Caelin Bragg
Advertising & Distribution Manager
After two months of debate in the Kansas House of Representatives and Senate, Gov. Laura Kelly has approved house bill (HB) 2144 to become law next year.
The bill, originally presented to the Kansas House by District 77 Representative Kristey Williams on Tuesday, Feb. 5, was heavily amended following its introduction, leaving only the requirements of reporting certain information to the public left.
“Though the original contents of the bill included mill levy, tuition and scholarship requirements — the final version did not,” Williams said in a newsletter when the bill was introduced. “Instead, it focuses on those items that can enhance transparency and accountability and provide the foundation for local change in our communities.”
HB 2144, also titled the “Community College Taxpayer Transparency Act,” will require community colleges to specify to students what their student fees are used for, identify which courses are transferable to other Kansas Board of Regent colleges and will require them to publish a variety of information regarding tuition and fee rates, geographical demographics of their student body, the amount of dollars collected by property tax and the amount spent on scholarships and Pell Grants for in and out of district students. The bill will be enforced as law starting July 1, 2020.
The bill originally contained restrictions on the spending authority of community colleges and their Board of Trustees, but these were struck away by the House and Senate Committees on Education. The final bill was passed by the Kansas House by a vote of 116 to six on Thursday, April 4, with all six nays coming from democrats who also voted against the bill when it was first introduced, most of whom citing they believed the bill was unnecessary as their reason for voting nay.
“I believed the bill was an unfunded mandate,” District 86 Representative Jim Ward, who voted against the bill, said. “It imposed requirements on community colleges to do things without resources to cover costs incurred. Further, it didn’t include tech schools and universities. If the information is for the public good, we should want all schools to share the same data, not just a select few.”
This final point was something the community colleges had been pushing throughout this process. They believed that, if this was important information that the public should have, there is no reason to single out the community colleges in Kansas.
“We were a little disappointed that the focus was solely on community colleges when there’s a whole two other significant sectors of higher-ed in Kansas,” Butler President Kim Krull said.
Krull says that Butler already provides or records most of the information that HB 2144 will require, but work will have to be done on the website to make it more accessible to visitors.
Prior to the governor’s approval, HB 2144 passed the Senate after amendments on Wednesday, March 27 by a vote of 39 to zero and was presented to the governor on Monday, April 8.
