Episode One:  The Deceptive Gut and Go Legislative Hat Trick

In April 2025, while most Kansans were getting ready for planting season and graduation, a different kind of planting was happening in Topeka. On the final day of the legislative session. Lawmakers pushed through a bill with a bland name. Senate bill 98. It didn’t mention Kansas farms. It didn’t mention water. It didn’t mention your property taxes. But SB 98 quietly rewired who this state is really for.

You have to start with the bill that Senate Bill 98 used to be, when Senate Bill 98 was introduced on January 29th, 2025. It wasn’t about data centers at all. It was a license plate bill, a small feel good measure to let the Route 66 Association of Kansas sell a distinctive route 66 license plate with a modest royalty to help preserve the historic highway through Galena, Riverton, and Baxter Springs.

That was the whole bill. A license plate for a highway. It passed the Senate on February 19th, 39 to 1. It passed the House on March 13th, 105 to 17, nearly unanimous. Nobody was fighting about it because there was nothing to fight about. The only reason the bill went to a conference committee at all was to resolve a two word difference (in line 56). between the chamber’s, two words about a license plate.

And that is where the trick began in Topeka. There is a maneuver that has an ugly, honest nickname the Gut and Go. It works like this. You take a bill that has already passed both chambers, a bill everybody has already agreed to, like a route 66 license plate bill. You keep the bill number. You keep the file folder. But behind closed doors in a conference committee, you strip out every word of the original bill, and then you insert something completely different.

That is not a rumor. That is not an accusation. That is the truth, straight from the Kansas Legislature’s own conference Committee report on Senate Bill 98. They admitted it in writing. They removed the Route 66 license plate, and in its place, they inserted the entire contents of a different bill. Senate Bill 51, which had been sitting in a House committee going nowhere.

SB 51 was the data center bill introduced back in January by a lobbyist for Net Choice, the National trade group that represents the biggest tech companies on Earth. By April, SB 51 was stuck. It could not get across the finish line on its own. So Kansas legislators took the route 66 license plate bill, SB 98, the one that had already been accepted and used it as a vehicle to sneak in a 20 year corporate tax giveaway in the final hours of the last day of the session.

The Kansas House repassed the gutted bill. That same afternoon, 85 to 37, the Kansas Senate also repassed it a few hours later, 26 to 8. Six senators were absent or chose not to vote. The whole thing took less than one working day. On April 24th, Governor Laura Kelly signed it. And on July 1st, 2025, the 20 year sales tax exemption for hyperscale data centers became Kansas Law.

Here is the part that should stop you cold. The official record of that vote on the Kansas Legislature’s own website still ties Senate Bill 98 to the Route 66 license plate. Look it up yourself. Type it into your browser. KS legislature.gov Senate Bill 98 February 19th vote. The header still says “SB 98 Providing for the route 66 association of Kansas distinctive license plate.” (refer to the screenshot images below).

The bill it belongs to now exempts corporate data centers from 20 years of sales tax that is not sloppy filing. That is what a cover up looks like when it forgets to clean up after itself.

This is episode one of a five part investigation. We are going to name the players, the lobbyists, the politicians, the out-of-state money. Because Kansas did not lose its water, its land, its power grid and its property tax base by accident. It lost these things in a single afternoon behind a Gut and Go legislative hat trick.