photo by: AdobeStock

The Kansas State Capitol building is shown in Topeka.

KU will remain under the supervision of the Kansas Board of Regents after a Kansas House committee on Thursday significantly changed a bill that was designed to help universities move at the “speed of innovation.”

The House Committee on Higher Education Budget approved HB 2798, which puts the bill on track to be voted on by the full House and then move to the Kansas Senate for consideration in the coming days.

But the bill looks significantly different from when it received a surprise introduction last week. That bill would have exempted the University of Kansas, Kansas State and Wichita State from various state laws related to the selling of university property, competitive bidding processes for a host of services used by the universities, among other changes.

On Monday, a revised bill made it clear that the universities won’t be able to sell any of their properties without specific approval from the Kansas Legislature. That provision also would require universities to get approvals to do deals with private equity companies that may want to own a piece of the university or its intellectual property, the committee was told.

As for other state laws that the universities may want to be exempted from, the revised bill makes clear that the universities would have to come up with their own policies for how to conduct businesses in those matters, and those policies would have to first receive approval from the Kansas Board of Regents before they could be used. If the universities and the Regents failed to agree on a new policy, the universities would remain under the state’s existing laws.

Both Democratic and Republican members of the committee said they were pleased the bill was limiting how far universities could go in exempting themselves from state rules and regulations.

“The bill that came before us last Thursday, I had a lot of fear of that because of everything it could do,” Rep. Mike Amyx, D-Lawrence and the ranking minority member of the committee, said. “I felt like I was being asked to give up a lot of my legislative responsibilities, and I just could not do that.”

Committee Chair Adam Turk, R-Johnson County, told the committee that he felt much more “settled” about the bill after work was done over the weekend to revise it after the bill was introduced on Wednesday and received a quick hearing on Thursday.

“I think we have done good work here,” Turk said of the changes.

The structure of the bill now lends itself to universities creating new policies that create exemptions from more technical matters related to state governance. For example, the bill gives the universities the ability to unilaterally grant utility companies easements on university properties. Currently, such an easement request requires approval not only at the university level but also through the state’s Department of Administration.

The same holds true for many types of purchases the university makes for goods and services. In addition to needing approval at the university level, the Department of Administration also may need to provide approvals, and in cases where contracts are involved, the Kansas Attorney General’s office also might have to review the matter. Universities could now draft a policy that doesn’t require those approvals from the Department of Administration and the Attorney General’s office. That policy, however, would have to be approved by the Board of Regents — a body appointed by the governor and confirmed by the Legislature — before it could be used. The revised bill also clarified that any policies related to purchasing must have provisions that call for competitive bidding.

Other examples of changes universities may pursue included changes to how universities dispose of surplus property, such as vehicles, office equipment or other such items. The universities and Board of Regents would be allowed to create new policies for disposal of property that are different than the process other state agencies are required to use. But the provision made clear that the selling of state-owned real estate — land and buildings on campus or elsewhere — must follow existing state law, which requires approval from the Kansas Legislature.

Legislators also sought assurances that any new policies created by universities and approved by the Regents would be easily accessible for the public and lawmakers to see. Lawmakers were told by a member of Office of the Revisor of Statutes that any such policies should be public records under the Kansas Open Records Act, and likely would be searchable on each university’s website. For good measure, the committee added a provision to the bill that made it clear that universities would have to provide copies of any such policies to lawmakers upon request.

One other amendment may be forthcoming once the bill reaches the floor of the House. Members of the architectural industry had expressed concern that the changes might require university projects to simply choose the lowest bidder for architectural services. Often, universities use a request for proposals for such architectural services rather than a simple low-bid process. A proposed amendment would have made clear that architectural services and other similar engineering services would be exempt from any strict competitive bid policy.

The committee rejected the amendment on the grounds that it was introduced at the last-minute and had not been reviewed by the committee’s leadership. Committee Chair Turk said he would review it, however, and would be open to presenting it for approval when the bill reaches the House floor for a full vote.

A date for that vote hasn’t yet been set. The bill, however, has bipartisan support in that both the leaders of the Republican-controlled Legislature and staff members of Democrat Gov. Laura Kelly have been working on provisions of the bill for months.

Both parties have said the bill is designed to help universities “move at the speed of innovation,” and quickly respond to challenges and opportunities in the rapidly changing education industry.