Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
House Bill 2144, titled “The Community College Taxpayer Transparency Act,” was passed by the Kansas House of Representatives on Wednesday, Feb. 27 after heavy amending and is now in the Kansas Senate.
All sections of the bill related to the budgeting and spending authority of a community college and its Board of Trustees have been removed. The only remaining parts of the bill include class transferability and tuition and fee transparency.
“Asking community colleges to provide basic student and taxpayer data is part of my continued efforts to advance more accountability and transparency policies that better inform,” Kristey Williams, Kansas’ 77th district representative and creator of the bill, said. “Providing basic information such as what courses are transferable, what fees are used for and how much in local property taxes are collected annually should be something we all support.”
The amended bill now only requires boards to clearly identify which courses are transferable to all other colleges on the community college’s and Kansas Board of Regent’s websites and requiring that a board must only charge student fees for a specified purpose, which will be clearly stated to the student, and the fees can only be used for the previously stated purpose. The amendments also included striking the requirement of community colleges to publish “taxpayer and student transparency data” in a local newspaper and now must only need to be published on its website.
Greg Joyce, chair of Butler’s Board of Trustees, said that while the remaining requirements of the bill would cause some extra work for the board, he believes it will still be manageable for them.
The bill was amended by the House Committee on Education following a hearing on Tuesday, Feb. 12 and was passed by the House by a vote of 84 to 40 split down party lines, with only one republican voting against it and two democrats voting for it. Williams and Linda Fund, executive director of the Kansas Association of Community College Trustees and representing the 19 community colleges in Kansas, provided testimony at the hearing.
“One of the things that we suggested, while it was still on the House side, was, if this is a transparency issue for higher ed, then expand it beyond the community colleges,” Butler President Kim Krull said. “Do it for the technical colleges [and] do it for the universities. Have it be a transparency bill for all of higher ed.”
The Senate Committee on Education held a hearing for the bill on Tuesday, March 19. Williams and Dan Murray, representing the KACCT, gave testimony at the hearing, both in support of the bill. The bill, originally introduced to the Kansas Senate on Thursday, Feb. 28, will continue to be discussed by the committee before a vote by the Senate happens.
