Print edition: 
WICHITA — Sedgwick County commissioner Kelly Parks will not run for re-election, board chairman Karl Peterjohn announced in an e-mail today.
Parks did not comment except to say he would be making a statement Wednesday.
Peterjohn said in his e-mail, sent from a private account, that Parks "did not announce specific plans besides that he would not be seeking re-election."
Former Wichita City Council member Sharon Fearey, a Democrat, and former county commissioner Lucy Burtnett, a Republican, have filed for the District 4 seat.
Parks has been the subject of some controversy. He recently used the county's e-mail system to tell a Wichita resident "Screw you" when she criticized him for appealing a speeding ticket in district court.
A former police chief of Valley Center, Parks also became the subject of courthouse pranks after saying in November during a discussion about ethics that he had turned some "stuff" over to the FBI. He refused to elaborate.
In May, the board of the Association of County Employees said Parks had approached its president about forming a union to enhance employee pay and benefits.
The board said that Parks not only asked the group to gauge interest in unionizing but to do so secretly.
Parks denied he had talked to the president about forming a union.
Read more about the story in Friday's Eagle.
