REPORT ON THE UNIT MEETINGS FOR THE STUDY OF REPRESENTATIVENESS

OF THE LAWRENCE-DOUGLAS COUNTY PLANNING COMMISSION

February 22, 2002

The Unit Meetings for the Representativeness of the Planning Commission study were held on Saturday,
February 2, at Drury Place, and February 5 at the Ninth Street Baptist Church. Information was presented
by Alan Black, Melinda Henderson, and Betty Lichtwardt, Chair. It was noted in the introduction that
“we appreciate the amount of time and work that goes into the job of being a planning commissioner, and
we greatly respect our commissioners for being willing to serve voluntarily and without pay on what
must be the most difficult advisory commission that was ever invented.” The Committee also gratefully
acknowledged the contributions of David Burress as a member of the Rep Committee before he resigned
to become a member of the Planning Commission.

By way of background information, Alan Black gave a history of zoning and planning commissions; their
origin in the business community and tradition of being primarily composed of members associated with
real estate, development and related vocations. He described responsibilities of planning commissions,
the importance of their advice, and related this to the Lawrence-Douglas County Planning Commission
(or PC). (For more on this see the February, 2001 Voter and the January, 2002 Voter.)

OUTLINE OF THE STUDY: DEFINING THE QUESTION OF REPRESENTATIVENESS AND

METHOD OF STUDY.

Defining “representativeness”
The Committee first had to establish what we meant by the term “representativeness.” After much
discussion, we chose a 10-year period from 1990 to 2000 to compare how the membership compared to
the population under the jurisdiction of the Planning Commission; i.e., Lawrence and the unincorporated
Douglas County. For demographic characteristics to compare, the Committee chose gender, vocation,
party affiliation, and residence (unincorporated county or Lawrence) because this information was readily
available through public records.

The study: Demographic comparisons of the county population with the members of the PC.
Melinda, using statistics from the 2000 Census, Douglas County voter registration records, and Kansas
Department of Human Resources (based on the Standard Industry Classification at the 2-digit level,
abbreviated to “SIC”), compared the PC with the population of Douglas County for residence, gender,
party affiliation, and vocation. (See graphs Nos. 1-4, on the illustration page.)

RESULTS OF THE DEMOGRAPHIC COMPARISONS.

Melinda found that based on population, the PC is disproportionately male (Graph #2), Republican
(Graph #3), and rural (Graph #1), compared to the general population. In terms of occupations within
industries (Graph #4), the PC is disproportionately high in those employed in service areas; finance-
insurance & real estate; agriculture; and construction.

STUDYING THE ACTIONS OF THE PLANNING COMMISSION

The next question for the Committee was how the actions and advice of the PC compare to the general
concept of public interest. The purpose of this inquiry was to try to determine whether there was an
inherent bias that might be affecting the PC advice against or in favor of a standard that measures public
interest. Adopting a measurement of public interest was discussed at length by the Committee. We finally
decided that since this was a League study and the League has continuous records of Planning
Commission meetings available through the Land Use Committee (LUC) that covers a period of many
years, we should use those records.

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 Defining bias: Adopting a standard for comparison
The Committee then had to adopt a standard and data base of information by which we could compare
the actions of the Planning Commission (PC) with what the Rep Committee defined as public interest. If
there were a tendency shown by the PC members to vote more in favor of applicants’ requests than our
standard warranted, the Rep Committee would determine this to be a bias contrary to League assessment
of public interest. The standard which the Rep Committee adopted was based on a combination of
planning staff advice, and planning staff assessment of consistency with the comprehensive plan,
Horizon 2020 (see Graph #5 on last page).

Method of study: Source of information and comparisons.

Over a period of many years, the League Land Use Committee has reviewed the Planning Commission
monthly meeting agendas and has a continuous record of Staff Reports, Planning Commission meeting
minutes, reports written for the LUC by its members, and letters sent to the Planning Commission by the
LUC on particular agenda items. The Rep Committee considered this source of primary importance to
our Rep study because the LUC reports and letters were based on the League Environmental Quality
Positions on Land Use dating from 1973 which represent our concepts of public interest on land use, and
guide our study and actions. All of the items from Planning Commission meeting agendas chosen by the
LUC for study were significant, and many were controversial. Because of time constraints the Rep
Committee needed to limit the amount of information that we reviewed. Therefore, we decided to study
Planning Commission actions on the specific selected issues that were taken from the LUC records and
had been targeted as significant or controversial. We decided on the time period for study to be the two-
year period between January 1, 1999 and December 31, 2000 because this was the two-year period
following adoption of Horizon 2020 by the County Commission and the beginning of our Rep study.

The data chosen for tabulation were the voting records of the Planning Commission as a whole (tallied by
David Burress) and the voting by individual planning commissioners (tallied by Melinda) taken from the
monthly Planning Commission meeting agenda items that had originally been specifically selected by the
Land Use Committee as significant and/or controversial.. The PC votes as a whole were taken from the
minutes of each meeting. The individual PC votes were obtained by Melinda from the Planning Office
from the tabulations recorded at each PC meeting. The Committee tallied the PC votes on well over 100
of these selected agenda items taken from the two-year period.

Judgment of bias.
The Committee compared the voting record on the selected issues by the Planning Commission as a
whole to gauge an indication of bias. We made three comparisons: PC positive votes for applicants’
requests and other agenda items compared with (a) planning staff recommendations for approval; (b)
planning staff evaluation of consistency with Horizon 2020; and (c) LUC support for the agenda items.
(See Graph #5.)

