The Kansas Senate unanimously passed four bills aimed at increasing government transparency Thursday but rejected a proposal to open officials’ private emails about government business to public scrutiny.

One of the bills passed would limit government fees for producing records, and another would increase lobbyist disclosures about their funding. A third requires the Legislature to provide live Internet audio of some committee meetings.

The chamber rejected an amendment by Democratic Minority Leader Anthony Hensley of Topeka to a fourth bill. The bill would preserve existing open records exceptions, and Hensley’s amendment would have required state agencies to disclose officials’ emails about government business on private accounts or networks.

Hensley said in a statement that rejecting the amendment was hypocritical after the Kansas Republican Party criticized former U.S. Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton’s use of private email for official business.

Democratic legislators have sought to open up emails to records requests following disclosures that Budget Director Shawn Sullivan used a private email account at least twice in December to circulate details about potential budget proposals. But, bills submitted to both chambers of the GOP-dominated Legislature were not given a committee hearing.

In debate on the Senate floor, Republican Sen. Jeff King from Independence said that the language of the amendment was too vague and could extend to private communications unrelated to official work. Having already been passed by the House, that bill will now be sent to the governor to be signed. The other three bills will now move to the House.

Under the lobbying bill, all registered Kansas lobbyists would be required to give detailed reports of money they received from state agencies or organizations that receive public funds. State agencies would also have to report any money that ended up paying for lobbyists either directly or through memberships and associations under an amendment attached to the bill by Republican Sen. Dennis Pyle from Hiawatha.

Pyle said he did not believe that public employees’ unions and other groups that would be affected by the bill would object to the added scrutiny.

“I don’t think they want to be determined to be public Klingons with their trying to carry out a cloaking device,” Pyle said, referring to an alien race in the TV series “Star Trek” with the technology to make spaceships invisible.

The records bill would bar state agencies from charging more than 25 cents per sheet of paper when producing records for a request, and any employee hours added to the price would have to be calculated using the lowest salary in the agency. Government agencies have sometimes charged hundreds of dollars to fulfill records requests.

Four legislative committees would stream their sessions live starting in 2016 under the other bill, and the Legislature would then look into the cost and feasibility of expanding that service to all committee meetings. Republican Sen. Kay Wolfe from Prairie Village said the committees selected for the program will be those that generate the most public interest — mostly likely budget, tax and judiciary panels.