Kansas City Star/Yahoo! News: Kansas Senate drops effort to remove ethics watchdog as details of investigation emerge

Kansas Republicans moved to oust the director of the state’s ethics watchdog group on Friday before appearing to drop the effort hours later as details emerged of a potentially broad investigation by the agency.

The Kansas Governmental Ethics Commission, responsible for enforcing the state’s ethics and campaign finance requirements, has issued subpoenas, the Kansas Chamber of Commerce said in a statement accusing the agency of “an extreme fishing expedition aimed at silencing political speech.”

Discussion is rampant in Topeka that the Ethics Commission is conducting a broad inquiry involving numerous Republicans. The commission has declined to confirm the existence of an investigation, though the Chamber of Commerce’s statement confirmed some type of inquiry is ongoing. Democratic lawmakers in meetings Thursday and Friday openly referred to an investigation involving subpoenas. …

“It’s really outrageous on a number of fronts,” said Beth Rotman, money in politics and ethics program director at Common Cause, a national group that promotes government accountability.

“This ethics agency has a job to do for everyday Americans,” Rotman said. “They have a job to do for we the people who have these laws in place, and they have a job to do and if there has been any potential issue they need to investigate, they need to be able to start to do their jobs and go forward with this without potential retribution, which is what this looks like from here.”