Committee hears House Bill 2206 proposing campaign finance changes, name change for ethics commission

The Senate Federal and State Affairs committee heard testimony Thursday on House Bill 2206, a campaign finance bill that would rename the Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, change definitions for political committees and coordination, raise some reporting thresholds and tighten prohibitions on contributions made in another person’s name.

Jason from the Revisor’s Office provided an overview of the bill, saying it “is a campaign finance bill that also gets into some aspects of the Kansas governmental ethics commission” and that the bill’s first change is renaming the agency to the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission. The bill would add a definition of “cooperation or consent” (functionally addressing coordination), revise the political-committee definition to add a $3,000 annual aggregate threshold and a five-year lookback for “total program spending,” increase the…