Search for county manager lacks public input

The four finalists for Sedgwick County manager have been described as “extraordinary” and “awesome.” Such superlatives reflect what the county will need to replace the now-retired William Buchanan, but the search has badly lacked transparency and community input.

After commissioners discussed their own ideas for what a successor should offer – including the majority’s preference for someone with private-sector business experience – a consulting firm sifted through 85 applicants and narrowed the field to eight candidates. Six interviewed with commissioners as a group and individually in July.

Aug. 4 brought the announcement of four finalists: Michael Scholes, who was chief of staff for the Kosovo Forces of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization, and Ryan Waller, assistant county administrator of Lake County, Ill., in addition to local candidates Tim Kaufman, director of the county’s Division of Health and Human Services, and Tom Stolz, director of the Metropolitan Area Building and Construction Department.

The four met Aug. 17 with both a county government panel and a community panel composed of Wichita Mayor Jeff Longwell, Joe Johnson of the Wichita Independent Business Association, Don Klausmeyer of the Wichita Area Builders Association, Jeff Fluhr of the Greater Wichita Partnership, Colin McKenney of the Nonprofit Chamber of Service, Goddard Mayor Marcey Gregory (representing the Sedgwick County Association of Cities) and the Coalition for a Better Wichita’s Jennifer Baysinger. (Kenya Cox of the NAACP was named to the panel but unable to participate in the interviews.)

Those are worthy stakeholders in the county’s management. But the panel’s diversity doesn’t match that of the county’s population.

And no effort was made to let the broader community get to know the finalists, or to formally enable citizens to be witnesses and contributors to the process.

Because Sedgwick County had no need to hire a county manager for 2 1/2 decades, perhaps no one involved this time recalls the debacle of the 1987 search for Buchanan’s predecessor. Three commissioners set aside a six-month search process and hired a county employee who had missed the cut to five finalists – and who would be forced to resign after a 1990 drug bust.

But the county should have learned from the more recent mistakes of Wichita, which had three city-manager searches in four years before landing Robert Layton in 2009. To its credit, the city made the five finalists in 2008 available for televised public forums as well as media interviews, and enabled citizens to submit questions and feedback forms. The city also has used a public event and opportunities for online and other input to help its ongoing search for a new police chief; earlier, citizens informed a Police Department assessment.

County Commission Chairman Richard Ranzau told The Eagle: “We discussed a meet-and-greet type of thing with citizens, but in the end I don’t think anyone thought that we would gain much out of it.”

Unfortunately, that means county residents must blindly trust in the judgment of a County Commission that has not earned much trust with recent decisions.

For the editorial board, Rhonda Holman

This story was originally published August 31, 2015 at 7:07 PM with the headline "Search for county manager lacks public input."