{"id":96208,"date":"2025-10-22T10:31:37","date_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:31:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/?p=96208"},"modified":"2025-10-22T10:31:41","modified_gmt":"2025-10-22T16:31:41","slug":"schwab-recommends-streamling-processes","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/2025\/10\/22\/schwab-recommends-streamling-processes\/","title":{"rendered":"Schwab Recommends Streamling Processes"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p><em>By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>TOPEKA \u2014 The Kansas secretary of state\u2019s office recommends streamlining the processing of campaign finance records, lobbying reports and statements of substantial interest by filing those documents directly with the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>State law has mandated Secretary of State Scott Schwab operate the state government\u2019s intake center for these documents, but his office does almost nothing with the records before transferring each to the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission. This system persists despite statutes placing responsibility for regulation, oversight and imposition of penalties exclusively with the commission.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Clay Barker, general counsel to the secretary of state\u2019s office, asked the Kansas Legislature\u2019s interim committee on campaign finance to accept this duplicated approach no longer made sense, given widespread access to the internet.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIn today\u2019s world, there\u2019s no need for the secretary of state to be the middleman. We\u2019re just there. We just suck up time and money taking the reports and passing them on,\u201d Barker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Both the secretary of state and the disclosure commission offices separately publish online the content of campaign finance reports for candidates, parties and political action committees.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Barker recommended all campaign finance reports in Kansas be filed directly with the disclosure commission. All should be submitted electronically, he said, with limited exceptions for use of paper. State law currently compels candidates for statewide office, such as governor or attorney general, to submit records by computer. Other candidates have an option of paper or electronic reporting.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>He said paper filings were inefficient because countless staff hours were consumed by state employees entering contents of documents into a database for analysis. Scans of original documents weren\u2019t easily deciphered, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt\u2019s very hard for the public sometimes to read or search handwritten campaign finance reports,\u201d Barker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Barker also recommended the Legislature repeal a state law requiring candidates to include on advertising the name of the campaign\u2019s treasurer.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cIt is a disincentive for a volunteer treasurer to have their name on every mailer whose message, especially negative messaging, they had no role in creating,\u201d Barker said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Another change suggested by the secretary of state\u2019s office would repeal a requirement candidates, political parties and PACs report expenditures by subcontractors engaged in advertising, public relations or consulting on campaigns. The law requiring reporting on payments to contractors as well as subcontractors was difficult to comply with and hard to enforce, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Rep. Alexis Simmons, D-Topeka, said the challenge of extracting information about subcontractors shouldn\u2019t deter the state from seeking information about the name, amount, date and purpose of payments.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI\u2019m kind of concerned we\u2019d do this just because people don\u2019t follow the law,\u201d Simmons said. \u201cWe\u2019re here for transparency. I worked on campaigns professionally for years. People go out of their way to try and hide things, and I don\u2019t know why we would enable that.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Barker said the law posed a disproportionate reporting burden on campaigns and committees because the information was frequently beyond their reach. Often, he said, consulting firms bundled services for clients through complex networks of subcontractors. The inability of candidates to verify activities of subcontractors risked the filing of incomplete or inaccurate reports, he said.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>\u201cI do everything I can to follow the law and be transparent as I know other legislators do,\u201d said Sen. Caryn Tyson, R-Parker. \u201cI don\u2019t see an issue with this either way.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>By Tim Carpenter, Kansas Reflector TOPEKA \u2014 The Kansas secretary of state\u2019s office recommends streamlining the processing of campaign finance records, lobbying reports and statements of substantial interest by filing those documents directly with the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission. State law has mandated Secretary of State Scott Schwab operate the state government\u2019s intake center for [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[23],"tags":[823,4150],"class_list":["post-96208","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-state","tag-campaign-finance","tag-scott-schwab"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96208","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=96208"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/96208\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=96208"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=96208"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.kcnonline.com\/wp\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=96208"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}