Millions of dollars in back pay for thousands of state employees in Kentucky is at stake in a lawsuit resulting from the first state budget standoff in 2002.

Attorney Phillip Shepherd represents several thousand state employees who believe they were shorted around 15-million dollars in pay hikes when lawmakers failed to pass a budget in 2002. A budget did pass in March 2003 that included annual two-point-seven percent pay raises. But since the 2002 legislature failed to susp/files/storyimages/a state law requiring five-percent pay hikes, Shepherd says the state owes the workers the difference between the mandatory five percent raises and the two-point-seven percent increases approved nine months later.

Attorney Sheryl Snyder, who represents the executive branch, disagrees. He says lawmakers did susp/files/storyimages/the five-percent requirement when they approved two-point-seven percent pay hikes applicable for all of 2003.

Franklin Circuit Judge Roger Crittenden hopes to making a ruling in the case by the /files/storyimages/of February.