Topeka ? In the recent general election campaign, an out-of-state group spent an estimated $1 million on advertising to defeat Kansas Attorney General Steve Six.

And there is no record in the state about who bankrolled that effort.

For the eighth straight year, the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission will recommend that the Legislature approve a bill that would require groups such as the Iowa-based American Future Fund, which helped beat Six, to file campaign finance reports that show exactly how much they are spending and who is funding them.

These groups get around the traditional campaign disclosure rules for individuals and political action committees because they don’t expressly advocate to vote for or against a candidate. Instead, they move voters through “issue ads.”

Carol Williams, executive director of the Ethics Commission, said the groups are trying to influence the election.

House Minority Leader Paul Davis, D-Lawrence, has pushed for a change in the law for years.

“There are just going to be more and more groups spending more and more money to influence our elections,” Davis said.

“We have to know who is funding these groups in order to have transparency for the voters,” he said.

According to its website, the American Future Fund “was formed to provide Americans with a conservative and free market viewpoint to have a mechanism to communicate and advocate on the issues that most interest and concern them.”

It opposes the health care reform signed into law by President Barack Obama and ran ads attacking Six for refusing to join the legal challenge of the law.

Six was defeated by Republican Derek Schmdit, who has since fulfilled a campaign promise by joining a lawsuit against the health reform law.