by Mary Rupert
State Sen. David Haley, D-4th Dist., was left off the list of the state legislators who were invited to the mayor’s Wyandotte County legislative delegation meeting on Monday.
The meeting took place at lunchtime Monday at a restaurant near 18th and I-70.
Sen. Haley, who has served in the state Senate since 2001, and served in the House for six years before that, recently had visited the mayor to tell him that he was going to introduce a bill in the Kansas Legislature that would help fill the open 1st District, at large, Unified Government Commission seat. The seat has been vacant for more than a year, and several tie votes have been recorded. The proposed bill would set a deadline for filling the seat, possibly 30 days, and would allow a tiebreaker such as drawing names to resolve a tie vote.
Sen. Haley also had said he was proposing a meeting of the legislators from Wyandotte County to discuss this issue, but the mayor’s meeting took place first.
Sen. Haley did not attend Monday’s meeting, although he said last week that he heard there was a meeting planned by the mayor, but lacked the details of it. Last week, he said while he would like to have support for the bill, he planned to introduce the bill regardless of the support.
Bill Hurrelbrink, a spokesman for Mayor Mark Holland, said there was a communications mixup by the staff at the mayor’s office, and Sen. Haley was not extended an invitation.
“Our office called him last night and apologized,” Hurrelbrink said. It was not an intentional error, he said. Also, he said it is important that the mayor wants the position filled, but there have been tie votes each time a vote was taken.
Human rights activist Alvin Sykes remarked today that he thought the mayor should have personally apologized to Haley, instead of having a staff member apologize.
Rep. Val Winn, D-34th Dist., said the topic of the bill on filling the vacancy came up for a short discussion during Monday’s meeting, but it wasn’t widely discussed. She said in Sen. Haley’s absence, no one wanted to have a full discussion of the item. It was just one of several items that were mentioned, she added.
Rep. Winn also said the mayor’s office was concerned about the issue in view of a lot of attacks on home rule.
Rep. Pam Curtis, D-32nd Dist., said the meeting was mostly about improving communications between the legislators and the UG, and that several other meetings may be planned in the future.
The issues here, according to Rep. Curtis, seem to be that some in the local government are concerned about the state settling matters that need to be settled locally, while Sen. Haley is acting on behalf of citizens who came to him and asked him to look at it because the local government stalemated. His bill would be trying to give citizens a method to deal with the vacancy.
A resident, Carolyn Wyatt, has filed suit against the UG to try to get a judge to rule that it had to fill the seat.