KU student overcomes $1,800 bill for open records request seeking information between professor and Koch Industries
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When recalcitrant Kansas governmental agencies can’t fend off public-information requests with one of the many exemptions under the Kansas Open Records Act, a preferred tactic for avoiding disclosure is charging outlandish fees to retrieve sought-after documents.
A University of Kansas student learned this lesson recently when she asked to see documentation reflecting one of its business-school professor’s financial ties to Wichita-based Koch Industries.
Art Hall, a KU professor who directs the Center for Applied Economics out of the university’s business school, was once an economist for Koch Industries.
The namesake multibillionaire family that made Koch Industries one of the world’s largest privately held companies also lavishes its wealth upon think tanks, political action committees and conservative politicians who share its free-market, limited-government philosophies. The Koch influence is particularly evident in Kansas politics.
Hall is often quoted in media reports about Kansas tax policies. Hall generally believes that targeted tax incentives for select few businesses (like the millions in tax breaks that lured AMC Entertainment Corp. from downtown Kansas City, Missouri, to Leawood) are a misguided strategy for growing the state’s economy, preferring instead a broader approach of lowering tax burdens for many, if not all, businesses as a means to stimulate commerce. Hall advised Gov. Sam Brownback on his tax policies. Brownback then implemented sharp income-tax cuts for nearly 200,000 Kansas businesses. Hall also consulted with former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius.
Schuyler Kraus, a KU student, wondered to what extent Hall maintained an ongoing financial relationship with the Kochs, as well as any strings that the Kochs attached to financial gifts it made to KU. Kraus filed an open-records request seeking records going back as far as 10 years, according to an article in the Lawrence Journal-World.
KU administrators told Kraus that the request would cost $1,800 to fulfill. Government agencies are allowed to charge requestors reasonable fees associated with fetching records. But some government agencies stretch the loose definition of “reasonable” to avoid disclosure.
Public bodies in Kansas tend to be particularly flagrant in this regard. Kansas Sen. Jacob LaTurner, a Pittsburg Republican, has tried to pass legislation that would limit the type of high-priced hourly charges that government agencies tack on to records to make public information less accessible to the general public. The Pitch recently faced an exorbitant sum for a records request seeking self-reported violations by the KU athletics department, a document that the University of Missouri made available quickly at minimal charge.
Like most university students footing the escalating costs of higher education, Kraus didn’t have $1,800 at hand to spend on a records request. But Kraus raised enough money from other sources, particularly the American Association of University Professors, to cover the cost of the request, according to the LJW.
Charging that kind of fee to a tuition-paying student is a black eye for KU. Nice work on the part of the Lawrence community for supporting a student’s quest for a more transparent university.
