Just hours after the Americans for Prosperity Foundation-Kansas was again forced to file a Kansas Open Records complaint against the state after the Kansas Department of Commerce (KDOC) has refused to answer records requests, Commerce found the records they had not produced for more than seven months.
According to a release, AFP-Kansas filed the complaint with Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach after the agency failed to provide reports requested by AFPF-KS over seven months ago regarding a KDOC-run corporate welfare scheme called the Attracting Powerful Economic Expansion Act (APEX).
While AFPF-Kansas now has the requested records, they are not withdrawing the complaint as they are also asking for an investigation into Commerce’s response to records requests.
“Commerce has not only failed to produce those records, but the agency has not responded to a single inquiry about the status of the request since its original reply on January 9, 2024,” the release reads. “Along with demanding Commerce provide those APEX reports, AFPF-KS continues to request the Attorney General’s office open an investigation into how Commerce responds to KORA requests.”
AFPF-Kansas State Director Elizabeth Patton slammed the APEX program in the release.
“The APEX program doled out over $1 billion in incentives to favored companies,” Patton said. “The public deserves to be able to inspect the quarterly and annual reports the law required Commerce to complete,” Patton said. “AFPF-KS’ experience suggests that Commerce has no interest in complying with transparency laws. The agency must be held accountable.”
AFPF Director of Investigations, Kevin Schmidt, concurred.
“It’s unacceptable that a state agency as well-funded as the Department of Commerce cannot even provide a status update on a seven-month-old open records request for reports it’s mandated to create by law,” he said. “It’s no coincidence that Commerce failed to provide those records at the same time it was lobbying to get expanded authority for its failed STAR Bonds program to try to get the Chiefs and Royals to come to Kansas.”
Not the first time Commerce has refused to fill KORA requests
This is hardly the first time AFPF-Kansas has been forced to file a complaint against KDOC.
In 2021 AFPF-Kansas filed a series of records requests looking into the STAR bond program.
The limited number of documents provided by the KDOC showed a startling lack of oversight of a program that involves more than a billion dollars of taxpayer funds.
According to a release from AFPF-Kansas, the 2021 KORA request sought access to all internal or external studies or reports, project feasibility studies, and e-mail communications about the STAR Bond program.
On Dec. 14, 2022, AFPF-Kansas formally filed a complaint under the Open Records Act and requested an investigation by the Kansas Attorney General’s Office.
“The agency has yet to provide the final batch of records and instead has extended its response deadline eleven times,” the release said. “The final set of records should include e-mails sent to or from the accounts of Lieutenant Governor and KDOC Secretary David Toland and his chief of staff about STAR bonds. KDOC has not offered any detailed explanation for its interminable delay.”
AFPF-Kansas said this is not the first time that complaints have been made about how Commerce handles KORA requests related to its economic development programs.
“It shouldn’t take more than a year to access public records from a state agency running a corporate welfare program with over $1 billion worth of bonds,” AFPF-KS State Director Elizabeth Patton said in the release. “If Commerce is slow-walking KORA request responses because of perceived political sensitivities, it should be held accountable.”
