Kansas bill dangles cash to persuade K-12 school districts to hire a specific gun-detection vendor

TOPEKA — Firearm detection software company ZeroEyes hired lobbyists in Kansas and more than a dozen other states this year to improve prospects of cornering the market on multimillion-dollar school district security contracts by inserting restrictions in legislation to undermine the ability of rival venders to bid.

In Kansas, the gambit may work.

“We started working with statehouses to do some sort of direct appropriated money, that kind of thing, or maybe some policy changes,” said Kieran Carroll, chief strategy officer for ZeroEyes of Conshohocken, Pennsylvania.

After business lobbying successes in Utah, Texas, Florida and Michigan, Carroll said the company expanded its operation this year to state capitols in Kansas, Missouri, Iowa, Colorado, New Mexico, Virginia, North Carolina and half-dozen other states. The objective of hiring four lobbyists in Kansas was to convince legislators to support a bill incentivizing school districts to enter contracts with ZeroEyes for deployment of AI technology capable of monitoring security camera feeds to identify gun-wielding intruders.

Rep. Kristey Williams, the Augusta Republican and chairperson of the House K-12 Budget Committee, invited Carroll to make a presentation to her committee in February.

“Take a couple minutes and do the live demo,” Williams urged Carroll. “It’s impressive.”

The ZeroEyes appearance was part of an “informational” hearing, which in legislative speak meant it wasn’t a regular committee meeting in which vendors or lobbyists with opinions contrary to those of ZeroEyes would be given an opportunity to make a sales pitch to legislators.

ZeroEyes only

An early version of Senate Bill 387 explicitly declared Kansas school districts that hired ZeroEyes would be eligible for a slice of the state’s $5 million School Safety and Security Grant program.

The final version of the bill sent Gov. Laura Kelly didn’t overtly earmark state tax dollars for the no-bid arrangement beneficial to ZeroEyes, but a rival vendor says four of eight precisely written caveats within that bill excluded all companies except ZeroEyes from leveraging state grant funding to obtain AI security systems.

A school district in Kansas could go with a different vendor, but language in the bill meant the dollar-for-dollar match from the state would only be available to districts that signed with ZeroEyes. The financial incentive would be in play if the governor chose to sign the bill rather than line-item veto the ZeroEyes provision. The bill, which contained the annual budget appropriation for Kansas’ public schools, passed the House on a vote of 115-2 and the Senate by a margin of 35-2.

“I look at us as a bipartisan, nonpartisan solution,” Carroll said. “We are not trying to get overly involved in any kind of Second Amendment debate, or civil rights debate or any mental health debate.”

Overall cost of video monitoring services would be a major consideration for school districts in Kansas. During the presentation to the House committee, Carroll said outfitting Kansas’ 1,300 school buildings with ZeroEyes technology and providing 24/7 oversight of images captured on 25 cameras in each school would cost $8.5 million annually. An upgrade to the option of 50 cameras in each school building would annually cost taxpayers $15.2 million per year.

‘Love to bid’

Mark Franken, vice president of marketing at Omnilert in Leesburg, Virginia, northwest of Washington, D.C., said the industry had taken notice of ZeroEyes’ hardball business tactics in statehouses. He said Omnilert hired lobbyists in a couple states, but not Kansas, to make legislators aware of ZeroEyes’ anti-competitive campaign.

He said one method ZeroEyes inhibited competition was to convince state legislators to write bills requiring bidders to hold a U.S. Department of Homeland Security “safety act” validation. The only company to go through that paperwork process to obtain the DHS document was ZeroEyes, Franken said.

“Kansas is one of several states where that tactic has been used. It’s actually happening in Missouri right now,” Franken said. “We would love to bid. We’re all for open competition.”

He said vender competition would result in school districts getting technology most suited to the need and at a price that was fair whether it was a larger school district such as Wichita, Blue Valley, Olathe and Topeka or a smaller district ranging from Buhler, Garnett, Wellsville, McLouth to Bucklin.

A reduction in the per-camera cost of AI monitoring services would stretch taxpayer dollars so more school cameras could be linked to gun-identification software, he said.

Omnilert has been in the AI security business for about four years and its clients include Baltimore County schools where 7,500 cameras were being monitored throughout the district, he said.

The bill on Kelly’s desk required venders to have contracts in at least 30 states and customers in the public and private sectors. It required the vendor to have received a patent on AI security technology. It must have developed its software in the United States without third-party or open-source data, be compliant with the safety act at DHS and manage an operations center staffed by “highly trained analysts.” It couldn’t collect or monetize biometric data or personally identifiable information.

These features were attributed to ZeroEyes in the verbal presentation to the House committee or in marketing information on the company’s website.

Demand for security

Frank Harwood, deputy commissioner of fiscal and administrative affairs for the Kansas State Department of Education, said 188 school districts in Kansas applied last year for part of the $5 million allocated annually by the state for school safety and security projects. Requests from those school districts totaled $14 million, he said.

Harwood said the vast majority of schools in Kansas had some building coverage with security cameras. He said some schools might have a handful of cameras in each building while others could have 200 cameras in a large high school complex.

A security company making recommendations about placement of cameras to make use of AI software would likely suggest installation of additional cameras to deal with coverage gaps inside and outside school buildings, he said.

“You’re going to have a lot of districts that will say, and the company will say, you don’t have enough cameras in the right places,” Harwood said.

Rep. Rebecca Schmoe, R-Ottawa, said she was supportive of collaboration among businesses and school districts to better defend against potential attacks on students, teachers and administrators. She expressed appreciation for the dedication of ZeroEyes executives to the problem of school violence.

“It is unfortunate, the disregard for life,” she said. “It is absolutely heartbreaking.”