TOPEKA — The Kansas House shelved a proposal Thursday setting fee limits on government agencies responding to public requests under the Kansas Open Records Act and unanimously pivoted to a bill compelling a good-faith effort to control costs for searching, redacting or delivering documents.

The original bill, introduced on behalf of the conservative think tank Kansas Policy Institute, would have capped copying costs at 25 cents per page for KORA requests and banned assessments for documents sent electronically to those requesting materials. The initial version said the cost for processing KORA requests would be based on the lowest hourly rate of an employee qualified to handle requests.

Those provisions were replaced in House Bill 2134 with language instructing government agencies to make good-faith efforts to control costs of making records available to the public. Assessments for staff time would be related to salaries or wages of the people processing requests, but the rate wouldn’t factor in employee benefits.

If staff time responding to records request exceeded five hours or $200, the agency holding the records “shall make reasonable efforts to contact the requester and engage in interactive communication about mitigating costs to fill the request.”

In addition, a requester of agencies in the state’s executive branch would be allowed to appeal reasonableness of a fee to the Kansas Department of Administration.

Rep. Susan Humphries, a Wichita Republican who chairs the House Judiciary Committee, said both sides of the issue came together to work on a compromise. It was important both sides, requesters and responders, were willing to search for middle ground, she said.

“What has happened … is sometimes people request open records and they’re hit with a huge fee and charges,” she said. “Other times people make unreasonable requests. Like to the City of Topeka. Someone wanted to know every email that had the word ‘elephant’ mentioned in it in the last 10 years. Unreasonable.”

The House bill was approved 123-0 and forwarded to the Kansas Senate for consideration.

Opponents to the first draft of the bill included the cities of Overland Park, Shawnee, Maize and Topeka; the Kansas Association of School Boards, Kansas Association of Chiefs of Police and the Kansas Sheriffs’ Association; the League of Kansas Municipalities and the Kansas Association of Counties; as well as the Unified Government of Wyandotte County and Kansas City, Kansas.

The critics argued the price structure outlined by Kansas Policy Institute wouldn’t reasonably cover the cost associated with large requests for government information.

Supporters of the original legislation included the Kansas Association of Broadcasters and Kansas Press Association.

“This is the way the legislative process is supposed to work,” said Rep. Dan Osman, D-Overland Park. “You get a bill. Sometimes it’s not ready for prime time. Sometimes it requires getting everybody in a room and actually hashing it out and coming up with a resolution that works for everybody.”