We then tallied voting records of individual members over this two-year period to gauge whether the
demographic characteristics and vocations in general might have any predictive value in determining
bias. (See Table # 6). The Committee did not analyze any of the information statistically for significance
beyond these graphs and tables.

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 RESULTS OF THE STUDY ON BIAS

Study of the voting Bias of the Planning Commission as a whole. (Graph #5)
1. There was little evidence that LWV letters and communications had much impact either on the staff
or PC in their recommendations or voting. This might be expected because LUC letters often reflect a
need for general policy changes using the PC items as examples, and such changes would not be
immediately apparent. The LUC letters possibly are received too late to affect outcomes on specific
issues. There is a very short time period between LUC receipt of the available information in the
form of Staff Reports, plats, and development plans for each Planning Commission agenda, LUC
meetings to review this material and write the letters, and receipt of LUC letters by the Planning
Commission at their study session before each PC meeting. This gives the recipients little time for
review of LUC comments.
2. Regarding recommendations of the planning staff we found that there was a bias in favor of
approving applicants’ requests beyond what was recommended by the planning staff, but not a
substantial one. The staff recommended approval on 81% of our selected agenda items. The PC
voted approval of 90% of these same agenda items. Therefore, we interpreted these results as a
disparity between staff recommendations and Planning Commission approvals that could indicate
bias, but we did not test this for significance.
3. The greatest noticeable indication of bias was in the staff assessments for conformance to Horizon
2020 compared to how the Planning Commission actually voted. Not all agenda items are assessed by
staff for consistency with the comprehensive plan. However, of those they did assess, staff
considered only 66% of our selected agenda items to be consistent with Horizon 2020. The Planning
Commission approved 85% of these same agenda items.

The question of voting records of individual commissioners as a reflection of their occupations. (Table
#6)

We found no basis for a positive relationship between what might be termed development-related
vocations of Planning Commissioners and their voting records, as each commissioner’s occupation is
described in the SIC. There was a progression of voting in favor of applicants’ requests from the lowest
commissioner’s voting record of 76% in favor of applicants’ requests to the highest commissioner’s
voting record of 95% in favor of applicants’ requests. The occupation of the lowest-ranked (least biased)
commissioner was in law practice and the highest-ranked (most biased) commissioner was in financial
planning, with a variety of occupations represented in between.

CONCLUSIONS FROM OUR STUDY.

1. The members of the Planning Commission over a ten-year period were not proportionately
representative of the population of Lawrence-Douglas County in terms of gender, political party
affiliation, residence, and vocation. Members tended to be male, Republican, and disproportionately
rural residents (Graphs #1-3). In terms of vocations they also were not representative of the general
population (see Graph #4).
2. Over the two-year period during which the voting records were tallied, there seemed to be a bias in
favor of applicants’ requests and other planning issues over and above staff recommendations for
approval. This is noticeably apparent when comparing the evaluations by the staff for consistency
with Horizon 2020 and the voting record of the PC on comprehensive plan issues. (Graph #5).
3. We have not shown a positive relationship between a bias in a PC member and his or her occupation
or other demographic characteristics. (Table #6).
4. At this stage, without further study, we have no basis for recommending additions or changes to our
current League Land Use Positions regarding the Planning Commission.

—Submitted by Alan Black, Melinda Henderson, and Betty Lichtwardt, Chair

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 DISCUSSION BY THE MEMBERSHIP
It was noted from casual observation that there seemed to be a reverse relationship between how long
members of the PC have served and their tendency to vote against staff advice and the comprehensive
plan. This would indicate a need for better education of the Planning Commissioners initially, either
before
serving or early in their terms. The League already has emphasized this in their Land Use Position on the
PC adopted in the mid-1980s.

CONSENSUS
The Committee on Representativeness of the Planning Commission reported to the Board of Directors,
and the Board adopted the following language to be considered at the annual meeting of the Lawrence-
Douglas County League of Women Voters:
1. The process of appointing members to the Planning Commission should be open. There
should be a public announcement when vacancies occur and applications from interested
individuals should be accepted and considered by the appointing authorities. The hope is that
the make-up of the Planning Commission will be more representative of the demographics of
Lawrence and the unincorporated portion of Douglas County.
2. The governing bodies of Lawrence and Douglas County should have written policies on
eligibility for the Planning Commission which include residency criteria.
3. The laws and policies regarding conflict of interest by members of the Planning Commission
should be made clear.
4. Planning Commission meetings should be televised.

[SEE GRAPHICS AT END OF DOCUMENT]

This was reformatted and reprinted from the March, 2002, Voter

FINAL POSITION STATEMENT ADOPTED BY THE LEAGUE OF WOMEN VOTERS

LAWRENCE-DOUGLAS COUNTY AT THEIR ANNUAL MEETING ON APRIL 6, 2002:

1. The process of appointing members to the Planning Commission should be open. There
should be a public announcement when vacancies occur and applications from interested
individuals should be accepted and considered by the appointing authorities.
2. The governing bodies of Lawrence and Douglas County should have written policies on
eligibility for the Planning Commission including whether or not there is a residency
criterion.
3. The governing bodies of Lawrence and Douglas County should have written policies
regarding conflict of interest that apply to members of the Planning Commission.
4. Planning Commission meetings should be televised.

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