Kansas House GOP Has Gathered Secretly

By Clay Wirestone, Kansas Reflector

Kansas House Republicans have repeatedly met in closed caucus meetings this legislative session, doing state business in secret and upending longstanding tradition.

Kansas Reflector staff have witnessed five of these closed sessions firsthand, in January, February and March. Further reporting found that all of the House GOP’s Statehouse caucus meetings have been closed. That means a quorum of Kansas legislators are debating policy questions among themselves, in private, without outside witnesses.

It’s as clear as the sign posted outside the Old Supreme Court: “CLOSED MEETING.”

Former Republican Rep. Susan Concannon said she didn’t remember any time that the House GOP had closed such meetings during her 12 years as a legislator — even during debate about repealing former Gov. Sam Brownback’s tax cuts. She retired after last session. I heard the same from other Statehouse veterans.

“We have never had a closed meeting,” Concannon said. “In fact, I didn’t even think that that was allowed.”

House Democrats have held a single private meeting this session, dealing with a conflict between legislators on the floor. Wichita Rep. John Carmichael actually refused to attendbecause of the closure.

I don’t want to suggest that anyone has broken the law. The Kansas Open Meetings Act includes a loophole allowing the House and Senate to pass rules that for any other governmental entity would violate its provisions. But past leaders rarely closed legislative meetings, understanding that sunshine disinfects. Republican bosses this session have swerved in the opposite direction.

I tried to get their take on the matter, but they proved surprisingly shy.

House Majority Leader Chris Croft decides whether to close GOP caucus meetings. I called, texted and emailed Croft. He did not respond. I sent a message to his chief of staff, Dan Stanley, that also went unanswered. Finally, I attempted to visit the majority leader’s office and was prevented from entering by House guards.

Consider the implications.

The Kansas House comprises 125 members. A whopping 88 are Republicans. If they hold closed meetings every day of the session, they could direct committee decisions and floor votes. They could pull bills from consideration if the caucus didn’t agree. They could, in other words, do all of the work of legislating without pesky outsiders looking over their shoulders.

Those watching the House this year may well conclude that’s what happened. Bills whiz through committees and floor action with little debate, compared with past years, before lawmakers turn to the next topic.

Melissa Stiehler, advocacy director for Loud Light, has tracked the session up close.

“The shift toward secrecy from legislative leadership is shocking,” she said. “More and more, I see what happens publicly in the Statehouse as being ceremonial — stripped of its institutional traditions and principles and left only with lawmakers going through the motions.”

Rep. Suzanne Wikle, a Lawrence Democrat, has started her first term in office. But she spent years before as an advocate in the Statehouse.

“I feel like any bill that is brought to the House floor … it’s safe to say it’s going to pass, right?” she told me in February. “In my first stint in the Statehouse on the other side, that was not always the case. There were votes that were very close, and sometimes you didn’t know if a bill was going to pass before final action was taken on it. And I just feel like that’s very different now.”

Consider the public reaction if your local city commission or school board began gathering in closed session before every single meeting. Imagine what civic advocates would say. Imagine the outraged coverage from local news media and social media gadflies. Imagine the calls on state officials to step in and take action.

Liberal or conservative, Republican or Democrat, the outrage would froth.

Rules, laws and gray areas

Shades of gray existed for GOP and Democratic caucus meetings before 2025. They weren’t always totally open, even if they weren’t totally closed.

Journalists didn’t attend every meeting. Reporters might drop by as the session progressed, tracking both bills and party drama. If leaders wanted privacy, they would occasionally move caucus meetings to nearby buildings, or hold them at unannounced times. If reporters tracked down the meeting, they could usually stay — as leaders smiled through clenched teeth and reminded members that their friends from the press were in attendance.

Something changed between last session and this one, however.

The section of the House rules applying to open meetings was rewritten. When presented to the House by Rep. Susan Humphries, R-Wichita, she summarized the changes as making “some exceptions to the Open Meetings Act for the majority and the minority party.”

That’s one way to put it.

Here are the two relevant sentences from the 2023-2024 rules:

The open meeting law (K.S.A. 75-4317 et seq., and amendments thereto) shall apply to meetings of the House of Representatives and all of its standing committees, select committees, special committees and subcommittees of any of such committees. Caucuses of the House majority party may be closed as determined by the Majority Leader. Caucuses of the House minority party may be closed as determined by the Minority Leader.

The 2025-2026 rules add the following text between the sentences.

… except as otherwise provided in this Rule or other House Rule. As used in this Rule, the term House includes standing committees, select committees, special committees and subcommittees of any such committees, where applicable Pursuant to K.S.A. 75-4318(g)(4), the House of Representatives is authorized to provide for exceptions to the open meetings law.

A plain reading of the changes suggests that lawmakers wanted to make crystal clear that the House had the right to exempt itself or any of its constituent parts from open meetings law. Those rules apply to every other public body in Kansas, but not state legislators.

Again, they already had that right. A Jan. 30, 1981, opinion from Kansas Attorney General Robert Stephan outlined the legal rationale.

He acknowledged that: “If the purpose of a prearranged gathering of a majority of a quorum of the Legislature is held to discuss legislative matters, we believe that the gathering is a meeting subject to the provisions of the Kansas Open Meetings Act.”

