Lawmakers want KS Highway Patrol under Kobach’s authority if Kelly doesn’t remove leader

Two Kansas lawmakers say they will seek to place the Highway Patrol under Attorney General-elect Kris Kobach’s authority if Gov. Laura Kelly doesn’t replace the leader of the agency, who has faced allegations of harassment and staffing difficulties.

A push to remove the Democratic governor’s power over the statewide law enforcement agency and hand it to Kobach, a deeply controversial Republican figure, would almost certainly trigger an explosive battle among state lawmakers.

State Sen. J.R. Claeys, a Salina Republican who has been a member of Kobach’s transition team, has been working with state Rep. Stephen Owens, a Hesston Republican, to draw up options to shift oversight of the Highway Patrol away from the governor. Claeys said Monday he would back off the idea if Kelly fires Col. Herman Jones, the Highway Patrol superintendent who has led the agency since 2019.

The Legislature would have to pass a bill that includes the change, allowing Kelly to veto it — and setting up a high-stakes showdown over whether to override the governor’s veto.

A spokesman for Kelly did not respond to questions about whether Kelly intended to keep Jones as superintendent.

“The Kansas Highway Patrol is a valued part of the Kelly administration and will continue to be throughout her time as governor,” Zach Fletcher, a spokesman for Kelly, said in an email.

House Speaker-elect Dan Hawkins, a Wichita Republican, promised a vigorous investigation into alleged mismanagement of the Highway Patrol and didn’t rule out adopting Claeys’ and Owens’ approach.

Still, he stopped short of endorsing the idea.

“The House intends to fully dig into the Kelly administration’s mismanagement of the Kansas Highway Patrol,” Hawkins said in a statement. “Based on the findings of the review, the Legislature will consider all potential courses of action to ensure the mismanagement of the KHP does not continue.”

Senate President Ty Masterson, an Andover Republican, struck a similar tone.

“In light of the continued loss of experienced troopers and the plummeting recruitment numbers, the Senate will take a serious look at proposals to reform the administration of the agency so our troopers can focus on the important work they do for Kansans,” Masterson said in a statement.

Jones, a former Shawnee County sheriff, has faced opposition from both inside and outside the Highway Patrol for years. He has been sued by five women, all current or former Highway Patrol employees, who allege a hostile work environment, a culture of sexual harassment and gender discrimination at the agency under his leadership. A separate lawsuit accuses him of wrongful termination of two male troopers who say they defended the women.

Claeys and other lawmakers have also bemoaned short staffs at the Highway Patrol in recent years. Graduating classes at Kansas’ trooper academy have continually shrunk, Claeys said, unable to keep pace with the rate of troopers resigning and retiring.

Seven troopers graduated in June’s recruiting class as compared to 38 in December 2017, according to Highway Patrol reports.

“We have to do something. Laura Kelly has to do something,” Claeys said. “If she does I’m happy to have that be the solution. I hope that’s the solution. I want her to fix this. I think she’s fully capable of it. I don’t understand why she’s choosing not to.

“If Laura Kelly chooses not to do something about it, we need to put the Highway Patrol in the hands of a different agency.”

Claeys said he would prefer to write that policy change into the state’s budget. Generally, a policy written into the budget is a proviso that only remains in law for the duration of the budget in question. Meanwhile, Owens is crafting a bill he plans to introduce to the House early in the next legislative session.

State Rep. John Carmichael, a Wichita Democrat, said he believed a leadership change at the Highway Patrol was likely even without the legislative effort. He noted that, even before Jones took over, the agency had been plagued by scandal and controversy under its two previous superintendents.

“As the governor moves into another administration, it’s the logical time for members of her administration to find other careers in some instances or sometimes for the governor to make hard decisions,” Carmichael said. “I think, in the end, these problems will work themselves out.

“The difficulty will be finding a new superintendent who is willing to come into an agency which has had 12 years of strife and try to straighten things out.”

Claeys’ proposed alternative — the Kobach-led Kansas Attorney General’s Office — would prove disturbing to Democrats, who have deep and long standing concerns about Kobach’s leadership. Kobach has spent much of his political career promoting a hardline stance against illegal immigration and championing restrictions on voting and voter registration, citing voter fraud.

In the past, Kobach defended a state law in federal court that required residents to prove their citizenship in order to register to vote. It was struck down after a trial that ended in Kobach being held in contempt of court and ordered to take additional legal education.

As attorney general, Kobach will have oversight of the Kansas Bureau of Investigation, which frequently assists local police departments and county sheriffs in investigating significant crimes. Placing the Highway Patrol under the attorney general would give Kobach authority over another frontline law enforcement agency, which has more than 800 employees.

Carmichael cautioned against consolidating police and prosecutorial power under one office.

“Citizens ought to be concerned if the attorney general is, in essence, the person who investigates and arrests and prosecutes. There needs to be a division of responsibility,” he said.

State Rep. Boog Highberger, a Lawrence Democrat, said he would oppose the move regardless of who held the office but that it “certainly raises my concerns” that Kobach would hold that power.

A spokesperson for Kobach didn’t comment on Monday.

Owens said the office was the most logical choice because the Kansas Bureau of Investigation is already under the control of the attorney general, the state’s top law enforcement officer.

“They may not like who is currently the attorney general, just like I would have preferred that we have a different governor,” Owens said. “However, we have who we have and we need to work within those contexts.”

Claeys also floated the possibility of temporarily granting the attorney general the power to appoint the Highway Patrol superintendent while leaving the agency itself under the governor’s authority.

Whether either idea advances, Claeys’ comments — coming less than a month before the Legislature begins its annual session in Topeka — suggest Republicans are in no mood for a detente with Kelly, who narrowly won re-election last month by defeating Derek Schmidt, the current Republican state attorney general.

Kelly and the Legislature fought repeatedly over the scope of the governor’s authority during her first term. In November, voters narrowly rejected an amendment to the state constitution that would have given the Legislature greater power to block regulation’s proposed by the governor’s administration. Early in the pandemic, Kelly and Republicans also clashed over her emergency powers.

“It doesn’t surprise me. They want to strip the governor of all of her duties,” state Sen. Oletha Faust-Goudeau, a Wichita Democrat, said of the idea of removing Kelly’s authority over the Highway Patrol.

On Twitter, Claeys has made clear he wants to use legislative hearings to focus attention on the Highway Patrol. He has promised to review “every suit, every complaint, every administrative action.” Those hearings, he and Owens said, would be held in the House Committee on Corrections and Juvenile Justice.

Claeys and Owens would need near lock-step support from Republicans to shift control over the Highway Patrol over a veto from Kelly, which requires a two-thirds vote in both the House and Senate to override. Still, awareness among legislators of their efforts appeared limited on Monday.

State Rep. Will Carpenter, an El Dorado Republican and the incoming chair of the House Federal and State Affairs Committee, said there hadn’t been discussion so far of making such a change.

“There’s a lot of groundwork to be laid anytime you do it, such a move like that ... the pros and cons or whatever,” Carpenter said. “At this point in time, there’s been no talk about that.”

In a statement, the Kansas State Troopers Association lent its support to Claeys’ efforts. Sean McCauley, an attorney for the association, said the Highway Patrol had lost “fantastic employees” who have grown weary of the agency’s direction under its current leadership.

McCauley, saying the “time for action is now,” called on Kelly to make changes at the Highway Patrol. But if she doesn’t, McCauley warned, “the KSTA will carefully review any option to effectuate change, whether that is removing the appointment from the governor or other possible legislative remedies.”

The association’s political action committee endorsed Schmidt this year, after remaining neutral in the 2018 race for governor.