By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector
TOPEKA — Republican and Democrats in the Kansas Legislature expressed frustration with inability of a software developer to hit the June 30 deadline for completing work on modernized software for processing bills, amendments and resolutions.
The Legislative Coordinating Council, comprised of the state’s top legislative leaders, signed a $3.9 million contract with Propylon in October 2022 to overhaul the computer system essential to drafting and tweaking legislation. In December, an IT steering committee thought it was reasonable to assume Propylon would have made enough progress to deploy the new system by the end of June.
Persistent bugs in the software prompted the LCC’s vote this week to postpone the launch until Oct. 1. The three-month extension to address problems would come at an estimated cost of $190,000, legislative officials said.
House Speaker Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, said he wouldn’t be surprised if Propylon was unable to comply with the revised deadline. The plan was to thoroughly integrate the new system long before start of the 2026 legislative session in January.
“My frustration is the Eveready bunny called Propylon,” Hawkins said. “It just keeps going and going and going. When does it stop? Right now, it wouldn’t surprise me at all if we got to January 1 and we don’t go live simply because Propylon doesn’t seem to deliver on their promises.”
The Legislature has worked with Propylon on IT projects since 2011. The company’s work on the Kansas Legislative Information System and Services, or KLISS, has generated controversy for years as other states adopted increasingly sophisticated programs to write legislation.
Operational problems with Kansas’ current version of KLISS has periodically brought the House and Senate to a standstill. There have been conversations among legislators about switching to one of Propylon’s software competitors, but the LCC stuck with Propylon.
Senate Majority Leader Chase Blasi, R-Wichita, said a functional software system was crucial to the daily operation of the Legislature.
“It’s been three years,” he said, “and we’re missing a deadline again.”
“We keep punting this,” said Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes, a Lenexa Democrat. “We do need to move forward, but I don’t believe we’re getting what we need from them.”
Gordon Self, who leads the Legislature’s office of the revisor of statutes, is a member of the KLISS project steering committee responsible for monitoring work on the system update. He said testing of Propylon’s new software revealed flaws and warranted the postponement.
“We did not feel the system was production ready,” Self said.
Self said the original three-year timeline established in the Propylon contract was ambitious. A four-year schedule would have been reasonable, he said.
He said many users of Kansas’ existing bill-writing software were interested in making the system faster. In his role as leader of the division dedicated to writing legislation, Self said his focus was on accuracy.
“I won’t take a system into usage that isn’t ready,” Self told legislators. “I’m an optimist, but I’m also a realist. If we don’t get what we need in a timely fashion, we will be back here to discuss other alternatives.”
Tom Day, director of the Legislature’s administrative services division, said he was confident Propylon would have session-ready software by Oct. 1. He acknowledged testing continued to identify defects in the new KLISS software.
“We fix some and then when we get into an almost production-type environment, others pop up,” Day said.
Senate President Ty Masterson, R-Andover, said it was risky to give Propylon until October to address weaknesses in the software. He said a revised deadline of Aug. 15 or Sept. 1 would be more appropriate because it would give actual users of the software more time to identify kinks prior to the 2026 session.
“We wait to go live October 1, then you’ve got the Thanksgiving holidays, the Christmas holidays. That doesn’t feel like hardly enough time to have a real-live test,” he said.
