TOPEKA, Kan. (AP) — A powerful Kansas business group said Friday that it has received subpoenas from the state ethics commission for information about campaign finance activities as Republican lawmakers moved to oust the commission’s top staffer.
A spokesperson for the Kansas Chamber of Commerce, long influential among Republicans in the GOP-controlled Kansas Legislature, said in a statement that the Governmental Ethics Commission has launched “an extreme fishing expedition aimed at silencing political speech.”
The chamber declined to comment on the exact details of the subpoenas.
That statement came after GOP senators negotiating with House members over an elections bill proposed setting new qualifications for the ethics commission’s executive director. The change would remove current Executive Director Mark Skoglund from the job.
When the Republican senators made the proposal Friday, one House negotiator, Democratic state Rep. Vic Miller, of Topeka, said he’s heard for about a month that about 30 lawmakers have received ethics commission subpoenas, but he acknowledged having no evidence.
Miller’s comments led reporters to question a Kansas Chamber lobbyist at the Statehouse, and the lobbyist said chamber staffers had received requests for information from the commission.
“The subpoenas issued by the commission do not give a clear reason why they were issued and are nothing more than an extreme fishing expedition aimed at silencing political speech,” Kansas Chamber spokesperson Sherriene Jones-Sontag said.
Republican negotiators for both the House and the Senate expected to include the provision dealing with the ethics commission measure in an elections bill, so that both chambers could vote on the package later Friday.
Meanwhile, reporters asked House Speaker Ron Ryckman Jr., an Olathe Republican, whether lawmakers have been subpoenaed. He read a statement off his phone citing a provision in the Kansas Constitution that protects legislators from being subpoenaed while they are in session.
“There haven’t been any lawful subpoenas issued that I know of,” he told reporters.
Senate President Ty Masterson’s office issued a statement saying that the legislative session “is not the appropriate venue to discuss or comment on subpoenas of any sort.”
But Masterson, an Andover Republican, told reporters: “It does appear that somebody weaponized the ethics department.”
Republican lawmakers want to require the ethics commission’s executive director to be an attorney with an active Kansas license.
Skoglund is an attorney, but his license is suspended, according to an online Kansas Supreme Court database.
Skoglund said he declined to pay fees and pay for continuing legal education courses while working first for the Legislature’s research staff and then the commission. His predecessor was not an attorney and held the job for decades.
