Two Wichita City Council candidates returned money to several donors this month amid confusion over campaign finance laws.
District 6 incumbent Maggie Ballard and District 1 candidate Joseph Shepard each received more than $500 from single donors ahead of the primary on Aug. 5. Critics of the campaigns said they violated a Wichita city ordinance which caps contributions from donors at $500 for the primary and $500 for the general election.
Ballard returned $25 and Shepard returned $120 to donors, but both candidates say recent changes to state campaign finance law make the situation murky.
“I think it’s very confusing because the state (limit) is different than the city,” Ballard said. “That can be a little bit confusing for, not only candidates, but for people that want to donate.”
Shifting limits and changing finance laws
Wichita last updated its campaign finance ordinance in March 2024. At the time, the city’s ordinance and state law matched on the issue of donation limits. That changed last April, when Gov. Laura Kelly signed House Bill 2054 into law. The bill updated the Kansas Campaign Finance Act, relaxing donation restrictions.
For cities of Wichita’s size, donation limits for city government races quadrupled to $2,000.The updated law also allows candidates to take a donation greater than the limit for primary contributions, as long as they use an “acceptable accounting method” to split the funds between the primary and general election.
By the time the bill was signed into law, local campaigning — and fundraising — was already in motion. Three candidates — Shepard, Ballard and District 1 candidate LaWanda DeShazer — had already received substantial donations. Shepard had received $14,426; Ballard, $9,705; and DeShazer, $4,180.
Tyler Schiffelbein, communications manager for the city of Wichita, said the city clerk sent the candidates information about city ordinances on campaign finances around June 6. He said it’s the "onus of the candidate to know and follow all local ordinances.”
Shepard said those weren’t the only advisories being sent to campaigns, however. The state also sent memos about Kansas election laws around the time of the primary election and the deadline for submitting campaign finance reports. The second memo included information about state contribution limits, Shepard said.
In an attempt to decipher state and city finance laws, Shepard said, his campaign got in touch with the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission in early July.
The commission, formerly called the governmental ethics commission, is in charge of enforcing the state’s laws around campaign finance, conflicts of interest and financial disclosures.
“We were told that you are able to move forward and abide by the state laws’ campaign finance limits,” Shepard said. “We checked with the governmental ethics office not once, not twice, but on multiple occasions, and they gave us the thumbs up.”
He said the Sedgwick County Election Office also “gave us the thumbs up.”
Ballard said her campaign also reached out to the state commission for advice and was told she could accept more than $500 as long as she earmarked the money for the primary and general elections.
Allegations of over-fundraising
Ballard and Shepard, along with the other eight candidates running in city races, filed their campaign finance reports with the county election office in late July.
The following day, Shepard posted on Facebook with a link to his campaign finance reports.
“We’re running this campaign the way we plan to lead: with honesty and accountability,” Shepard wrote. “No secrets, no surprises just truth.”
DeShazer said Shepard’s post caught the attention of her campaign.
“He posted his financial records, which of course made everyone take a look,” DeShazer said. “And I have qualified people on my staff that just recognized the discrepancies.”
The report filed by Shepard’s campaign on July 28 showed $39,682 in contributions from 262 donors. Of those donors, eight contributed more than $500. Those donors gave Shepard’s campaign $2,100 more than they would have if they had each donated up to the $500 cap.
Shepard wasn’t alone. Ballard’s campaign received $1,025 from Robert Foster in two donations made in April and $750 from Kristin Ghere in two donations made in May and June.
DeShazer said she wouldn’t use the word “violations,” describing the donations instead as “discrepancies.” Some of her supporters claimed that Shepard was violating city law and called on Wichita or state officials to enforce the limit.
Who is the enforcer?
Wade Wiebe, executive director of the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission, said changes to the state’s campaign finance law “do not prohibit a municipality from making more stringent ordinances, but the Kansas Public Disclosure Commission (KPDC) will enforce the limits outlined under our statutes.”
Wiebe added that responsibility for enforcement would “fall under the governing body that created them.”
Laura Rainwater, Sedgwick County election commissioner, said her office keeps campaign records but does not enforce campaign laws.
“We tell candidates they must contact the jurisdiction for answers to and enforcement of contribution limits,” Rainwater said.
Wichita’s city ordinance says donors or candidates who violate campaign finance laws could be charged with a misdemeanor and receive up to a $2,500 fine or “one year of confinement.” Until Oct. 2, though, the city didn’t have a formal process for filing a complaint under its campaign law.
“Since the ordinance was enacted, there have been no issues prior to this,” Schifflebein said.
Letter of the law
Ballard said in her opinion it’s clear that “the state law change does not override city ordinance when it comes to contribution limits.” Ballard said she intended to accept only $1,000 from any one donor and use the earmarking clause under the state law.
“Since the city law is silent about how to handle this type of contribution, I believe there is no conflict in following the guidance provided in the new state law,” she said.
Ballard wrote in an email to KMUW on Wednesday that “if anyone contributed over $1,000 per individual per campaign cycle, I would refund that amount over $1,000 to the donor.”
In a subsequent interview, she said she’d overlooked that Foster had donated $25 online before making a $1,000 donation by check. Ballard said she had refunded him the $25.
She said a more concerted effort to educate campaigns and candidates on the difference between state and local rules might have helped avoid confusion.
“If anything, we learned that there needs to be more education,” Ballard said. “Or everybody just needs to do their homework a little bit better.”
Shepard said there are still questions about whether state campaign finance laws preempt the city’s campaign laws.
He said Wichita isn’t the only municipality dealing with campaign finance confusion. In Wyandotte County, the county government updated its ethics code in March to remove county-specific contribution limits in favor of the state limits. Though a $500 contribution limit similar to Wichita’s still exists in that county’s code.
“I don’t want to be the litmus test to challenge this, especially not 30-some-odd days out before the election,” Shepard said. “To me, that’s a distraction.”
Shepard said his campaign amended its finance report and refiled with the county election office. The overall money available to Shepard’s campaign dropped by only $120, after a refund to LaTasha St. Arnault.
Shepard said he also issued Johnathan Hutton a $500 refund for an over-donation during the primary period, but that Hutton sent it back as a contribution to the general election.
In the amended report, donations originally made to Shepard by Cecil Hall, John Gregory, Amy Cox, Danielle Johnson and Jennifer Ray over $500 were relabeled as coming from each donor’s spouse. Shepard said his campaign contacted each couple to make sure they agreed to the change before resubmitting the report.
After amending the report, Shepard made another Facebook post, saying that “accountability means owning mistakes, correcting them, and preventing them in the future.”
“I even struggle with calling it a mistake sometimes, like it’s so confusing,” Shepard said later. “And yet the reality is, the city ordinance is the city ordinance and we are honoring that city ordinance until it changes, if it changes.”
