Every now and again, someone introduces a bill in the Kansas Legislature that has even old-timers scratching their heads, wondering just what it does and why it might be a good idea—at least to the person who introduced it.

It happened last week, with a relatively simple little bill that just took a new direction on an old topic.

The bill, by Rep. Scott Schwab, R-Olathe, but introduced through a committee so that except to insiders, there was no DNA on it, was too simple.

It just requires vendors to the state who bid on contracts of at least $5,000 to register as lobbyists. Just like the lobbyists who promote industries, lifestyles, food products…just like the folks you see in the Statehouse hallways with their little and relatively indecipherable name badges.

Now, why would Schwab want someone who, say, contracts to mow rights of way or paint a state building or get the contract to provide copiers in the Statehouse to register as a lobbyist?

Schwab says to a point, we’re all over-thinking this one.

By registering as lobbyists the bidders on state contracts have to report to the Secretary of State any money, any food or drink or entertainment that they spend with a state officer.

Maybe there’s a trick here: the lobbyist registration costs $50 if the lobbyist (contractor or bidder on a state contract, in Schwab’s world) intends to spend less than $100 on some state employee, but $375 if the lobbyist intends to spend more than $1,000 a year in pursuit of contracts. Maybe the amount the contractors or vendors would tell us something about just how serious the vendor is about getting a state contract.  

Schwab says, and he’s right, that now, the lobbyist laws are the only way to make vendors with the state—or nearly anyone with a financial interest in anything the state does—report any expenditure on behalf of their effort to get a contract.

But, while the additional lobbyist fees would be a good deal for the state’s revenues, and a new cost to folks who want to sell things to the state or provide services to the state—you gotta wonder whether there’s a real need for this little enterprise.

Schwab says he doesn’t know. But the registration would give Kansans a peek into the complicated business of doing business with the state.

There doesn’t appear to be a big problem, or frankly any problem with contractors bribing state officials to get contracts, or to pad those contracts. Maybe there is, and we just don’t know it, or maybe there isn’t because the state has some relatively good “whistle blower” law that encourages state employees to tell people in authority about what they believe to be unethical business going on with the state.

Notice any new roads that are narrower than the contract called for? Or any offices with one coat of paint instead of two, or a mid-management state employee with some link to purchasing services showing up in a new Buick lately?

Not sure whether this little experiment will get passed into law, or whether we’ll find anything new about state contracting. But, at least the vendors would get those little badges that they can wear around and that maybe their kids can take to show and tell day at school…