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The State of Disclosure in Kansas
Kansas earned a B+ in the Online Contextual
and Technical Usability category and shares
with Iowa the distinction of being the most
improved state in this area since 2003. Along
with improvements in the usability category,
Kansas raised its overall grade from a D to
a D+ with the creation of a voluntary electronic
filing program in 2008.
Kansas’s campaign finance law earned
a D- and ranked 42nd in 2008, but the passage
of Senate Bill 196 in 2008 created a stronger
law than the current grade reflects (2008 law
grades are calculated based on laws passed
as of December 31, 2007). The new law requires
the disclosure of late contributions and independent
expenditures of $300 or more and increases
the level of detail disclosed about campaign
contributors of $150 or more to include the
industry in which they are employed (occupation
disclosure is currently required, though employer
data is not). Enforcement provisions of the
law remain weak as reviews or audits of disclosure
reports are not required. In 2007, legislation
was passed that allowed the Secretary of State’s
office to develop a voluntary electronic filing
program. The new system came online in 2008,
and moved Kansas up ten places in the electronic
filing rankings.
Kansas
earned a D+ again in the Disclosure Content
Accessibility category in 2008, though the
state dropped six places in the rankings
as other states improved. The public has
online access to scanned copies of paper
reports, as well as itemized contributions
that have been data-entered by Governmental
Ethics Commission staff. Electronic reports
are filed with the Secretary of State’s
office and are now available on both that
agency’s site
in an HTML format, and as PDF files on the
Government Ethics Commission’s site,
though this development came after the close
of the 2008 assessment period. The disclosure
site features a contributions database that
is searchable by donor name, transaction date,
and amount but search results cannot be sorted
online or downloaded from the site. The lack
of an online, searchable database of campaign
expenditures remains the primary weakness of
the site.
The
Governmental Ethics Commission’s
web site was redesigned since the 2007 assessment,
which helped the state improve from a B to
a B+ in the usability category in 2008. Usability
testers reported the new site was easier to
understand and rated their overall experiences
on the site more favorably than testers did
in 2007. The new site features a better organized
page for accessing reports for a given election
and navigation options have improved. The site
includes menu options on the left side of each
page and icons at
the top of the homepage that link to the main
areas of the site. The disclosure site provides
users with a clear explanation of which records
are available in the database, instructions
for searching data, and a “Quick
Statistics” function for comparing the
totals raised and spent between candidates
going back to 1993.
→ Quick
Fix: Allow database search
results to be sorted online or
downloaded from the site.
♦ Editor’s
Pick: “Quick
Statistics” provide summary
amounts raised and spent for each candidate
and go back to 1993. View image
 Disclosure
Agency: Governmental Ethics
Commision
Disclosure Web Site: http://www.accesskansas.org/ethics
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