Getting permission to ask voters to increase sales taxes is one thing.

Actually asking Douglas County residents to approve a new 1/4-cent sales tax is quite another.

That’s the thinking of a majority of Douglas County commissioners, who say they have no problem asking the Kansas Legislature to approve a bill that would allow them to put a potential sales-tax increase on November’s general election ballot. The bill is scheduled for consideration Wednesday by the House Taxation Committee.

But commissioners Jere McElhaney and Bob Johnson aren’t yet sold on conducting such an election, which  if successful  would generate money to buy land for development of industrial parks and preservation of open space.

The sticking point: A proposal to split the money 50-50 between industrial and open-space acquisition, as tentatively recommended by ECO2, a committee formed by the Lawrence Chamber of Commerce to study the issue. Commissioner Charles Jones serves on the committee, but his fellow commissioners have plenty of questions.

“I think there’s a whole list of things that’s wrong with it, in my opinion,” said McElhaney, a critic of ECO2’s plans. “I just think it’s the wrong time. And I don’t like the way the money is being split up for economic development and green space.

“It maybe should be 95 percent (for) economic development, and maybe 5 percent (for) open space.”

Johnson said he supported ECO2’s efforts, but not all of its findings. Spending the same amount of money on industrial land and open space would make little economic sense, he said, given that industrial property would generate new taxes, new jobs and other spinoffs.

“Open space  economically, it becomes a liability,” he said, because it would take property off public tax rolls and add to costs for maintenance and other issues.

Besides, he said, industrial land costs more money to acquire in the first place.

“I’m more inclined to support (an) acre-for-acre (split) than dollar-for-dollar, because you’re really talking about apples and oranges,” Johnson said. “If you spend a dollar for open space, you get something. If you spend a dollar for industrial space, you get nothing.”

Kelvin Heck, co-chairman of ECO2, said two years of committee work had led to the current plan to split spending on property acquisition right down the middle. If $100,000 was to be spent on industrial land, the thinking goes, $100,000 likewise be spent on open space.

“Everybody has different numbers. Everybody has different balance points,” said Heck, a commercial real estate broker for Grubb & Ellis/The Winbury Group. “We’re pretty well set on 50-50, dollars and cents. It’s what we’ve agreed to in the past two weeks. I don’t see it moving. If the public moves it, that’s one thing. But I don’t see ECO2 moving it.”

Without a majority of commissioners supporting the plan, however, the election might never be conducted. Getting the state’s permission to conduct an election then would be moot.

“We’re going to try to make this politically saleable,” Heck said. “Obviously, we want this to be something that a majority of voters will support. Otherwise, we won’t have accomplished a whole lot.”

Commissioners are scheduled to discuss the election-authority bill, House bill 2828, during their regular commission meeting, which begins at 9 a.m. today at the county courthouse, 1100 Mass.

Members of ECO2 are scheduled to conduct a closed meeting at 1 p.m. Tuesday to hammer out a draft plan that would be opened to public comment.