As developers regularly request tax breaks from the City of Lawrence, some former members of a public committee that used to review incentives would like to see more transparency and collaboration in the process.
Some of them called for the Public Incentives Review Committee to return.
For years, the PIRC brought together Lawrence city commissioners, Douglas County commissioners and Lawrence school board members, alongside other community members and experts to discuss, ask questions and make recommendations on economic development incentive requests.
But the city dissolved that committee in 2024 as part of a broader restructuring of its advisory boards.
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Shannon Kimball, who is a longtime member of the school board and former member of the incentives committee, said the old process allowed the school board an earlier look at incentive requests.
Now, she said, the school board is often looped in near the end of the process.
“The school board is being asked to basically just sign off on these because, if we don’t, it often means we’re killing the project,” Kimball said. “And we haven’t had any opportunity at any point up until it shows up at our board meeting for final approval to ask questions or weigh in in a meaningful way.”
Economic development around town has an impact on the school district, Kimball said. New businesses can mean new property tax revenue for the school district. New housing can mean more families with students, which draws more state funding.
“All of these kinds of decisions that get made at the city and county level are having an impact on our public school system, and it is my opinion that, all too often, the school district is not brought to the table as part of those conversations, and they really should be,” she said.
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Susie Carson, the city’s economic development director, said the city values input on incentive decisions, and city staff communicate with other governing bodies as projects move through the development process.
“I think those conversations are important, and we continue to look for opportunities to strengthen communication and information-sharing among our public partners,” Carson said.
She said the city does not currently have a plan to bring back the incentives committee. That decision would be made by the city commission, she said.
Mayor Brad Finkeldei said he is in favor of more collaboration between governing bodies because decisions made by one group often affect the others.
“I think that is an area we definitely need to continue to improve on,” he said. “And I think it goes in all directions.”
He said there were some issues with the incentives committee that led to its end. Some of the incentive requests don’t involve school district or county tax dollars, he said, yet representatives from those groups were the ones advising the city.
While he understood that development decisions still affect the other groups, even if their tax dollars aren’t part of the incentives, he thought a working group or some other collaborative process may work better than an advisory committee.
Douglas County Commissioner Patrick Kelly was part of the committee and said he valued the opportunity to discuss proposals and hear different perspectives.
But he said it was sometimes challenging to vote on recommending the project as a member of the committee and then later vote on approving the project as a county commissioner.
“I wouldn’t want my participation in an earlier committee vote to suggest that I had already reached a conclusion,” he said.
If some sort of collaborative incentives committee was to return, he said it would be good to consider who was on the committee and if they may vote again on the same proposals later.
That’s the same reason the committee operated without a city commission representative the last few years of its existence, after city commissioners decided it didn’t make sense to be on the advisory boards that were tasked with making recommendations for their decisions.
Rob Chestnut, a former city commissioner and member of the incentives review committee, said the committee provided a structured way to evaluate complicated requests.
That can be particularly valuable on the back end, he said. He said the committee could allow the city to look back at previous incentives to evaluate whether they were a good investment.
Some agreements, he said, even have clawback agreements where developers may be forced to pay back some incentive money if they fail to meet certain commitments, like employment numbers. The committee, Chestnut said, could provide a place for that accountability to happen in a public setting.
“What I don’t know is that without having that incentive review committee, when incentives are offered and accepted, and the project’s complete, then who’s going back and looking at the assumptions that were made?” he said.
Those conversations are especially valuable as part of a public meeting, he said. The incentives review committee is subject to Kansas’ open records and meeting laws, which provides a layer of transparency.
“I like the idea of having a posted meeting,” Chestnut said. “You review the assumptions. Anybody can attend.”
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Cuyler Dunn (he/him), staff reporter, has worked with The Lawrence Times since April 2022. He can be reached at [email protected].
Read his complete bio at this link. Read more of his work for the Times at this link.
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