Bipartisan support emerges in Kansas House for compromise campaign ethics reform bill

TOPEKA — The Kansas House’s Democratic leader extracted from a Republican committee chairman Thursday a rare public commitment to fight for preservation of a compromise bill altering authority of the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission to administer campaign finance law.

The deal was negotiated by Gov. Laura Kelly’s chief of staff, the ethics commission’s executive director and lawyers providing legal counsel to clients under scrutiny by the commission for alleged campaign violations. In a Capitol not known for swift proceedings, the House substitute for Senate Bill 208 was fast-tracked through the House Elections Committee and approved Thursday with bipartisan support by the full House. The bill was forwarded to the Kansas Senate on a vote of 119-3.

House Minority Leader Vic Miller of Topeka, during House floor debate on the bill, sought a pledge from Leavenworth Rep. Pat Proctor, chairman of the election committee, to vigorously cling to the House’s position and oppose all effort by the Senate to insert partisan provisions back into the legislation.

Previously, the Senate passed Senate Bill 208 to ban use of drop boxes by advance voters in Kansas. The prohibition sought by the Senate, sharply opposed by Democrats, was deleted in a gut-and-go maneuver by the House committee.

“When the bill came across it was a monster,” Miller said. “Will you give us a solemn commitment that you will fight to protect 208 in its current version?”

“I will give you my solemn commitment,” Proctor said. “This bill was hard-fought. Not everybody got what they wanted. Not everybody likes everything in it. But all the parties agreed to it and I respect all the work they did enough to fight to keep the language the way it is.”

“I accept that completely,” Miller said. “Thank you for that commitment.”

The new reform bill

Under the updated edition of the 22-page reform bill, Proctor said Kansas campaign law would be amended to establish a five-year statute of limitations on actions by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. KGEC’s subpoena authority would be reformed to require involvement of district court judges. Individuals accused of misconduct would be able to have their case heard by a Kansas administrative judge rather than KGEC.

The bill would redirect financial penalties paid by offenders to the state treasury instead of KGEC to address concern about potential bias among commissioners in favor of financial sanctions. Currently, 25% of the agency’s revenue was derived from payment of fines. The bill would increase fees assessed political action committees to generate more revenue and potentially hold harmless KGEC’s budget.

“This is an essential element of this bill,” Proctor said. “The commission must, in order to avoid the appearance of impropriety, have no financial interest in finding a respondent guilty.”

Financial penalties assessed by KGEC would be capped and the commission would be forbidden from mandating community service for people running afoul of state law. The bill would clarify campaign staff were eligible for compensation reflecting fair market value for their services.

The compromise bill would require KGEC to adopt standards for members of the commission, the executive director or other commission staff to be recused from a case.

Proctor said the legislation wouldn’t be retroactive, meaning it wouldn’t have an influence on pending campaign finance investigations of the commission.

‘Proud of consensus’

Negotiations involved attorneys Josh Ney and Ryan Kriegshauser, Kelly’s chief of staff Will Lawrence as well as Mark Skoglund, executive director of KGEC.

“This bill brings major bipartisan due process reform to the commission and I’m very proud of the consensus we built with executive director Skoglund and the governor’s office,” Ney said. “We’ve been long overdue for bringing more clarity and fairness to campaign finance laws and procedure in Kansas.”

Ney said he looked forward to contributing to discussion of other changes during meetings of an interim legislative committee in the summer or fall.

Skoglund said he welcomed movement in the House on the compromise legislation.

“We don’t love everything in the bill, but the bill represents a successful negotiated compromise on a number of items,” he said.

Rep. Paul Waggoner, a Hutchinson Republican, introduced House Bill 2391 to dramatically weaken KGEC and significantly change campaign finance law in Kansas. It was drafted by Ney and Kriegshauser, who have represented GOP political consultant Jared Suhn. Suhn has been engaged in a protracted legal dispute in Johnson County with his former business partner Kris Van Meteren.

In wake of that lawsuit, KGEC issued subpoenas to Republicans in the Legislature and to individuals associated with political action committees supporting GOP candidates.

In the 2022 session, House Republicans responded to KGEC by attempting to rewrite state statute to force Skoglund to resign. That was followed in the 2023 session by the House bill tied to Waggoner, which would have allowed limitless campaign contributions and enabled coordination between candidates and political action committees.

Lenexa Rep. Brandon Woodard, ranking Democrat on the House Elections Commission, said he was backing the compromise rolled into Senate Bill 208. He said the alternative House bill previously touted by Waggoner and the two attorneys was an unacceptable attack on KGEC.

“The initial bill would have allowed me to buy a sports car for a campaign volunteer,” Woodard said. “We had a long journey from what this bill started out as to where we’ve gotten today.”