Capitol Bully

Howse called Officer Marshall on March 11 to complain that she had been fired for pursuing the charges against Chris Barone. Howse filed a police report with Marshall.

On April 30, 2004, Chris Barone pleaded guilty to charges of telephone harassment. He was fined $200.

Howse filed a lawsuit on July 22, 2004, against KU Medical Center, Atkinson and another hospital official. She claimed in the suit that hospital administrators were more interested in "pleasing a Kansas Senator who is responsible for funding the Medical Center" than the "best interests" of the hospital.

The case settled out of court on November 3, 2005. Terms of the settlement are confidential.

"The matter was resolved to the mutual satisfaction of the parties," says Carrie Mulholland Brous, Howse's attorney.

Chris Barone has had other legal problems. In June 2003, Chris Barone was arrested in Crawford County for possession of a controlled substance or drug paraphernalia. He still owes Jackson County, Missouri, $8,821.43 in unpaid property taxes on 4547 Fairmount Avenue, which he purchased from his father in 2003. Jim Barone bought the house in 2001 and deeded it to Chris in 2003.

Jim Barone doesn't want to talk about his family. He refuses to talk about his sons — Chris and Kevin — or answer questions about using his influence to try to get Chris Barone out of legal jams.

"You can do all of the research you want on me," Jim Barone tells the Pitch. "It'll be hard to find me talking about my family."

During the 2006 session, Senate leaders were scrambling to get a 21-vote majority to pass an expanded casino gaming bill. Lawmakers saw gambling as a way to pay for an increase in school funding. But Jim Barone, a self-professed supporter of gambling expansion in Kansas, was balking at the bill. His reason: a provision in the bill could prevent his son Kevin from keeping a job.

In early March of last year, Barone met with officials of the Sumner County Economic Development Commission in south central Kansas, according to the Morning Sun. He told the county's economic development team that they had a shot of being included in the gaming bill.

About the same time as the meeting, the county hired Jim Barone's son Kevin to lobby on behalf of the county's gaming interests. Barone's fee for lobbying the Legislature was $1,250 a month plus expenses, according to The Caldwell Messenger.

But Sumner, in farm country south of Wichita, had never been discussed as a potential casino site.

Hensley, the minority leader, blasted Barone in an editorial in The Wellington Daily News, saying Barone had misled the people of Sumner County. "I find it disturbingly coincidental that Sen. Barone's son, Kevin Barone, was then hired to lobby for Sumner County," Hensley wrote. "In my opinion, no legislator should place their personal interests above the interests of every other Kansan."

Barone was unable to deliver gambling to Sumner County. He would eventually cast his vote in favor of expanded gambling, though the measure failed.

Lawmakers added a conflict-of-interest clause to the bill, barring legislators and their family members from working in the gaming industry until they'd been out of office for five years.

"It wasn't an accident that we wrote a bill to take care of what we saw as very egregious overstepping of bounds," an architect of the bill, who asked that his name not be used, tells the Pitch.

A former legislator adds, "It just smells bad when there's an opportunity for a legislator's family member to gain from a piece of legislation that the legislature is voting on. I think anybody can see that."

Barone complained to reporters that the conflict-of-interest provision was "far overreaching." His opposition came at the expense of his home county. Crawford County voters had passed a referendum in 2005 in support of expanding casino gambling in the county.

Sumner County has retained Kevin Barone to lobby lawmakers again in 2007.

The hallway outside room No. 181-E is empty except for a security guard sitting next to the entrance to the Capitol building. Sen. Jim Barone has two minutes before he has to be at the Senate Ways and Means Committee. A Pitch reporter introduces himself to Barone as he exits his office. Barone glares at the reporter, leaving the reporter's outstretched hand hanging in the air. "Come here," Barone grumbles, stomping back into his office.