Love your Kansas alma mater? Be wary of secrecy in state’s new $50K hire | Opinion

Kansas Republicans sure like to hide the ball.

Here’s the latest example: GOP members of the state’s Legislative Coordinating Council last Thursday approved a $50,000 no-bid contract with former Emporia State University President Ken Hush to consult with the Kansas Legislature as it wages war on public university budgets this year.

That’s bad.

Hush, you’ll remember, is a former Koch Industries executive whose tenure at ESU is memorable mostly for widespread faculty firings and the decimation of the institution’s enrollment numbers. (The university saw a slight rebound in 2025.) Presumably he’s getting his new gig to apply that same appetite for destruction to the larger system of Kansas colleges and universities.

“Having the opportunity to have a person like that who does have intimate knowledge of the higher education budget, I thought it was prudent for us to hire that person for the legislative session,” said Kansas House Speaker Daniel Hawkins.

If you love your alma mater, folks — whether it’s KU, K-State, Wichita State or any other public institution in the Sunflower State — it’s time to let your legislators know. Loudly.

So Hush’s hiring is bad enough. But worse is the way the LCC went about it — in virtual secrecy.

Hush’s name never came up during the council’s deliberations. The Kansas Reflector reported that Senate President Ty Masterson confirmed only after the meeting that the contract had been awarded to the former ESU president. And Senate Minority Leader Dinah Sykes — one of two Democrats on the council — said she learned about the possibility of hiring Hush only when she saw it on the agenda the night before the meeting.

“This is not how we should be transparent,” she said. (Sunflower State Journal reported her comments.)

She’s right. But the hidden ball is standard operating procedure as the GOP-controlled Kansas Legislature gets its 2026 session started this week.

Transparency? What transparency?

At its democratic best, the Legislature works like this: The public knows what issues legislators are working on, and regular Kansans get plenty of opportunity to sound off and make the case for or against those issues before legislators cast their votes.

It’s why committee hearings in both the Kansas Senate and Kansas House are built around taking public comment, often with the time divided between advocates and opponents of whatever bill is being contemplated.

The problem? It doesn’t always work that way.

During the 2025 session, for example, state Sen. Mike Thompson, a Shawnee Republican, presided over a one-sided anti-immigration hearing featuring testimony from Attorney General Kris Kobach and a Kansas Bureau of Investigation official. Thompson didn’t allow opposition testimony from a nun because, he said, she didn’t sign up 24 hours in advance.

The hearing had been placed on the Senate calendar only the night before.

Cute trick, eh?

In fact, legislators have all kinds of neat little maneuvers for bypassing public scrutiny. The Kansas City Star nearly a decade ago documented how elected representatives introduce bills anonymously to avoid examination of “who pushed the measures and why.” A different ploy, the “gut and go” procedure, lets lawmakers replace the contents of a bill with language of an entirely different bill addressing different issues — confusing to anybody trying to track what actions their government is actually taking.

Nothing much has improved since then. Things have gotten worse, in fact: Both legislative chambers have limited reporter access in recent years.

“Decorum is essential for good policymaking,” Hawkins said last year, explaining why he was blocking journalists from the floor of the Kansas House.

Maybe. Maybe not.

Self-government depends on the consent of the governed. But how can Kansans give their consent if they don’t know what the Kansas Legislature is doing, or if they’re not allowed to weigh in?

Which means hiding the ball is antidemocratic. You have to wonder if that’s the point.

This story was originally published January 12, 2026 at 1:50 PM.