Senate efficiency committee hears SB13 to remove legacy filing requirements at secretary of state

The Kansas Senate Efficiency Committee held a hearing on SB13, a bill sponsored by the Secretary of State’s office that would eliminate a variety of legacy filing requirements currently directed to the Secretary of State’s office.

Supporters told the committee the bill would amend 12 statutes and repeal 11 statutory filing requirements that they say are redundant or unused. Clay Barker, general counsel for the Kansas Secretary of State, described the measure as Secretary Schwab’s top legislative priority for the year and said the removals would save the office both IT and staff time.

Barker said the change would free about 400 hours of one-time IT programming time and roughly 50 staff hours per year by removing low-value filings from the Secretary of State’s processing and database requirements. He told the committee that many of the filings exist for historical reasons from a pre-internet era when the Secretary of State’s office in the statehouse served as a central public records location.

Barker outlined categories targeted by SB13: reciprocal university agreements filed with the Board of Regents, annual tax-abatement reports from the Department of Revenue, copies of river easements filed with the Kansas Water Office and county registers of deeds, bonded-warehouse licensing that dates to a 1927 requirement, and annual union filings and constitutions that duplicate federal filings. Barker said agencies on the receiving end retain records and that members of the public generally go to the issuing office for such documents.

“People go to the issuing office, and that office will have a copy of all this,” Barker said. He also quoted a passage he attributed to former Indiana governor Mitch Daniels to describe the intent: “you can't carve fat out of government the way you can carve fat off a steak. It's more like marbled meat.”

Committee members asked whether the changes were initiated by external requests or internal review. Barker said the office compiled a spreadsheet of statute references—about 1,000 lines—and flagged items that appeared unnecessary, then checked with the agencies on the other side of the filings. He said the package was driven in part by the immediate IT programming cost of maintaining the filings in the Secretary of State’s systems.

Representative Wagner asked whether the groups affected had approached the office or if the office initiated the review. Barker replied the office prepared the list internally and contacted corresponding entities to confirm whether the filings remained necessary.

Representative Sanders asked whether the information would remain available if it were removed from the Secretary of State’s files. Barker replied that the documents would still be available at the issuing offices or the county register of deeds and that often the Secretary of State’s role in keeping those copies is a legacy requirement.

Barker gave several quantitative examples included in the hearing record: the bill would amend 12 statutes and repeal 11; bonded-warehouse licensing once applied to several hundred warehouses but now about 11 remain; and the current licensing fee cited for warehouses is $25. Barker and the Revisor of Statutes’ staff said the Secretary of State’s office had discussed the changes with the counterpart agencies and that unions and other filers supported removing redundant state filings.

Committee staff reported no written proponents, opponents or neutrals on the bill at the time of the hearing. The committee closed the hearing on SB13 with no formal vote recorded at that time.

The committee scheduled further business; no final action on SB13 was recorded in the transcript excerpt provided.