We are excited to join Mainstream Coalition to host an event strictly focused on the secrecy around the Kansas Legislature and the governor’s Administration. It will be a casual town hall setting, and the event will last one and a half hours, with the speaker portion going for half-hour and then we will open up the floor to questions from attendees.

At the moment, our speaker is Stephanie Clayton, Kansas Representative for District 19. She will talk about what she’s pursuing in legislation to increase the transparency.

More speakers will be announced.

How secretive is the Kansas Statehouse?

• Legislators don’t have to list how they voted on a bill
• Legislators are not required to include their names on bills they introduce
• Legislators can gut a bill and introduce amendments that have nothing to do with the original bill in a practice called Gut and Go.
• Elected officials don’t have to announce public meetings they have or take minutes of those meetings which would record it was held and the topics discussed.
• Elected officials don’t have to comply with KORA (Kansas Open Records Act)

Get Informed. Take Action. Join us!

Background

Kansas has one of the most secretive state governments in the nation. Why is a transparent government a good government? We elect these officials into office. They represent us. They are accountable to us.

How many times in recent years, especially during Brownback’s term, did you think, who would submit this crazy bill to become law? Who influenced them to write this bill? Who actually wrote it?

For each of the issues that affect our state: Medicaid expansion, public school funding, campus carry, and election reform, it’s obvious that if we’d known the authors of the bills or who crafted the bill, we’d be in a better place. If you have been disappointed or even angered by where gun legislation has headed in the past few years, maybe knowing who wrote those bills would have helped you figure out which legislator to advocate either for the bill or against it.

We might think we are naive citizens, a few degrees away from our legislators and the administration and that information is hard to retrieve, but even professionals, who are covered by the First Amendment, end up getting the run around. If an actual KORA is filed, administrators first ask why the person asking for the information wants it and even then, employees take their time providing the info.

More needs to be done to make the Statehouse more transparent.