TOPEKA — Longtime Kansas Republican activist and retired businessman Gene Bicknell spoke out publicly this week about his long-running tax dispute with the state of Kansas, accusing the state and Gov. Sam Brownback of “tax extortion.”

“I have a tax dispute with the State of Kansas,” Bicknell wrote in a statement released to several Kansas media outlets this week. “I have been subject to some of the most incredible conduct by the Governor and his administration in an effort to extort money from me. I have stayed quiet and not wanted to fight matters in the press — until now.”

Before retiring, Bicknell was the founder of National Pizza Co., which became one of the largest owners of Pizza Hut franchises in the country. An ardent Republican, he ran unsuccessfully for the Republican nomination for governor in 1986 and 1994.

Later in the 1990s, he bought a home in Florida and retired there in 2003. That year, he said, he registered to vote, registered his cars, obtained a Florida driver’s license, opened bank accounts and prepared a will as a Florida resident. Then he started filing Kansas nonresident income tax returns.

Gene Bicknell

In 2006, Bicknell sold National Pizza Co.

In his tax dispute, Bicknell is seeking a refund of an estimated $50 million in income taxes, interest and penalties that he has paid for tax years 2005 and 2006, years in which he insists he was a Florida resident. The Kansas Department of Revenue, however, alleges he was still legally a Kansas resident.

Bicknell said he is now concerned that Brownback is planning to veto a bill passed in the closing hours of the legislative session because the final version did not include a change in tax law that Brownback had sought, one that would have prevented Bicknell and other people with income tax disputes from appealing their cases to district court where they could have a full “de novo” trial, with the opportunity to present evidence and make arguments of law.

“The Governor’s brazen and clandestine late night efforts on Saturday, April 30th to take away my right and the right of all Kansas income taxpayers to a fair trial in a court of law was just too much for me to stay silent any longer,” Bicknell wrote.

Sen. Tom Holland, D-Baldwin City, who served on the conference committee that produced the final version of Senate Bill 280, said the controversy began last year when lawmakers passed a bill allowing anyone to appeal a tax dispute from the Board of Tax Appeals, an administrative hearing body within the Department of Revenue, to a district court.

Prior to the change last year, taxpayers could appeal a BOTA decision to the Kansas Court of Appeals, where the burden of proof was on the taxpayer to show that BOTA had erred in its decision.

Bicknell made such an appeal, and the appellate court agreed with him, sending the case back to BOTA for a new hearing. BOTA then appealed that ruling to the Kansas Supreme Court, which has not yet decided the case.

Late in the session this year, Holland said, the conference committee worked on a bill that mainly dealt with details of property tax law. But he said the House wanted a provision that would scale back last year’s change so that only property tax appeals — not appeals of rulings on income taxes or any other kind of taxes — could be appealed to district court.

Holland said that bill met stiff resistance on the floor of the Senate. And so it was sent back to the conference committee, which restored the original language allowing all tax cases to be appealed to district court.

Holland said the language limiting appeals was requested by House negotiators. But Bicknell said Brownback had fought the idea of allowing de novo appeals to district court when lawmakers first passed the reform bill last year.

“In an effort to defeat the reform legislation in (2015), Sam Brownback pulled out as many tricks as he could, including the incredible statement I understand was made by his Secretary of Revenue (Nick Jordan) to state legislators that they needed to vote down the taxpayers right to a fair trial because in my specific case, ‘if he (Bicknell) gets to district court, he will win,'” Bicknell said.

Jordan declined to comment on Bicknell’s statement, saying the department does not comment on pending litigation.

Brownback’s office did not immediately respond to requests for comment Tuesday afternoon.

In his statement, Bicknell said it was former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius, a Democrat, who began the “secret” practice of targeting for audits people with high incomes who filed nonresident returns. But he said the policy has continued under the Brownback administration.

“People who work hard all their lives and move from Kansas to retire in warmer climates or to live near family and friends are the ones to suffer from the Governor’s secret program,” he said.

He also decried the Board of Tax Appeals, which until recently was known as the Court of Tax Appeals, because the judges who serve on it are not necessarily lawyers, and all are appointed by the governor.

“I will continue to fight this fight to get a real court of law to hear my case,” Bicknell said. “I hope the citizens of Kansas can have that right too — they deserve it and I think the U.S. Constitution guarantees it.”