Kansas Meadowlark

Saturday’s Chanute Tribune published an article, “Umbarger’s campaign expenditures questioned by foe.” The article described Senate candidate Iris Van Meter’s (R, Thayer) questioning of two expenditures in the campaign finance report filed on July 28 by her opponent, Senator Dwayne Umbarger (R, Thayer).

Umbarger’s report listed a $1738 expenditure to Carolina Carports, which was likely spent for the carport on Umbarger’s farm, which is shown at the left. Does this carport look like a structure suitable for “Storage for Legislative Service, Campaign Signs, and Campaign Information”? [What is “Legislative Service” and how does one store it?] (more…)

The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission publishes a list of “Top 20″ Kansas Political Action Committees (PACs) every year, but this list is computed only using PAC contributions to candidates.  Why are PACs that raise a lot of money, spend a lot of money, or have a lot money in the bank not in the “Top 20″?

A Meadowlark PAC Ranking, which includes factors for money raised rank, money spent rank, and money in the bank rank, shows 10 Kansas PACs having more political clout than those published by the Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission declines to change the way it computes its “Top 20″ PAC list even when their list doesn’t accurately reflect political strength.

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Starting in early 2006 the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission published online “all” campaign finance reports for Kansas Political Action Committees (PACs) and political candidates — these reports are now free for the public to view.

These new online reports are welcome sunshine on political money since before that campaign finance reports had to be purchased from the Kansas Secretary of State for an outrageous $0.50/page. But now in 2008 not all PAC reports are online and free to view and many don’t know other reports exist. (more…)

Why are missing, large money transfers between a Kansas PAC and a federal 527 PAC from 2006 ignored by the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission? Are a missing $25,000 transfer and two $15,625 transfers big enough to trigger the need for an “errors and omissions” notification, and the need for an updated PAC report? The Ethics Commission has known about these omissions since August 2007 but has taken no action. (more…)

Mr. Bruce McKinney was the Chair/Treasurer of a PAC, Wichita Voters for Truth, that sent out a hit piece in Wichita in Nov 2006 and then never filed a Jan 2007 report with the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission. The Ethics Commission cannot find this guy, but newspapers can find him and then quote him about his political activities? (more…)