Cruse dumps Ranzau’s planning commissioner, appoints Anchor owner instead
After five months and a rewrite of the rules, Sedgwick County Commissioner Lacey Cruse has replaced Richard Ranzau’s appointee to the Planning Commission with one of her own.
Cruse’s action removed Richard S. Dailey from the Metropolitan Area Planning Commission and replaced him with Schane Gross, the owner of The Anchor, a Douglas Avenue bar and restaurant.
It swept away a lingering vestige of Ranzau’s tenure as a county commissioner that ended in January.
Wednesday’s vote was the culmination of months of quiet maneuvering by county management to allow Cruse to be able to remove Dailey, who had planned to finish out a term ending in August 2021.
The MAPC is the joint planning body for the county and the city of Wichita, with seven members appointed by each. It wields significant authority over real estate development decisions in the city and county.
Cruse said she wanted to appoint Gross to bring more diversity to the board. Gross will be one of two women on the 14-member commission. The other is its chairwoman, Cindy Miles.
Appointments to county boards and commissions are usually made by individual commissioners and routinely rubber-stamped by the commission as a whole.
But on Wednesday, Commissioner Jim Howell questioned why Dailey was being fired from the MAPC when he still had two years left in his term.
“I love The Anchor, it’s a great restaurant and I’m sure she (Gross) will do a great job,” Howell said. “I just want to say I appreciate the service of John Dailey and I hate to see him removed from this board simply because of something that’s not within his control.”
Cruse took offense that Howell questioned Dailey’s removal and voted against appointing Gross.
“I may be new to this, but I do not question anybody else’s’ appointments, because I trust that the people that elected you are going to trust in you to make a good decision,” Cruse told Howell. “Give me a shot, OK? Give me a shot and make sure you understand that we’re not doing things as business as usual around here anymore. That’s how things are going to be while I’m sitting in this chair.”
The rule change that allowed Cruse to replace Dailey was passed by the commission Jan. 30.
The change was on the “consent agenda,” ordinarily a list of routine and noncontroversial business items that pass with a single vote.
It was listed as a “Joint Ordinance and Resolution with the City of Wichita to Approve the First Amendment to Interlocal Agreement.”
An attached staff report said the action “would clarify language regarding County appointments to the MAPC.”
What it actually did was alter the agreement so that county appointees to the MAPC serve at the pleasure of the county commissioners — and can be removed at will regardless of when their term is supposed to end.
Howell said that slipped by him in January because it looked routine and he didn’t know the underlying plan was to clear the way for Cruse to replace Dailey.
“I didn’t catch onto it at the time,” he said. “I never got a briefing from anybody. . . . It feels like it was a little covert.”
It took another four months to go into effect because it had to be approved by the Wichita City Council, which also put it on the consent agenda, and be signed off by Attorney General Derek Schmidt.
Commission Chairman David Dennis defended the change in the ordinance, but said “It may be it shouldn’t have been on consent.”
Commissioner Michael O’Donnell blamed Dailey for not stepping down from the MAPC after Ranzau, who appointed him, lost his seat to Cruse in November.
“I’m spellbound that Mr. Dailey would want to serve, when I believe Ms. Cruse or at least staff made it apparent to him that they didn’t want him serving in that position,” O’Donnell said.
Dailey said nobody asked him to step down.
“They didn’t ask me to resign,” Dailey said. “They just asked me what I intended to do. I told them I intended to fulfill my obligation to serve until the end of my term.”
He said he felt his presence on the commission was important because he was the only member living in the unincorporated area of the county.
“They went through a bunch of stuff just to get me off of there,” Dailey said.
Dennis apologized to Gross for the way the nomination was handled and for Howell voting against her appointment.
“I’m sorry that there’s been so much discussion over one appointment because normally they are very, very smooth,” he said. “I am also very disappointed that one commissioner would vote against another commissioner’s appointment, because that’s the first time I’ve seen it since I’ve served on this board. So you should have been appointed unanimously and that is the way it should have happened.”
Howell said he felt it was inappropriate for Dennis to apologize for how he voted.
“If this is so automatic, why do we even vote on these appointments?” Howell said. “I have every right to vote the way I need to vote.”
This story was originally published June 5, 2019 at 5:52 PM.
