Kansas Bioscience Authority pays $46,000 to chairman's company

The Kansas Bioscience Authority has paid almost $70,000 in state money to its chairman and his private business, a newspaper reported.

The Kansas City Star, citing records it received from the authority through a Kansas Open Records Act request, said Thursday the agency paid Clay Blair Services Corp. $46,000 for "office expenses and clerical support" and an additional $23,239 to Clay Blair directly for other expenses.

Blair doesn't receive a salary from the authority, which oversees the state's three-year-old economic development effort to generate additional research and create new jobs in the region's life sciences industry. It's expected to create more than $580 million in new business.

He said he ran the agency, which was created in 2004, out of his Johnson County real estate development office for most of last year and the payments represent reimbursement of those expenses.

"My staff, my secretaries, my people basically were conducting the business of the bioscience authority," Blair told the newspaper. "The executive committee decided my company should be provided an allowance for providing the facility, the staffing, the e-mails, the long-distance phone calls."

The authority's board voted to give Blair's company $4,000 a month, which some members said was the most efficient way of helping the authority do its work.

"Clay, he was very much a one-person show and he was doing an extraordinary amount of work on behalf of the KBA," said Bill Sanford, who sits on the authority's board and its executive committee. "It is probably the best economic deal for the KBA."

The payments ended when the authority hired Tom Thornton as its first chief executive officer in September and moved into a permanent headquarters in Olathe in October.

Agency officials have attracted criticism from state leaders in the past, including that it too a long time for the authority, created in 2004, to hire a top executive, and hasn't reported the details some lawmakers wanted about how it used more than $40 million from the state.

"I think the bioscience authority was experiencing growing pains," said Rep. Terrie Huntington, R-Mission Hills, who is vice chairwoman of a legislative committee responsible for economic development. "I had some concerns."

A spokeswoman for Gov. Kathleen Sebelius said the governor believes the authority will run more smoothly now that it has a full-time executive.

"Governor Sebelius has confidence in Tom Thornton as the new CEO and knows he has a plan for a more transparent process and for board accountability, which we support," said spokeswoman Nicole Corcoran in an e-mailed statement.

The $23,239 in payments to Blair represented reimbursement for meals, hotel stays, airfare and mileage and was the largest single reimbursement among $60,521 paid to the authority's nine board members.

"Regarding my expenses, they reflect thousands of hours of donated public services for over a year of transitioning to employing its CEO," Blair said in a written statement.

Authority officials have worked to bring new jobs to the Kansas City area, including trying to attract a Quintiles Transnational Corp. facility to Overland Park, expand the Hospira Inc. operation in McPherson and move the North American headquarters of British company OncImmune Ltd. to Lenexa.

On the Net:

http://www.kansasbioscienceauthority.org

Information from: The Kansas City Star, http://www.kcstar.com