By Grace Hills
TOPEKA — Inspired by the corporate world, a Kansas state senator wants to provide a monetary incentive for state employees to report fraud, waste or abuse.
Sen. Michael Murphy, a Republican from Sylvia who introduced Senate Bill 450, was the sole person to testify Thursday before the Senate Committee on Government Efficiency.
He said he was inspired by his former employer, United Airlines, which had a similar program that gave an employee 10% of the savings if they identified a way for the company to save money. Sen. Larry Alley, a Republican from Winfield, said there was a similar program when he worked at Boeing.
Under the proposed bill, if a state employee reports fraud, waste or abuse of funds administered by a state agency that ends up saving the state money, the employee would get 10% of the savings.
Murphy said the program would save Kansans tax dollars.
“So if an employee sees something,” Murphy said, “whether it’s just fraud or it’s waste or inefficiencies, whatever like that, if they can bring something like that forward and save tax dollars and they can be rewarded for doing that, this encourages them to do that and kind of gives them an ownership.”
Alley said the program worked well at Boeing, but he noted the task of sifting out waste, fraud and abuse is already a part of some state employees’ day-to-day jobs, like the inspector general. Murphy agreed, and said he would work with legislative staff to clarify that.
“This needs to be something that’s just where you’re aware of something,” Murphy said.
Sen. Cindy Holscher, a Democrat from Overland Park, said the Committee on Government Efficiency, or COGE — which was modeled after tech-billionaire Elon Musk and President Donald Trump’s DOGE, which cut 9% of the federal workers but failed to deliver on promised cost cuts — can be “little bit partisan at times.”
“What prevents people from trying to get back at people through whistleblowing?” Holscher asked Murphy.
“I’m not going to say it won’t happen. We know it happens,” Murphy responded. “But this isn’t so much of an ‘I’m going to get you,’ this is more like, ‘I see something here that’s going on that maybe we can take care of and I can benefit from it.’ ”
“When you find people who work for the government — and I’m not casting aspersions on anyone here — but lots of times it’s, ‘It’s not my money, and I don’t care,’ ” he added. “I see that, and the bottom line is if it was their business, they would be watching and making sure things were happening.”
To close out the 13-minute hearing, which was abnormally short for the committee, Sen. Renee Erickson, a Republican from Wichita and committee chair, told members the COGE portal was closed. Last session, the portal was flooded with Kansans asking for Medicaid expansion, reproductive freedom and medical marijuana. Erickson said concerns can now be emailed to her or the committee assistant.
