Topeka ? Want to know the salary and benefits package of Kansas University Athletic Director Lew Perkins and his top staff?

Want information about the Lawrence Police Department’s high-speed chase of a driver who collided with and killed another motorist?

Good luck.

In both instances, KU and the Police Department have cited exemptions to the Kansas Open Records Act to keep such information secret.

Many times each year, the media and ordinary people alike try to pry information out of the government and are rebuffed because of the numerous exemptions to the Kansas Open Records Act.

The 1984 law makes public records open for inspection by anyone. The law states it “shall be liberally construed” to ensure that public business is conducted in the open, but 46 exemptions have been added through the years. In addition, sprinkled throughout other state laws are more than 300 other provisions that keep information secret.

Now, all those record-closing statutes are going under the legislative microscope.

“We are hopefully going to get a lot of junk out of the laws and replace it with common sense,” said Randy Brown, a former Kansas newsman, now a member of the board of the Kansas Sunshine Coalition for Open Government.

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“Open government is the only way that citizens can know if their government is serving them well and properly. It is the only real check on the powers of law enforcement and the courts, the city councils, county commissions, school boards and the like,” Brown said.

In 1999, a group of Kansas newspapers, including the Journal-World, tested the Kansas Open Records Act by requesting common public documents from government agencies in each of the state’s 105 counties. Compliance with the law was irregular, dozens of requests were denied and some records were released only after illegal questioning from government officials. In one case, the person requesting a public record was escorted to the county line by sheriff’s officers.

The project prompted a law approved in 2000 that said all exceptions to public disclosure would expire July 1, 2005, unless the Legislature acted to reinstate the exceptions.

The review process will get under way this session — which begins Monday — before the House Local Government Committee, chaired by state Rep. Jene Vickrey, a Louisburg Republican.

“I certainly won’t back down from doing my job correctly,” Vickrey said. “We will be making decisions that will affect everyone’s life in the state, and we are going to do that correctly.”

Officials say the review probably will take all of this session and continue through the 2005 legislative session.

Brown said some of the most troublesome blackouts of information concern the Legislature itself. Legislative records dealing with proposed legislation and research for legislators are off-limits to public viewing.

Vickrey said he agreed that some exceptions from public disclosure seemed too broadly written.

“I would want better exemptions that hit the target better. I would hate to think we would do all this work and not improve the law.”