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Posted on Thu, Oct. 22, 2009

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Jail council gets new members

County Commission changes its members who serve on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council.

BY DEB GRUVER

The Wichita Eagle

Just in time for a retreat today, Sedgwick County has switched which commissioners sit on a group charged with finding ways to reduce the jail's population.

Out are Kelly Parks and Dave Unruh. In are Karl Peterjohn and Gwen Welshimer.

Parks last week tried to use what he thought was his authority as chairman of the commission to remove himself and Unruh from the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council. He later learned that a resolution approved last year by commissioners, including him, didn't give him that authority. The resolution said that two commissioners served on the board as long as they remained in office.

The council is an important group because the jail's population is one of the county's biggest concerns right now. The council is made up of key figures in the criminal justice system, from judges to prosecutors to public defenders.

Wednesday, Parks succeeded in changing that resolution. Commissioners voted 3-2 to approve a resolution that appoints two commissioners to serve at the "pleasure" of the chairman with the majority consent of the board.

Unruh and commissioner Tim Norton voted against the new resolution.

"It politicizes the chair position more than we have ever experienced," Unruh said, noting that the chairman of the commission is a "person among equals" whose vote "doesn't county more than anybody else's vote."

To let the chairman "have special powers where he can do things according to his pleasure as the resolution is written I think establishes the wrong policy," Unruh argued.

Instead, Unruh suggested that commissioners serve staggered two-year terms on the council.

Norton said he was uncomfortable with putting two new members on the council instead of leaving one experienced commissioner on the group and adding one who hadn't yet served on it.

"You lose some of the organizational and intellectual capital" by removing a longstanding council member, Norton said.

Parks countered with "I do think Commissioner Peterjohn and Commissioner Welshimer are intellectual."

Parks said that the jail is one of the county's most important issues and all commissioners need to get up to speed with what the council is trying to do to reverse overcrowding. But Unruh noted that the council's meetings are open to the public and "no one is denied to sit in on the Criminal Justice Coordinating Council."

However, Parks later said that once when Peterjohn attempted to come to one of the meetings, he was told he couldn't because that would lead to three commissioners meeting together at the same time without public notice, which would violate the Kansas Open Meetings Act. If three or more commissioners meet at the same time and place, the county must give public notice under that law.

Welshimer said the county is "at a critical point in trying to reorganize that jail population. That's one of the things I've been working on very hard. We all need to understand the function of the CJCC. I think all of us should have thorough knowledge with what's going on with our corrections and jail systems because we're the ones who pay for it."

The council will meet from 10 a.m. to 2 p.m. today in the commission's chambers on the third floor of the courthouse, 525 N. Main.

Unruh, who had served on the council since it formed in 2004, made several pleas to stay on the group. He says he plans to attend today's meeting, even though he is no longer an official member.

Although he and Norton voted against the resolution giving the commission chairman authority to name council representatives, they did vote to appoint Peterjohn and Welshimer to the council.