It didn’t make much sense, Kelly argued, to spend money on drug tests for a program that may not survive the state’s budget crisis. Kelly made the motion to table the bill.