Bowling for (tax) dollars with Michael O’Donnell — what could go wrong, Kansas? | Opinion
Michael O’Donnell hasn’t been a Kansas senator for eight years, but he’s back in Topeka, introducing legislation and shaping our laws.
Since he was run out of office as a Sedgwick County Commissioner four years ago due to political corruption, he’s become a lobbyist, and a fairly successful one.
That tracks.
He has some big clients: Evergy, the state’s dominant power company; Genesis Health Clubs; Jump Start gas stations; and the Cornejo Companies construction firm.
His client list also includes the Kansas State Bowling Proprietors Association, a group of about 60 bowling center owners across the state.
O’Donnell’s latest effort is a bill to exempt bowling alleys from having to pay sales tax on the equipment and supplies they have to buy to run their business.
The bill is numbered SB 26 and was the subject of a hearing last week in the Senate Committee on Assessment and Taxation. The committee chair, Sen. Caryn Tyson, announced this week that she plans to “work” the bill, which puts it on track to advance it to the full Senate.
When I traced down how it got there, the committee itself is listed as the original and current sponsor.
But the web page for the bill, where it says “Requested for introduction by” names “Michael O’Donnell on behalf of Kansas State Bowling Proprietors Association.”
More on that later, but first let’s look at the bill.
It would exempt bowling centers from having to pay sales tax on:
▪ Bowling equipment — includes automatic pin setters, pins, ball returns, lane machines, score screens and tables; televisions, furniture and fixtures; parts and labor for maintaining equipment, including purchased warranties and service agreements; labor to repair and remodel real estate.
▪ Customer-used equipment — loaner bowling balls, rental shoes and shoe deodorizers; reusable tableware (disposable tableware is already tax-free).
▪ Office equipment and supplies — Computers, copiers, printers; lane oil, janitorial equipment and supplies, security cameras, software and software maintenance labor.
Oddly, the bill specifies that miniature golf and go-kart equipment purchased by bowling centers not be exempted from taxes.
I talked with the president of the association, Kelly Hill, the owner of Billy’s Ayr Lanes in Liberal, and asked him why bowling should get a special tax break.
He said some other businesses get similar breaks — mentioning specifically the food he buys for his restaurant. And he said the customers pay sales tax to bowl, so, “we shouldn’t be taxed on the input prices to facilitate that game.”
He said they carved out mini-golf and go-karts to keep it bowling specific and not overlap with other recreation industry interests.
It’s not surprising that a special interest is seeking a special tax break for itself. Without such requests, the Legislature could probably wrap up its annual session in about two weeks.
What does bother me, though, is how bills can be written by those interests, introduced by their lobbyists, and get sponsored and advanced by a committee.
Call me a radical, but I don’t think you ought to be able to introduce a bill without at least one elected legislator on board.
I remember back when I first started covering the Kansas Legislature, 20 years or so ago.
I was at a House Utilities Committee meeting and when they asked for bill introductions, the chair waved at a group of lobbyists in the front row and asked “does anybody in the audience have any bills?”
A couple of the lobbyists stepped forward, said what was in their bills, and after a “without objection” approval, they were tossed in the hopper as committee-sponsored bills.
I wondered: What am I watching here? These guys get to introduce their own legislation?
I came to find out that this was a routine practice in the Kansas Statehouse.
And I came to find out that often, these bills pass through the system just as easily, in many cases easier, than if they were an elected legislator’s idea and drafted by the Revisor’s Office.
I also came to find out that the legislators often knew nothing about these bills as they voted them through, except maybe what the sponsor’s lobbyist told them.
It’s been cleaned up a little.
At least now the lobbyist submitting the bill has to identify him or her self and that becomes part of the record of the legislation.
But the Legislature could do better.
As of now, the Senate has 244 bills on its docket. To find out who walked them in the door, you’d need to open all 244 web pages and click the tab labeled “Requested for introduction by.”
That’s just the Senate. The House is even worse.
They have 371 bills pending, and to find out who’s behind a committee bill there, you have to actually open the PDF text of the bill itself.
I’m not sure what to call that. But it’s not called transparency.
Maybe the House and Senate should make and publish a list of all the bills coming into the Capitol from lobbyists and outside interests.
Or better yet, maybe they shouldn’t allow it at all.
This story was originally published February 7, 2025 at 10:52 AM.
