By Paul Soutar

The 2000 Kansas Legislature approved the restoration of the Kansas State Capitol with a price tag of $90 million to $120 million and an eight-year timetable.

It is still several years from completion, and the price tag has risen to $320 million.

Want answers? Well, good luck.

Most of those lie shrouded within the 1,781 pages of contracts and amendments surrounding the project.

That’s nearly twice the 906-page federal Patient Protection and Affordable Care Act, the national-health care law.

In an age when just about everything, including Graham Barker‘s Navel Fluff Collection, is on the Internet, the contracts for the Capitol’s restoration are not.

The mammoth document isn’t even available in an electronic format, such as a text or PDF file, said Shelley King, an attorney at the Kansas Department of Administration’s Office of Chief Counsel.

People can visit the DOA’s offices, where a designated page turner will watch as one peruses the document.

Want to copy a page? That’s 25 cents, please. Want the entire document? Well, that will run you about $445.25 – plus staff time.

“I have been told,” King said in an email, “that the contracts are bound a certain way and that copying a page would require taking the binding/document apart – making it much easier to copy once a document has been completely reviewed. Staff familiar with the contracts would be able to assure the documents stay together and in order.”

No one prior to Kansas Watchdog has filed an open records request for the contract, King said. That request was filed May 3.