County meeting blows up as commission considers dumping three elected offices
In the not-too-distant future, you may have three less offices to vote on in Sedgwick County elections.
And a County Commission meeting about setting that process in motion got heated Tuesday with one commissioner accusing a colleague of lying and then angrily stalking out.
The specific issue before the commission at Tuesday’s staff meeting was whether to hire a consultant for an efficiency audit to focus on whether there’s waste and duplication of services between departments under commission control. The underlying issue is whether county voters should continue to elect their county clerk, treasurer, and register of deeds.
Commissioner David Dennis spoke out strongly in favor of the consultant study.
“I really think that the ultimate responsibility for saving money in this county lies with the county commission,” he said. “The county commission and our county manager constantly look at the (non-elected) departments’ offices and regularly audits operations to ensure efficiencies in county government This is what we hope to accomplish following an independent auditor to come in and analyze these (elected) offices.”
Commissioners Sarah Lopez, who attended the meeting by phone, and Lacey Cruse indicated they’re leaning toward doing the study.
The proposal was strongly opposed by Commissioner Jim Howell and two of the three elected officials, Register of Deeds Tonya Buckingham and Treasurer Brandi Baily, on her first day on the job. County Clerk Kelly Arnold was traveling Tuesday, but sent his chief deputy Karen Bailey to represent him.
If the elected offices were to be eliminated, the leaders of the departments would be selected by County Manager Tom Stolz, who answers directly to the commission.
Buckingham, Baily and Bailey requested that the commission put off consideration of eliminating their offices for a year.
One certainty that emerged from the discussion is that the change would have to be approved by voters.
It could come to the ballot in one of two ways.
▪ The commission could vote to put it before the voters on its own authority. That’s the simple way, but if the commissioners want to do it, they’d have to move quickly because state law mandates that it be considered in a general election when the governor’s office is on the ballot. If the commission misses the deadline for next year’s election, it would be another four years before they could try again.
▪ If Sedgwick County were to have an active charter commission, that group could place eliminating offices before the voters on its initiative. But it’s complicated. As state law stands, Sedgwick County doesn’t have its own charter commission. And it failed in an effort to get state permission to form one in this year’s legislative session.
A charter commission, allowed in the state’s large counties, is a panel of 25 citizens empaneled once every 10 years to propose major changes to county government. It can bypass the county commission and take its suggestions straight to the voters.
Johnson County has a charter commission and in a weird quirk of law, it could actually send Sedgwick County voters proposals to change their governmental structure.
No one expects that to happen and County Counsel Mike Pepoon called it “ludicrous” to think that a Johnson County board, made up entirely of Johnson County residents, could or would try to intervene in Sedgwick County’s decisions from 170 miles away.
Buckingham said it’s obvious that the underlying motive of the proposed audit is to build a case for elimination of the elected offices, which would reduce county voters’ ballot choices to just their commissioner and the sheriff.
“If it was just an RFP (request for proposals), why are we in such a rush to get it done?” she said after the meeting. “The reason is obvious here, just to get it (elimination of elected offices) on the ballot.”
Buckingham said she’s in the middle of her own in-house study to make the department more efficient and getting ready to move the office’s voluminous books and records to another office. The county government has slowly been preparing to exit the courthouse to make more room for courts.
Baily, who worked in the county finance department for 15 years, said she already knows there are inefficiencies at the treasurer’s office, including personnel too spread out across town because of the critical office space shortage downtown.
“Give me the chance to make those efficiencies,” she said.
The meeting took a heated turn and ended abruptly when Howell was discussing the unsuccessful effort by Sedgwick County to get a charter commission of its own.
Howell recounted his recollection of a hearing on the bill.
“There was a question given by the Legislature to the person providing testimony for the county, ‘How would you use this?’” Howell said. “I was standing there in the room and the answer was, ‘Well, we might want to do what Johnson County did, that’s get rid of the (elected) offices and put it under the administration of the county manager. When that answer was given . . .”
Dennis interrupted: “That is false.”
Howell: “OK. All right. Please let me speak. That was alarming . . .”
Dennis: “Tell the truth then.”
Continued Howell: “That was alarming at that moment, that was a realization that this is an option, that this is how this could be used . . . We didn’t have any intention to do this for real, this was just an answer to the question of how might it be used . . . But that answer . . . . that was the moment that caused this thing to hit a brick wall.”
When Howell finished talking he said, “Please tell your thoughts, Commissioner Dennis.”
Dennis didn’t answer Howell.
Visibly angry, Dennis instead got up from his chair at the commission dais, strode out of the meeting room and slammed the door behind him.
Cruse, who chaired the meeting in the absence of Chairman Pete Meitzner, ended the discussion at that point, saying the commission will take it up again two weeks from now.
“This is obviously a hot topic of conversation and I hope that we can come to sort of an agreement around what’s best for the county,” Cruse said.
This story was originally published October 12, 2021 at 4:00 PM.
CORRECTION: This story has been updated to clarify that Commissioner Lacey Cruse attended the meeting in person and Commissioner Sarah Lopez participated by phone.
