The Kansas Open Records Act begins at K.S.A. 45-215, and section 45-218 states the rule plainly: all public records are open for inspection by any person except as the act otherwise provides, and each public agency must make suitable facilities available for that purpose. Original records may not be taken out of the office without the custodian's written permission. Inspection happens during the agency's regular office hours, plus any additional hours it has established under its own adopted procedures.
Every agency appoints a freedom of information officer to help resolve problems with requests, and the Bureau of Investigation's own summary of the act sets out the shared expectations: the request should be in writing, it should identify the records with as much specificity as possible, the agency has no obligation to create a record that does not already exist, and a record destroyed under a retention schedule does not have to be recreated. Where the person asked is not the custodian, the Act requires them to say so and to supply the name and location of the custodian where that is known or readily ascertainable. For Kansas records held locally, see the Kansas county pages.
- The third business day: every request must be acted on as soon as possible and no later than the end of the third business day after receipt.
- Delay needs detail: where access is not immediate the custodian must explain the cause and give the place and earliest time and date the record will be available.
- Lowest cost staff: charges for staff time must use in good faith the lowest cost category reasonably necessary, at salary or wage and without benefits.
- Five hours or two hundred dollars: above that, the agency must try to talk to the requester about cutting the cost, though nobody has to agree.
Written by SearchSystems.net from Kansas's own systems: K.S.A. 45-218, inspection of records and response, K.S.A. 45-219, copies and fees, the Attorney General's open government pages, the Bureau of Investigation summary of the Open Records Act, Chapter 45 of the Kansas Statutes, each read on October 15, 2026 by the SearchSystems editorial team.
Three business days, and what counts as acting
Section 45-218(d) requires each request for access to be acted upon as soon as possible, but not later than the end of the third business day following the date the request is received. Acting is not the same as producing. Where access is not granted immediately, the custodian must give a detailed explanation of the cause for further delay, and must name the place and the earliest time and date at which the record will be available for inspection, which turns the third day into a scheduling obligation rather than an excuse.
Where the request is denied, the custodian must provide, on request, a written statement of the grounds for denial citing the specific provision of law under which access is refused, and that statement is itself due by the end of the third business day after the request for it is received. In practice a Kansas requester who is refused should immediately ask for that written statement, because the citation is what makes the refusal testable.
Burden, repetition and the evidence an agency needs
Subsection (e) lets a custodian refuse access where a request places an unreasonable burden in producing public records, or where the custodian has reason to believe that repeated requests are intended to disrupt other essential functions of the agency. The sentence that follows is the one that matters: a refusal under that subsection must be sustained by a preponderance of the evidence. An assertion of burden is therefore a claim the agency has to be able to prove, not a discretionary judgment, and it sits alongside the separate cost conversation the fee section requires on large requests.
What Kansas lets an agency bill
Fees come from K.S.A. 45-219, and the Act is detailed about them. Copying fees may not exceed the actual cost of furnishing the requested records, including the cost of staff time required to make the information available, and actual costs may include the cost to review and redact, but they may not include incidental costs that are not attributable to furnishing the records. Where access is provided to records held on computer facilities, fees may include only the cost of computer services, including staff time.
Where staff time is charged at all, the agency must use in good faith the lowest cost category of staff reasonably necessary, charges must be based on the employee's salary or hourly wage, and the cost of employee benefits may not be included. On request, the agency must provide an itemised statement of costs incurred and charged, which must include the hourly rates charged for each employee involved and an itemised list of every other fee.
Copies are made while the records stay in the custodian's possession and under supervision, in the place the records are kept wherever practicable; where outside facilities are necessary the requester pays for them and the agency may charge a supervision fee. An agency need not copy audio or visual items such as tapes, discs, films, pictures, slides, graphics or illustrations unless they were shown or played at a public meeting of the governing body, and need not copy material copyrighted by someone else.
Nor does the Act let a requester plug their own device into agency equipment to take copies.
The five hour conversation, and the risk of silence
Kansas requires a cost conversation on larger requests. Where the staff time needed will exceed five hours, or the estimated actual cost for that staff time exceeds two hundred dollars, the agency must make reasonable efforts to contact the requester and engage in interactive communication about mitigating the cost of filling the request, using the means of contact the requester supplied. The requester is expressly not obligated to mitigate costs.
There is a trap in the mechanism, though: where the agency has made reasonable efforts to make contact and the requester has not responded by the end of the third business day, the request is deemed withdrawn until the requester contacts the agency again. Anyone making a substantial Kansas request should therefore watch the inbox they gave the agency, because three quiet business days can end the request without any decision on the records.
Challenging a fee, and who decides
Fees are set branch by branch: legislative agencies under the statute governing legislative charges, the judiciary by supreme court rule, and executive agencies by the agency head, each still subject to the limits in section 45-219. For executive branch records, a requester may appeal the reasonableness of the fees charged for access or copies to the secretary of administration, whose decision is final, which is a cheap and quick route that does not require going near a court.
Certified shorthand reporters keep their own transcript rates under supreme court rules, and fees collected are remitted to the state treasurer or the local treasury rather than kept by the office that charged them.
What is outside the Act, and one prohibited use
The common exceptions listed by the state cover criminal investigation records, criminal intelligence information, laboratory reports and files, anything that would reveal the identity of an undercover agent or informant, anything revealing the identity of the victim of a sexual offence, records protected by attorney client privilege, and most personnel records. Criminal history record information sits outside the Act altogether in Kansas, and is obtained instead through the Bureau of Investigation's fee based criminal history service.
One rule binds requesters rather than agencies: K.S.A. 45-230 prohibits using names and addresses derived from public records for certain commercial purposes, and a violation can bring a civil penalty of as much as five hundred dollars per incident, which is why Kansas agencies often ask a requester to certify the purpose before releasing lists.
Questions about public records requests in Kansas
Related Kansas records
Kansas's other public records guides on this site are the Kansas background check guide for the Bureau of Investigation criminal history service, the Kansas court records guide for the district court records search, the Kansas arrest records guide for what a booking makes public, and the Kansas county pages for every county office.