MESSAGES FROM THE GOVERNOR

House Bill No. 2284

An Act concerning the department of administration; relating to the procurement of managed care organizations for the Kansas program of medical assistance; requiring adoption of policies.

Message to the Legislature of the State of Kansas:

The bill, in its original form, contained several helpful provisions that I supported and would have improved transparency and accountability overall. However, as amended, this bill is now unworkable and opens the state up to costly and protracted litigation.

Additionally, this bill is a dramatic overreach by the Legislature into the role of the Executive branch, which is charged with administering and executing policy. It also overreaches into the Judicial branch by removing the courts from the process entirely and vesting that duty squarely with the Legislature’s ad hoc “appeals committee” — a move that calls into question the very constitutionality of this bill by denying the rights of ‘judicial review’ to those involved.

However, most alarmingly, this bill creates a haphazard procurement process that does nothing to mitigate conflicts of interest among legislators and creates an environment that is rife for exploitation and graft — exactly the opposite of what the existing process, overseen by the
Department of Administration, is designed to do. I am happy to work with the Legislature next year on a clean bill that addresses some of the underlying concerns without creating all the legal, ethical and constitutional challenges of this current version of the bill.

Therefore, under Article 2, Section 14(a) of the Constitution, I hereby veto House Bill 2284.

Laura Kelly, Governor

Dated April 3, 2025.