PIERRE — A political debate over the number of state employees spilled into the House of Representatives Wednesday with a party-line vote to revise the definition of a full-time equivalent position.

Democrats including gubernatorial candidate Sen. Scott Heidepriem, D-Sioux Falls, have criticized Republicans and Gov. Mike Rounds for the increase in FTEs from 12,964 in 2001 to a recommended level of 14,367 next year.

Rounds and others have defended that FTE growth, saying many of the new positions are university students doing teaching or research whose wages don’t affect the state’s budget.

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This session, the Bureau of Finance and Management submitted HB1052, which would eliminate hundreds of FTEs from the official count by declaring students employed by their university to not be FTEs.

Supporters of the bill argued that these positions are not paid for by the state and that counting them as full time jobs was misleading.

“These people are not highly paid — they are very low-paid — and they perform an important function for the university, but they are doing almost nothing as far as increasing the cost of state government,” said Rep. Jim Bolin, R-Canton. “This is an important clarification matter.”

Gov. Mike Rounds’ budget proposal for FY2011 includes 14,367 FTEs,

Rep. Larry Tidemann, R-Brookings, said just eliminating graduate student teaching assistants from the FTE count would lower it by 326.

But several Democrats argued the point of the bill was not to clarify but to confuse.

“This bill is covering up the increases we’ve been having the last six or seven years,” said Rep. Mitch Fargen, D-Flandreau. “We’ve increased about 1,400 FTEs across the state. I believe that this bill is trying to cover up some of those and sweep them under the rug coming up in this election year.”

The bill passed 46-22, with all 22 votes against the bill coming from Democrats.