TOPEKA — Kansas secretary of state candidate Pat Proctor blamed zealous bureaucrats for assessing his restaurant businesses $93,000 in penalties after failing to comply with federal wage and overtime laws.
Proctor, a Leavenworth member of the Kansas House, a retired U.S. Army colonel and recipient of a doctorate from Kansas State University, said he ran into trouble with the U.S. Department of Labor because he didn’t understand fundamentals of labor law. He had been in the restaurant business for approximately 10 years when the department raised the issue with him in 2016.
“One day, here comes the labor department in, saying, ‘Hey, you owe all these people money because you didn’t record their hours,'” Proctor said during an interview with KMAN radio host Mike Matson. “Here comes this bureaucrat into the restaurant with some regulations that we didn’t know about, and it cost us.”
In Kansas, the secretary of state is responsible for oversight of elections and manages business records filed by companies throughout the state.
Proctor said the original complaint alleged Baan Thai Restaurant Inc., which he co-owned with his wife, should have paid 31 salaried employees $93,008 for work performed from 2014 to 2016. The labor department said Proctor’s obligations included $79,133 for unpaid overtime and $13,875 for failure to comply with the $7.25 federal minimum wage. In total, he was cited for 41 violations.
In the KMAN interview, Proctor said he couldn’t recall whether compensation paid his staff was negotiated down to $68,000 or $78,000.
Proctor is the Republican Party nominee to replace Secretary of State Scott Schwab, who unsuccessfully sought the GOP nomination for governor rather than run again in 2026. Proctor’s Democratic Party opponent in the general election is Jennifer Day of Lawrence. The Nov. 3 ballot also includes Scott Morgan, the Lawrence nominee of the United Kansas Party.
“If Pat Proctor can’t pay his own employees, how can we trust him to run our elections?” Day said. “The fact that Proctor withheld tens of thousands of dollars from dozens of his employees — depriving workers of fair wages — shows he has no regard for the people of Kansas and that he thinks the rules don’t apply to him.”
Day, who owns a real estate investment business, said the candidate elected secretary of state should be a standard bearer in terms of elections and business filings. Those duties start with being accountable for personal mistakes, she said.
“As a small business owner myself, I know how important it is that these offices be run with integrity,” Day said. “My opponent has proven that he won’t put Kansans before his own interests, and it’s a record Kansas voters deserve to know about.”
Morgan, the secretary of state nominee of United Kansas, said he was puzzled that Proctor thought he should be trusted to lead the office of secretary of state despite an inability to understand fundamental rules applicable to business owners in Kansas. He said Proctor should consider dropping out the race if he didn’t feel up to the task of dealing with complexities of state law and regulation.
“If you don’t know that you have to comply with laws and regulations, how, exactly, are you qualified to be in charge of the state office responsible for accepting and maintaining filings from all of the Kansas businesses?” Morgan said. “Every business, and certainly one with multiple restaurants, hires accounting and legal help. Did Proctor do his own taxes? Did he memorize the food safety regulations?”
Morgan said ignorance of rules and regulations was no defense for someone caught financially shortchanging their employees.
Proctor co-owns Baan Thai restaurants in Leavenworth and Manhattan and recently opened Noodles of Asia in Leavenworth.
In the KMAN interview, Proctor said kitchen staff in his restaurants from 2014 to 2016 were paid salaries above the minimum wage. He said the federal government claimed he should have kept records of his employees’ time on the job because working more than 40 hours per week was overtime requiring bonus pay. Proctor said he didn’t track the hours worked by those restaurant employees, which deprived them of income.
Proctor also spoke about the issue during a candidate forum hosted by the Kansas Chamber. He said that if elected secretary of state he would reconfigure the office’s website and deploy artificial intelligence to provide information to business owners about federal, state or local operational requirements. The information would be distributed through a portal at the secretary of state’s office.
“It just spits out a list of all the things you got to do,” he said. “You know, all the forms you got to fill out.”
He said the Kansas Legislature should pass a law exempting companies from fines if his proposed website based in the secretary of state’s office proved inadequate to prepare company owners for the regulatory environment.
“If the government is going to make me do something, in my mind, it’s the government’s responsibility to make sure I know I have to do it,” he said.
Morgan, who operated a small publishing company for 17 years, said it wasn’t the job of the secretary of state to train business owners nor was it acceptable for the office to develop a program to exempt violators from accountability. The secretary of state’s website currently features a disclaimer that the office “does not provide legal guidance,” Morgan said.
“I am ware of that compliance can be confusing,” Morgan said, “but it is a solvable problem. Proctor should stop blaming others and accept responsibility.”
Kansas Reflector is part of States Newsroom, a nonprofit news network supported by grants and a coalition of donors as a 501c(3) public charity. Kansas Reflector maintains editorial independence. Contact Editor Sherman Smith for questions: info@kansasreflector.com.