FILE - Kansas Attorney General Kris Kobach speaks during a news conference, Thursday, March 28, 2024, at the Statehouse in Topeka, Kan. An audit released Tuesday, April 2, by Kansas’ attorney general concluded that the state is losing more than $20 million a year because its Insurance Department is lax in overseeing one of its programs. The department said the audit is flawed and should be “discounted nearly in its entirety.
The dispute involves two elected Republicans, Attorney General Kris Kobach and Insurance Commissioner Vicki Schmidt, who are considered potential candidates in 2026 to succeed term-limited Democratic Gov. Laura Kelly. Their conflict flared a week after the GOP-controlled state Senate approvedthat would give Kobach’s office greater power to investigate social services fraud through its inspector general for the state’s Medicaid program.
But Schmidt’s office said the inspector general relied on an “unduly harsh and unreasonable” interpretation of state law and “unreliable extrapolations” to reach its conclusions. Also, the department said, the conclusion that most applications for the tax break were mishandled is “astronomically unreflective of reality.”A Kansas paper and its publisher are suing over police raids.
The department countered that the homes were being audited and that it showed “forbearance” to “the heavily regulated industry” because annual audits often cannot be completed as quickly as the inspector general demands. Insurance Department spokesperson Kyle Stratham said that if the agency accepted the inspector general’s conclusions, “Kansas businesses would be charged tens of millions of dollars in additional taxes, which would have a devastating impact on the availability of care for senior Kansans.”Hanna covers politics and state government in Kansas for The Associated Press. He’s worked for the AP in Topeka since 1986.