Kansas House Bill HB2092

Kansas 2025-2026 Regular Session

• Introduced: 1/24/25
• Refer: 1/24/25
• Report Pass: 2/4/25
• Engrossed: 2/11/25
• Refer: 2/13/25
• Report Pass: 3/5/25
• Enrolled: 3/21/25
• Passed: 4/10/25

Caption

Setting the time for professional employer organization registration expiration, renewal and the filing of audits with the secretary of state, limiting the method of providing surety for professional employer organizations with insufficient working capital to bonds and eliminating a market value measure of the sufficiency of such bonds.

Summary

HB2092 updates Kansas rules for professional employer organizations (PEOs), which are businesses that provide co-employment and employee leasing services to client employers. The bill changes when PEO registrations expire, moving them to October 15 after issuance, with a special transition rule for registrations issued on or after January 1, 2025, which would expire on October 15, 2026. It also aligns the annual audit filing deadline with the registration renewal process and allows electronic filings and optional use of an approved assurance organization to handle registration and reporting tasks. The bill also revises the financial responsibility requirements for PEOs. A PEO that does not maintain positive working capital must provide a bond, and the bill removes other surety options such as an irrevocable letter of credit or securities, as well as the prior market-value measure for determining sufficiency. Limited registrations remain available for certain out-of-state PEOs that do not maintain a Kansas office, do not directly solicit Kansas clients, and have no more than 50 covered employees in the state; those applicants are exempt from the working-capital/bond requirements in the amended statute. The secretary of state retains authority to register, investigate, and enforce the law, and must maintain a public list of registered PEOs.

Impact

HB2092 amends K.S.A. 44-1704 and 44-1706, changing the administrative and financial compliance framework for PEO registration in Kansas. It affects PEOs, professional employer groups, and the secretary of state by standardizing renewal timing, tying audit submissions to renewals, and narrowing the acceptable forms of surety for undercapitalized organizations to bonds only. It also preserves and clarifies limited-registration treatment for certain out-of-state PEOs and expands flexibility for electronic filing and third-party compliance processing.

Sentiment

The bill appears to have been broadly noncontroversial and received unanimous support in both chambers. It passed the House on emergency final action by a 123-0 vote and the Senate on the consent calendar by a 39-0 vote, suggesting general agreement that the measure was a technical or administrative update rather than a major policy change. No committee transcript concerns are available in the provided materials.

Contention

No notable opposition is reflected in the available record. The main policy choices in the bill are administrative streamlining and tighter financial-security rules for PEOs, but the unanimous votes indicate no recorded floor-level contention. The only potentially significant substantive change is the elimination of non-bond surety options and the market-value standard for sufficiency, which would matter most to PEOs that rely on alternative financial instruments rather than bonds.