Get Full Government Meeting Transcripts, Videos, & Alerts Forever!
Get email alerts on the Lease Purchase Protest Petitions topic
No spam. Unsubscribe anytime.
Committee advances bill to lower protest-petition threshold for municipal lease-purchase agreements
Summary
The Committee on Local Government advanced HB 26-22, which replaces the existing '5% of votes for secretary of state' protest-petition metric with a 3% threshold of registered voters for lease-purchase agreements by municipalities, aiming to make signature targets precisely calculable; the bill moved out of committee unanimously and was placed on the House consent agenda.
The Committee on Local Government on Feb. 11 advanced House Bill 26-22, which changes how voters can force a special election on municipal lease-purchase agreements. The bill replaces an older standard—computed as 5% of those who voted for secretary of state in the last general election—with a flat 3% of registered voters in the affected municipality.
Mister Revisor told the committee the measure applies when a county, school district or community college proposes a lease-purchase to acquire real property, when the agreement runs more than one fiscal year, or when annual payments will exceed $100,000. Under current law a protest petition meeting the threshold sends the question to voters; HB 26-22 keeps that process but lowers and clarifies the signature standard.
Clay Barker, general counsel for the Kansas Secretary of State, said the change responds to a practical problem in the 2025 local election cycle where split precincts made the previous '5% of votes for secretary of state' metric effectively impossible to calculate for some school districts. "We wanna change 5% of the people who voted for secretary of state in the last election ... to 3% of all registered voters, which can be determined with precision," Barker said, adding that county clerks can then give petition gatherers an exact signature target.
Committee members asked whether the change is substantive or merely procedural. Barker and the Revisor said it is intended as a determinability fix that does not meaningfully alter the underlying standard: using registered voters typically produces a similar numeric threshold and allows clerks to calculate a fixed signature count.
There was no neutral or opponent testimony on the bill. Vice Chair moved emergency final action and to recommend the bill favorably; the motion was seconded and the committee voted in favor. The committee also asked that HB 26-22 be placed on the House consent agenda.
The bill is scheduled to move next to the House for consideration under the consent calendar.
