Duty of the public officers. Officers who sit mute while a contractor treats special-purpose tax as a customer-loyalty fund are not protected by “the contractor did it.” Public money in a political subdivision remains public money. K.S.A. 21-6005 reaches a person who has control of it by virtue of official position.

 Kansas law will void a city or county contract in defined situations. It does not say that every time a contractor spends a dollar wrong, the whole agreement disappears by itself. The distinction matters.

When Kansas law actually says “void”

The rule is aimed at the government’s power to make the contract, not at every later mistake in performance.

Kansas courts repeat the same points:

• A city or county cannot bind itself beyond its powers. A contract it had no power to make is ultra vires, void, and unenforceable. No further validity analysis is required.
• Anyone who contracts with a municipality is bound, at that party’s peril, to know the municipality’s authority.
• Contracts a municipality is not legally permitted to enter cannot be ratified. Performance by the contractor, money spent in reliance, and benefits received by the city do not estop the government from saying the contract was void.
• Cash-basis law, K.S.A. 10-1119: any contract between a municipal governing body and any person that violates the cash-basis act shall be void. Orders and warrants drawn in violation are void. An appropriation for a municipal fund shall not be used for any other purpose. Debt above the budgeted amount is void.
• State ex rel. Hecht v. City of Topeka: contracts in violation of the cash-basis law are void; a contract the city was not legally allowed to enter is ultra vires, void, and unenforceable. Even estoppel will not save a contract made in express violation of law.

That is the “null and void” doctrine in Kansas city and county law. It fits illegal formation (no authority, no vote, cash-basis breach, mandatory bidding ignored, purpose the electorate never approved) better than “the contractor later wrote a banquet check.”

What does not automatically void the master contract

A lawful services contract can still exist while some payments under it are unauthorized.

If JEDO had power to hire an economic-development contractor, the interlocal allowed it, and the board voted the agreement, a later banquet or civic sponsorship does not, by itself, erase the service contract. What it can do is this:

1. Mark that payment as unauthorized use of special-purpose tax money (ballot + K.S.A. 12-187(g) + AG 2001-014 + AG 2017-015 + “only as specified in the JEDO budget”).
2. Support recovery of the illegal outlay from the contractor or the recipient.
3. Support termination for cause if the contract says grant-fund spending is limited to the approved budget and the contractor blew that limit.
4. Support a False Claims action if someone knowingly presented a false claim for payment (K.S.A. 75-7503: treble damages and civil penalties to the political subdivision).
5. In a severe case, support misuse of public funds charges against a person who had control of public money and used it in a manner not authorized by law (K.S.A. 21-6005). That statute forfeits the official position of a convicted custodian. It is not a self-executing repeal of the GO Topeka contract.

Courts also try not to strike an entire contract as contrary to statute unless the legislature intended that result. Illegal pieces can fall while the rest stands, unless the whole bargain was outside municipal power.

The local precedent you already have

July 2004: Judge Theis held JEDO should have bid the GO Topeka contract because the City was part of JEDO and city ordinance required bids. He treated that contract as illegal and void if the plaintiffs amended and asked the court to set it aside. They did not amend. JEDO then passed a bid-exemption resolution. Theis later ruled for JEDO because the suit was not amended. That is the opposite of “the contract vanished by operation of law with no further action.” Someone had to sue, plead the right remedy, and finish the case.

So even when a Shawnee County judge said the JEDO–GO Topeka contract was illegal for failure to bid, the contract did not drop dead in the file room. The public body re-authorized the arrangement. That is why “null and void” is a claim you prove in court or a finding the board makes and then stops paying, not a slogan that ends the relationship on the day the banquet check clears.

How to state it for city and county without overclaiming

Use this, not “the contractor sinned, therefore the contract is air”:

Formation. If the city, county, or JEDO never had power to spend half-cent money for that purpose, or entered the contract in violation of cash-basis, bidding, or the ballot, Kansas treats that contract as void. The contractor is charged with knowledge of those limits. Benefits received do not save it.

Performance. If the master contract was valid but the contractor spent voter-pledged money on uses the ballot, interlocal, and JEDO budget did not specify, those expenditures are unauthorized. The agency can demand repayment, refuse further draws, terminate under the contract, and, if the claim for payment was false, use the Kansas False Claims Act. The master contract dies when the board terminates it or a court declares it void—not by the fact of the check alone.

Duty of the public officers. Officers who sit mute while a contractor treats special-purpose tax as a customer-loyalty fund are not protected by “the contractor did it.” Public money in a political subdivision remains public money. K.S.A. 21-6005 reaches a person who has control of it by virtue of official position.

That is the accurate city/county rule. Banquet spending, if unauthorized, is a strong argument that those dollars were illegal and recoverable, and that JEDO may terminate. It is a weaker argument that twenty years of service agreements were void from the first signature unless you also show JEDO lacked power to hire the contractor or that the contract itself was made in express violation of law—the 2004 bidding problem Theis already identified, which the board then tried to paper over.