From left, Reps. Blaine Finch, John Whitmer, John Carmichael and Fred Patton confer on the House floor about language in a bill that would limit public access to many records about complaints and disciplinary actions involving law enforcement officers.

Topeka ? Republican and Democratic leaders on the House Judiciary Committee said Thursday that they believe they have reached a bipartisan compromise on a bill that would limit public access to state records on law enforcement officers, including records about complaints, investigations and disciplinary actions involving officers accused of misconduct.

But that agreement came about only after the bill was pulled from debate on the House floor and sent back to committee once the ranking Democrat on the committee realized the original bill went much further than he had been led to believe.

“This is a very unfortunate circumstance and I bear responsibility for the oversight of the committee,” Rep. John Carmichael, D-Wichita, said when the bill first came up for debate on the floor. “I should have read the bill more carefully.”

The bill concerns records of the Commission on Peace Officer Standards and Training, or CPOST, the state agency that certifies and regulates state and local law enforcement officers in Kansas.

From left, Reps. Blaine Finch, John Whitmer, John Carmichael and Fred Patton confer on the House floor about language in a bill that would limit public access to many records about complaints and disciplinary actions involving law enforcement officers.

Among other things, that agency maintains a central registry of all commissioned officers in the state showing that they have received all of the education and training required to maintain their commissions. It also contains records of officers who have been terminated from their jobs.

In addition, CPOST is the state agency that receives formal complaints against officers, supervises investigations of those complaints, and has the authority to suspend or revoke an officer’s law enforcement license.

When it was first introduced, the bill would have declared that registry a “confidential” document that would be exempt from the Kansas Open Records Act and only open to other law enforcement or administrative agencies or courts.

It was supported by a number of groups representing law enforcement agencies, but it was strongly opposed by the Kansas Press Association.

That part of the bill was amended in committee to say that information in the registry would be considered “personnel documents” under the Open Records Act, which means only the names, salaries, position, length of service and any employment contract with the employee are open to the public.

Other information is closed to the public, including performance ratings, hours worked and individually identifiable records about employees or applicants for public jobs.

Although not everyone was entirely happy with that compromise, it appeared to be enough to satisfy most people, and it passed out of committee Feb. 3 with bipartisan support.

Just before it came up for debate on the House floor Thursday, however, Carmichael said he was made aware of another section of the bill that had never been discussed in committee and was not even mentioned in the brief “supplemental note” that explained the bill.

That section would have completely and permanently closed public access to records about complaints against law enforcement officers, or any information related to that complaint such as investigations and disciplinary action.

“No other law enforcement agency in this state has an absolute seal on their investigative records,” Carmichael said.

In other cases, he said, agencies can assert an exception in the Open Records Act that allows investigation records to be closed, and people seeking access to them can file a petition in court to get access if they can convince a judge that release of the records is in the public interest.

“And oftentimes, at the conclusion of an investigation, those records are opened because the public has an interest in knowing whether or not law enforcement is doing its job,” Carmichael said.

Rep. Blaine Finch, R-Ottawa, who chairs the Judiciary Committee, said there was no attempt to hide that provision of the bill, and he said there is an argument in favor of closing records about complaints and allegations made against officers.

“The goal here is not to shield bad cops,” he said. “CPOST is in the business of getting rid of bad cops and making sure the public is protected by good ones. … You don’t fix the system, you don’t enhance transparency by putting out allegations and risking an officer’s reputation because a citizen may have been upset about something completely different. Maybe they didn’t like the way their son or daughter got treated or the fact that their brother got arrested, and so they make a complaint.”

“Believe it or not, folks, the people who get arrested don’t like cops,” Finch said.

Debate on the bill was put on hold for several minutes as Carmichael, Finch and two other lawmakers met in a huddle to go over the language of the bill. Afterward, Finch offered a motion to refer it back to the Judiciary Committee to work on an amendment “to continue the air of good feeling and collegiality we have here.”

Later in the day, according to Carmichael, he and Finch met privately with staff in the Revisor of Statutes office and other attorneys whom he described as “experts in the Kansas Open Records Act,” and agreed on language that will be reviewed by the Judiciary Committee before the bill goes back to the full House.

That change would treat complaints and investigation records at CPOST the same as other investigation records, meaning the agency has the discretion to close records of active investigations, and it may open records of closed investigations, but members of the public can petition a court to open those records if they can show doing so would be in the public interest.