A second Kansas solar bill was written to answer the objections. It never got a hearing
A second Kansas solar bill was written to answer the objections. It never got a hearing
2026-09-10 · Kansas · Legislation · Did not pass
In 2026 the Kansas House produced a solar bill that fixed almost every objection the industry had raised to the Senate version. It died without a single hearing. House Bill 2669 was introduced by the House Committee on Local Government at the request of Representative Osman, and never advanced.1
Its drafting is worth reading closely, because it is the most carefully constructed statement anyone has put in front of the Kansas Legislature about how a solar-access rule would fit inside existing community association law.
What it would have done
New Section 1(a): “No deed, restrictive covenant, bylaw, rule or declaration of an association shall limit or prohibit, or have the effect of limiting or prohibiting, the installation of a solar energy conversion system upon the rooftop of any unit owned by a unit owner.”2
Subsection (b) preserved rulemaking but bounded it. An association “may adopt reasonable rules regarding the placement of a solar energy conversion system on the rooftop of a unit, but such provisions shall not: (1) Prevent the installation of a system; (2) impair the functioning of a system; (3) restrict the use of the system; or (4) adversely affect the cost or efficiency of the system.”
The two subsections that made it different
Subsection (c) is the carve-out that condominium and townhouse associations had asked for: “The provisions of this section shall not apply to the common elements or limited common elements of a common interest community.” A roof that is a common element — which describes most stacked-flat and attached-housing regimes in Kansas — would have been outside the bill entirely.
Subsection (d) settled where the rule would live: “This section shall be a part of and supplemental to the Kansas uniform common interest owners bill of rights act.” That placement carries consequences the bill never had to spell out. KUCIOBORA reaches only common interest communities of twelve or more residential units, and K.S.A. 58-4603 makes its provisions mandatory notwithstanding contrary declaration or bylaw language.
Why the placement mattered more than the prohibition
Attaching the rule to KUCIOBORA would have produced a solar right with a jurisdictional boundary that has nothing to do with solar. A Kansas subdivision of eleven homes is outside the Act. A subdivision of twelve is inside it. Two neighbours across a street in different plats would have had different rights, decided by unit count.
It would also have imported KUCIOBORA's enforcement architecture rather than creating a new one. K.S.A. 58-4621 lets “a declarant, association, unit owner, or any other person subject to this act” bring an action to enforce a right granted by the Act, and permits the court to “award reasonable attorney's fees and costs.”3 A homeowner denied panels would have had a fee-shifting claim already built for them — a far more consequential change than the prohibition itself, and one nobody debated because there was no hearing.
What the drafting tells a Kansas board to expect next
The condominium carve-out is now the settled starting point. Both the 2026 House draft and the trade-body amendment requests on the Senate bill converged on the same line: detached-unit rooftops in, common-element roofs out. A 2027 bill that does not include that carve-out will be an outlier.
“Or have the effect of limiting or prohibiting” is the language to watch. That phrase reaches indirect restrictions, and it is aimed at the practical toolkit an architectural committee uses — screening requirements, rear-slope-only placement rules, colour-matching conditions, approval fees. Subsection (b)(4)'s bar on rules that “adversely affect the cost or efficiency of the system” would have made a rear-slope-only rule difficult to defend on a north-facing roof. Boards that assume a placement rule is safer than a ban should notice that this draft treated them as the same thing.
Nothing changed on the ground. With both bills dead, a Kansas association's authority over rooftop solar is whatever the declaration gives it, exercised subject to the general duties in K.S.A. 58-4608 and 58-4609. That is the position as of today.
What to watch next
Watch whether the House committee that requested the bill takes it up in 2027 with a hearing this time. A bill introduced by a committee at a member's request, then never scheduled, usually means the chair was not persuaded rather than that the idea failed — a different and more recoverable problem than the Senate bill's.
Watch also for the unit-count threshold to become the argument. If a solar right is drafted into KUCIOBORA, the communities it misses are the small ones, and Kansas has a great many of them.
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