Topeka ? Higher-education officials are trying to kill an open-records bill because they don’t like a part of the proposed legislation that would make public the total compensation package of high-paid state employees, a Kansas legislator said Wednesday.

Rep. Jene Vickrey, R-Louisburg, said he was surprised by the position because no one from the state’s major universities had testified on the open-records bill during committee action.

Vickrey, who is chairman of the House Local Government Committee, said he wasn’t sure who in higher education was trying to upend the legislation, which was approved by the House 123-2, but that the measure, HB 2889, was stuck in the Senate Judiciary Committee with no date set for a hearing.

The dispute, Vickrey said, is about language in the bill that says that records of “actual compensation, employment contracts or agreements” of state employees are public records.

The Lawrence Journal-World and 6News have filed a lawsuit against Kansas University after the school refused to reveal the compensation package of KU Athletic Director Lew Perkins.

KU claims employee contracts are “individually identifiable records” that are exempt from disclosure.

Because of the legal battle, KU’s interim executive vice chancellor, Kevin Boatright, said he would not say whether KU was involved in trying to stop HB 2889.

“It would just be inappropriate for me to discuss any of this, including any legislative strategy that we may be pursuing,” he said.

The Kansas Board of Regents, which coordinates higher education statewide, has not taken a position on the bill, according to regents spokesman Kip Peterson.

But the general counsels of KU, Kansas State University and Wichita State University wrote a letter in November circulated to lawmakers that urged the Legislature to maintain three exemptions to the Kansas Open Records Act, including some personnel records. The lawyers didn’t address the issue of making public the employment contracts.

The other exemptions of public disclosure the school attorneys supported dealt with investigative records and engineering and architectural estimates.

” … it is important to recognize that each exception was written, considered, debated and enacted for sound reasons,” the lawyers wrote.

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