Kansas House gives unanimous passage to bill to close private e-mail loophole

The House voted unanimously Thursday to close a loophole in the Kansas Open Records Act that allowed public officials to avoid scrutiny by using private e-mail to conduct official business.

SB 22 will close the loophole and make public officials’ private e-mails open records if they pertain to official business. Private e-mails on personal matters would remain private.

The issue gained attention last year when The Eagle reported that Gov. Sam Brownback’s budget director had used a private e-mail address to send a draft of the governor’s budget proposal to two lobbyists with ties to Brownback several weeks before it was presented to lawmakers.

“I think really Kansans demand the ability to have oversight of their government, and they can’t have oversight if you can sneak business through private e-mail accounts and say it’s not a public record,” said Rep. Jim Ward, D-Wichita, who helped craft the proposed policy change.

The bill now heads to the Kansas Senate, where an earlier version gained approval in February. After final passage there, it would head to the governor.

“I think it would be very bad for the governor to veto this good piece of policy that balances the need to have public oversight of public business,” Ward said.

Brownback’s office said the governor would review the bill carefully if it came to his desk.

Doug Anstaett, executive director of the Kansas Press Association, called House passage of the bill a win for government transparency.

“This was a huge loophole that had to be fixed this year and so we’re pleased that the Legislature saw fit to get right on this and fix it rather than put it off for another year,” he said.

Rep. John Barker, R-Abilene, said the bill passed by a wide margin because lawmakers saw a need to bring the Kansas Open Records Act into the digital age.

“It had not been addressed in years. Because of technology advancement, we need to address those issues,” Barker said. “And in five years probably, with the way technology is going, we’re going to have to go back to it.”

Several other states are also grappling with the issue. Officials from both parties have come under fire for their use of private e-mail.

The Associated Press reported last week, for example, that Pennsylvania Attorney General Kathleen Kane, a Democrat, has routinely used private e-mail accounts to conduct public business, in violation of her office’s official policy.

Kansas lawmakers paired the open records reform with legislation that will define video recordings from police body cameras as criminal investigation records. The videos will be open to anyone who is the subject of a recording and to that person’s attorney. They won’t be open to the media or the public.

Anstaett said he would have preferred that the body camera videos be treated as open records but that this version was better than an earlier version that would have closed the videos to the public entirely.

This story was originally published April 28, 2016 at 4:11 PM with the headline "Kansas House gives unanimous passage to bill to close private e-mail loophole."