However, lawmakers could bypass those provisions, as “certain gatherings may be excepted from the act by House or Senate rule,” Stephan wrote.

Having the right doesn’t mean it was frequently exercised. Colleagues at Kansas Reflector and others who have followed the Legislature for years recalled few closed caucus meetings before this session. In 2021, for example, Senate Republicans closed their caucus meetingto deal with the drunk driving arrest of Majority Leader Gene Suellentrop.

I don’t believe that any legislative meetings should be closed. But I can understand why leaders would do so after a public conflict involving members.

Closed GOP House meetings this year, on the other hand, appear to have dealt with routine business. I wandered through the Old Supreme Court on March 21, a day that members didn’t caucus. They had left behind printed handouts labeled “Republican Bill Brief” for different pieces of legislation, summarizing the proposals, testimony and potential amendments.

First Amendment attorney Max Kautsch gave me his take: “Routinely meeting behind closed doors does little more than enable legislative leadership’s control over the narrative surrounding policies that so often are adopted at the expense of Kansans rather than for our benefit, helping thin-skinned leaders avoid legitimate criticism.”

The DePue question

Throughout the past week, I wondered how House GOP leaders define a closed caucus meeting. You might assume it includes elected lawmakers, along with a handful of staff members.

But that’s not what I saw.

The Rev. Dave DePue works for the national Capitol Commission group and leads Statehouse Bible studies. He does not serve as a legislator. He does not appear on the list of registered lobbyists, either. Yet I personally watched him leave closed GOP House meetings twice, on March 18 and March 19. He stayed for the entire time Tuesday but left after a half-hour Wednesday.

He also was present at the Feb. 25 GOP House caucus meeting, which Kansas Reflector reporter Tim Carpenter tried to attend. After Carpenter was told to leave, he asked about DePue. The minister subsequently departed as well.

The omnipresent DePue has long inhabited an unusual space at the Statehouse, serving as Brownback’s spiritual adviser. He even plans an upcoming book titled “Rising to Greatness: Lessons from the Purposeful Walk of Ambassador Sam Brownback and a Host of Other Champions.”

He talked with Kansas Reflector in 2023 as part of a series about the intersection of church and state in Topeka.

“It’s not religion so much. It’s faith,” DePue told former Kansas Reflector reporter Rachel Mipro. “It’s hard to be on the front lines of the work, like in government. We just support them. We got their back. We just try to be a supportive environment for legislators and our administrators. We have people pray for them. We walk around and encourage them. No agenda, just to kind of shore them up and strengthen them.”

I wondered what was going on with DePue’s attendance and asked him for comment.

He didn’t respond to my email. I look forward to learning further lessons fromBrownback’s purposeful walk, though.

Reporting stonewalled

As I tried to learn what was happening with House GOP lawmakers and closed meetings, I uncovered more details and encountered more resistance. It became clear that officials did not want this column to appear and did not want to explain their decision. So I decided to work harder.

Over two weeks, I contacted more than 20 legislators, lobbyists, journalists and political diehards to figure out what was going on. Many answered my calls, texts and emails. Others did not.

This reporting confirmed that Statehouse GOP caucus meetings were closed, but I wanted to see the situation for myself.

I sat outside the closed caucus meetings on Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday, watching the closed doors and who went in and out. The first day I was accompanied by Kansas Reflector editor Sherman Smith, who was taking photos.

A remarkable sequence of events unfolded. While the Old Supreme Court doors were closed, Smith was taking photos in the foyer. A staffer was sent out to shoo him away. A second set of doors was later closed to keep him (and me) further back. Once the meeting ended, leaders conspicuously did not leave through the public exit, apparently going through a back door.

When I returned Wednesday and Thursday, that second set of doors remained closed, and the same staffer kept watch.

I’m not sure whether leaders were paranoid about our presence. But I will note that House Speaker Dan Hawkins’ chief of staff, Carrie Rahfaldt, responded to my texts about whether the caucus was closed and suggested that I contact Croft. As mentioned earlier, the majority leader then didn’t respond to a call, text or email.

I attempted to drop by Croft’s office on Friday, with the House out of session. A guard stopped me in the House chamber. I asked if I could talk to a secretary or leave a message and was told no, that I needed an appointment. Despite further discussion and explanations, they still wouldn’t let me through.

Loud Light’s Stiehler summed up the situation.

“The legislative process seems to be entirely predetermined behind the closed-door Republican caucus meetings where this supermajority can subvert the eyes, voices and will of the people they are supposed to be there to serve,” she said.

I don’t believe that open government should be the exclusive concern of any party or ideology. It matters for everyone, because it matters for the people of Kansas. They deserve to know what’s going on in their name. Not only through the work of journalists, but also if they want to visit Topeka and see for themselves.

These meetings should be open. They should be visible. Leaders and their members should resist the urge to hide behind closed doors, avoiding questions or challenges. They should have the courage of their convictions.

In 1986, the Kansas Supreme Court wrote that open meetings law should be “interpreted liberally and exceptions narrowly construed.”

In 2025, the House GOP has done the exact opposite.

Clay Wirestone is Kansas Reflector opinion editor. Through its opinion section, Kansas Reflector works to amplify the voices of people who are affected by public policies or excluded from public debate. Find information, including how to submit your own commentary, here.