JimmyCsays: At the juncture of journalism and daily life in KC

The New York Times published an absolutely devastating story Sunday that exposed how Kansas elected officials, including Gov. Laura Kelly, completely prostrated themselves to the promoters of online sports betting earlier this year.

The first three paragraphs of the story — which an investigative reporter and a financial reporter worked on for months — painted a stunning picture, almost a caricature, of an elected official on the take.

Here’s how the story opens…

TOPEKA, Kan. — Representative John Barker, a cattle breeder, retired judge and chairman of one of the most powerful committees in the Kansas legislature, had a glass of 30-year Redbreast Irish whiskey in his hand and a Don Tomas cigar from Honduras in his mouth.

Both had been passed to him as he entered a party a few blocks from the State Capitol. It was co-sponsored by lobbyists who had recently turned to Mr. Barker for help legalizing sports betting in Kansas.

“They keep a special bottle for me up there — they know I like it,” he said of the lobbyists as he surveyed the crowded room. “I’m in my element when I have a whiskey and a cigar.”

Barker, a Republican from Abilene, was the sponsor of a bill to legalize online sports betting. The House approved the bill on April 28 on a 73-49 vote, and the Senate approved it 21-13 in the early-morning hours of April 29. Kelly signed the bill on June 20 and placed Kansas’ first-ever sports bet in September.

So eager were Barker and other legislators to accommodate more than two dozen sports-betting lobbyists that, in the course of negotiations over the bill, they made significant concessions to the gambling industry. One provision insured that casino companies, like Hollywood Casino in Kansas City, KS, would get a cut of sports-betting revenue. Another expanded the list of venues where sports betting would be allowed. Those sites included Kansas Speedway and Children’s Mercy Park, where Sporting Kansas City plays its games.

The biggest concession, however, was slashing the state’s share of gambling companies’ sports-betting revenue from 20 percent to 10 percent.

The lobbyists claimed that the 20-percent rate would mean less money available to pay out to bettors, which, they said, would drive Kansans to illegal gambling websites.

The NYT reporters, Eric Lipton and Ken Vogel, debunked that claim, however, saying statistics show that residents of high-tax states, like New York, have spent as much per capita on gambling as residents in states with low tax rates.

Now, three months into sports betting, the results have tended to indicate that the legislators who approved it were bigger suckers than the bettors. In September and October, Kansans placed $350 million of bets and, of that amount, the state collected less than $271,000 in taxes.

Told about that paltry amount, Barker, the whiskey-drinking, cigar-smoking lawmaker from Abilene, admitted to one of the NYT reporters: “I didn’t think of the consequences. Maybe we need to fix that.”

And then there’s the kicker of the story: Barker, who served four terms in the House, will not be around to propose any fixing. He was defeated in the August primary by a candidate who, The Times said, criticized him “for going too far to please the gambling industry.”

**

Of course, this is ruby red Kansas and Barker’s successor doesn’t sound like he’s going to be much better.

Curious to learn more about who beat Barker, I found it was a man named Scott Hill, a “rural Abilene farmer and rancher,” who’s anti-abortion and anti-gun control. His biggest claim to fame came in 1999, however, when, as a member of the Kansas Board of Education, he voted with five other board members to eliminate evolution as a principle of the state science curriculum.

From lap dog (Barker) to meathead (Hill). It’s Kansas, after all, and it could just as easily have been Missouri, which doesn’t yet have sports betting but probably will follow Kansas’ lead in a year or two.