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7/27/2019 KS - Who is Behind the Kansas Policy Institute FINAL
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The State Policy Network (SPN) is an umbrella group of right-wing think tanks across the country. The KansasPolicy Institute (KPI) is SPN’s cookie-cutter think tank in Kansas. Located in the hometown of Koch Industries, the
Kansas Policy Institute has close connections to the Kochs, the American Legislative Exchange Council (ALEC), Americans for Prosperity, and the Cato Institute. George Pearson, Chairman of KPI, has worked for three decades
in various positions in the Koch Foundations and Koch Industries.
KPI is a member of the controversial AmericanLegislative Exchange Council (ALEC). At ALEC,corporate lobbyists and state lawmakers go behindclosed doors to create laws, with no input from the
public, that end up helping the corporations’ bottom lines. Dave Trabert, President of KPI, serves on
ALEC’s Tax and Fiscal Policy Task Force.
Jonathan Williams, an adjunct Fiscal Policy Fellowat KPI, is the Director of ALEC’s Tax and FiscalPolicy Task Force.
Defund and privatize Kansas' public schools throughvouchers
Eliminate income taxes and cut corporate taxes
Privatize and outsource public services, eliminatingofficials’ oversight of taxpayer dollars
Destroy public pensions
In 2012, KPI launched a misleading ad campaign across the state, accusing public schools of abysmal failure.
Using data from the Kansas State Department of Education, KPI claimed that only 68% of 11th grade students in Olathe,KS, read at grade level. KPI ignored the additional 27% of students who read at grade level, and the fact that 95% of
Olathe's 11th graders were at or above grade level. A spokesperson for the Kansas Department of Education called themisleading and inaccurate advertisements “inappropriate.”
KPI has been the central coordinating think tank within Kansas helping outside interests attack clean energy
laws. KPI co-published the debunked Beacon Hill Institute report that ALEC has used for its clean energy standard repealin Kansas. KPI Vice President & Policy Director James Franko testified in the Kansas legislature alongside
representatives of Heartland Institute, Americans for Prosperity and Beacon Hill Institute in early 2013 to weakenKansas's renewable portfolio standard. Reasserting the false premise that clean energy standards substantially increase
electricity prices and inhibit job growth, Franko ignored the fact that Kansas has 19 operating wind farms that have brought millions to farmers leasing their land and millions more to the state, county and local levels. The American Wind
Energy Association says that Kansas wind industry jobs have grown to 13,000 with the help of incentives like therenewable portfolio standard.
While KPI is not required to disclose its donors to the
public, and does not do so voluntarily, a 2011 articlein The Washington Post asserted that KPI receives a
large portion of its funding from the Koch brothers.The precise amount of funding from the Kochs
remains unknown. The only other known KPI funders are the Koch-funded DonorsTrust and Donors
Capital Fund, which have funneled $534,500 to KPIbetween 2009 and 2011, and the California-based
Jaquelin Hume Foundation, which gave KPI $15,000in 2011.
KPI is known to have close relations with the Koch brothers
and Koch Industries, which is also located in Wichita. TheChairman of KPI, George Pearson, was a longtime Koch
employee and corporate executive, and was also instrumentalin developing the Cato Institute with the Koch brothers. TheInstitute’s former name, Flint Hills Center for Public Policy,
resembles the name of a controversial division of KochIndustries: “Flint Hills Resources.” Throughout 2011 and 2012,KPI’s headquarters has been the location of several “OccupyWichita,” “Occupy Koch-town,” and demonstration protestsdue to the conservative group’s connections with the Koch
brothers.