What is Art Hall, the KU lecturer with ties to Koch Industries, afraid might come out in a massive records request?

Here at The Pitch, we’ve become intimately familiar with open records laws in both Missouri and Kansas. The right, not privilege, to view official records is one of the few tools that the public has to keep tabs on what is done in our names. And it’s a right we exercise often.

Sometimes, government institutions fight to absurd extremes to keep their records away from disclosure, as though their contents were sacrosanct. More often than not, those records eventually become available and they turn out to be pretty ordinary stuff.

But if someone representing a public institution goes to court to keep public records closed, it’s usually an indication that those papers will reveal something embarrassing.

It’s a good bet that University of Kansas lecturer Art Hall knows of something contained within hundreds of documents sought by a student organization that may not play well in the public light.

Hall, who runs the Center for Applied Economics within the KU School of Business, pulled what looked like a desperate move on Thursday by suing the university to keep it from handing over a stack of documents to Students for a Sustainable Future, which was supposed to happen Friday. Hall has ties to Koch Industries; the students seeking his records wanted to see if the conservative family behind the Wichita company was influencing his teachings. 

Hall claimed that the records infringed upon his academic freedom. Douglas County Judge Robert Fairchild granted the temporary delay. 

The Lawrence Journal-World reports that Hall’s lawyer said open records laws don’t apply to his correspondence because his think tank at KU is funded privately. But if you’re a public employee, which KU lecturers are, then the Kansas Open Records Act applies to what you do while on the job. There are a number of exemptions to the law, one of which includes unfinished research, but KU officials tell the Journal-World that they sorted that stuff out of what they planned to give to the student group.

Students for a Sustainable Future sought a swath of university records pertaining to Hall to see what type of influence Wichita business magnates Charles and David Koch had on academia at KU. Hall would be a good target for this kind of investigation; the lecturer used to work for Koch Industries.

It’s clear that the Kochs use their fortune to influence politics, particularly in Kansas. Less obvious is their reach into institutions like KU. The Kochs have donated to the university, but the student group wanted to see if there were strings attached to those donations, or if there were more subtle attempts to influence classroom instruction at KU to align with the Kochs’ view on economics.

Students for a Sustainable Future sought the records in September but were confronted with a $1,800 bill by KU. The group raised the money anyway, and the students have gotten their hands on some of the records, but for now they can’t get more.

Hall is a prominent economist at KU, who has spoken often to media and has advised Gov. Sam Brownback and former Gov. Kathleen Sebelius. Hall generally advocates for state governments creating a broad, business-friendly tax environment rather than targeting incentives to one company or the next.