Topeka — The House on Monday rejected a bill that married proposals to ease lobbyist disclosure requirements and to create a commission that could increase pay for legislators and elected state officials.
The vote was 46-75. The bill represented the only legislation to deal with ethics and pay issues so far this session.
Many legislators say the current lobbyist disclosure law, passed just last year, is too harsh and burdensome. It requires lobbyists to report the recipients and values of individual gifts and meals they buy for legislators and their aides.
Many legislators have complained for years that their compensation is inadequate. The base compensation is about $21,000 a year, but about two-thirds of it covers the expenses that legislators incur from serving.
But some House members saw creating the commission and giving it the power to set pay independently of the Legislature as tantamount to approving a pay increase directly.
Rep. Carl Krehbiel, R-Moundridge, told his colleagues that he was voting no because the state doesn't pay its teachers, law enforcement officers, prison guards or university faculty adequately.
"Now there's this proposal for the Legislature to feather its own nest rather nicely," he said.
Other House members said legislative pay must increase to attract quality candidates and make sure legislators represent a cross section of the population.
"I ask you to do it, if not for yourselves, but for your successors," said Rep. Tony Powell, R-Wichita, chairman of the House Ethics and Elections Committee, which drafted the bill. "I truly believe this bill is the right thing to do."
On the pay issue, the bill, HB 2490, would create a nine-member commission whose members would be appointed by April 2, make recommendations by June 1 and see its proposal take effect on July 1.
After that, the commission would meet every seven years to review pay for legislators, the governor, lieutenant governor, attorney general, secretary of state, state treasurer and insurance commissioner.
Kansas now has a Legislative Compensation Commission, but lawmakers must approve its recommendations before they take effect and haven't.
Legislators say neither the House nor the Senate has the will to seriously consider the pay issue because members are too worried about political fallout.
In its lobbying provisions, the bill would end the required reporting of meals or gifts worth less than $15 and would put executive branch employees, who are now under a separate, stricter law, under the same law as legislators.
Under the current law, reports are not required on meals at events to which all legislators are invited. The bill would expand the exemption to cover meetings of regional legislative delegations, national legislative conferences and meetings of organizations such as a local Rotary or Kiwanis club.
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